Hey. I am aware of Zigbee devices but havent done much with them. On the other hand, I have done quite a bit of programming on the ESP32 modules.
I have ran into an issue for my ESP32 automation system:
#1. The library that I use for MQTT communications (PubSubClient) does not support publish qos, which means that there is no guarantee that the sent message will be properly received
#2. In the building where I am implementing my automation system, there are a lot of testing of the wireless devices going on therefore 2.4ghz signal is horrificly bad in there. My phone wont even connect to the 2.4ghz wifi unless I stand within 2 meters from a router. This results in various difficulties to connect my esp32 devices to the network. I have temporarly solved the problem by creating an access point on my raspberry PI, however that has limitations and allows me to connect only 7 remote clients at a time and I need more than that!.
How would Zigbee compare to an ESP32 in a simmilar application? SInce zigbee operates in a different frequency band, I would not have any frequency problems. I am wondering whats the communcations and messaging like on the zigbee. Is it simple and straightforward? Is it 100% guaranteed to transmit and receive a message? Will I be able to easily integrate the zigbee network with my raspberry PI that runs a server,database and controls the whole automation system? I would assume I would need to connect the coordinator device to raspberry PI and control remote nodes that way. Lets say I want to retrieve some information from node 5, I would tell my Raspberry PI that I need node 5 information, then It would send a message to coordinator and then the coordinator will finally talk to node 5. This is my current understanding.
Please share your knowledge and experience with zigbee devices so I determine whether its worthed wasting my time and effort
I have ran into an issue for my ESP32 automation system:
#1. The library that I use for MQTT communications (PubSubClient) does not support publish qos, which means that there is no guarantee that the sent message will be properly received
#2. In the building where I am implementing my automation system, there are a lot of testing of the wireless devices going on therefore 2.4ghz signal is horrificly bad in there. My phone wont even connect to the 2.4ghz wifi unless I stand within 2 meters from a router. This results in various difficulties to connect my esp32 devices to the network. I have temporarly solved the problem by creating an access point on my raspberry PI, however that has limitations and allows me to connect only 7 remote clients at a time and I need more than that!.
How would Zigbee compare to an ESP32 in a simmilar application? SInce zigbee operates in a different frequency band, I would not have any frequency problems. I am wondering whats the communcations and messaging like on the zigbee. Is it simple and straightforward? Is it 100% guaranteed to transmit and receive a message? Will I be able to easily integrate the zigbee network with my raspberry PI that runs a server,database and controls the whole automation system? I would assume I would need to connect the coordinator device to raspberry PI and control remote nodes that way. Lets say I want to retrieve some information from node 5, I would tell my Raspberry PI that I need node 5 information, then It would send a message to coordinator and then the coordinator will finally talk to node 5. This is my current understanding.
Please share your knowledge and experience with zigbee devices so I determine whether its worthed wasting my time and effort