Zigbee max devices

[Alex Johnson]

Is there any way in which I can use more than 200 devices in a Zigbee network?

I am trying to evaluate nRF52840 for healthcare (retirement homes, longterm living) and I can go up to 1000 devices in a network.

Of course I can split the network in multiple segments, but I need to have Zigbee pendants moving all around (which means they need to be part of the same network.

[Eduard Iten]

Hello Alex,

I just started to work on Zigbee. But in my company, we have a Zigbee Network with 2500+ nodes. A coordinator by itself can't support so many devices, but we have about 700 repeaters in this network.

Maybe you should consider thread to build your application (also works with nRF52840). We are planning to migrate the mentioned network to thread. Reason is that the coordinator in the Zigbee network is a single point of failure. With thread, we can have many border routers (otbr), so we have redundancy of the connection to the ethernet.

Regards, Edi

[Alex Johnson]

I thought a coordinator cannot keep more than 200 devices registered on the same PAN ID, according to this constant here:

ZB_CONFIG_OVERALL_NETWORK_SIZE

Of course I will have a router for each 4-8 devices because the buildings are very large and to cover all areas I will need many repeaters.

I would look at Thread, thanks for the advice.But I could not find any pendants for Thread. The Zigbee Pendants (SOS Buttons) at least exist, although I will have to talk to the manufacturer to make a smarted one that does not talk only with network coordinator.

[Eduard Iten]

Well, we use CC2562RB as a coordinator in this setting with zigbee2mqtt. I don't know if thats a relevant difference.

With matter over thread, you can use all the ZCL-devices. I thought you are developing your own end device. But if your manufacturer uses an NRF as a base for the zigbee device, they should also be able to deliver matter/thread implementation.

[Alex Johnson]

Yes. This is the difference. CC2562RB probably supports more devices. I will look into it. Thanks.