NRF52840 dongle as a coordinator for Zigbee2MQTT

[Manju_rn]

Has anybody been able to configure the NRF52840 dongle as a co-ordinator and use the Zigbee2MQTT?  I think this will be a good product as it has the range when compared to CC2531 / 38 sticks. There have been customer PCBs that are designed but they are expensive comparatively.

[Edvin]

Hello,

It is possible to use the nRF52840 dongle as a coordinator, but I have not seen any Zigbee2MQTT port for the nRF. I don't think that is something that we (Nordic) have, but perhaps you can find something from some of the other users.

After a quick search on the web, I didn't find anything, but I only spent a couple of minutes.

Anyway, there is a CLI example in the SDK that works on the dongle. You can use this to select the role for the nRF52 Dongle, open and close the network, interact with the other nodes and so on.

Best regards,

Edvin

[Manju_rn]

Thanks, yep know about the co-ordinator functionality. The zigbee-herdsman layer I believe is for the TI devices only. Let me check on the CLI part.

It will be quite good if this zigbee-herdsman is extended to nRF since there are this CC2531 chips being used as coordinator for the Home Automation which are quite bad. Tthere is hardly any professional Dongle type CC2562 or CC1352p chips out there (there are some custom ones though) and I believe, in that respect, this nRF52840 is a terrific dongle

[Edvin]

I see.

I don't think that this is something we'll implement from Nordic's side. I agree it is a nice to have feature, but our dongles/DKs are for development purposes. They are not intended for commercial use. If someone writes a port to Zigbee2MQTT, and you find it, please feel free to link to it here, as it may help other users. But as far as I see it, it is not something used in commecial products. 

Do you agree?

Best regards,

Edvin

[Manju_rn]

Well, in my opinion, it seems that the chip manufacturer's do not seem to realize the enthusiast market which upholds the opensource and for Zigbee, Z2M is one of the great software surpassing any known commercial implementation which is simple, extendable & interoperable. Regarding the the nrf52840 Dongle, not sure why it is not considered a commercial product, look at the similar product from TI - CC2531 which is widely used as a co-ordinator and seamlessly works with Home Assistant, OpenHAB (& maybe others).  Unfortunately, the original product is cost prohibitive and the cheap Chinese clones have reliability issues.  This is where i believe Nordic's dongle which is relatively cheap and can fill in the gap and potentially be a market leader in these enthusiast community (knowing Nordic, am sure no concerns on quality & reliability).   

[Edvin]

If you want to discuss this with the regional sales manager for your area, please let me know via a PM here on DevZone, and I can give you the contact information. I am an engineer just explaining what I believe is the reason behind this.

So, unfortunately, so really there is no point in convincing me since I don't make these decisions. 

Send me a PM if you are interested in the contact information.

Best regards,

Edvin