chshu
commented
4 months ago @Hedda Thanks for the suggestion, we are indeed working on a esp-zigbee-host example, which will run on a ESP Wi-Fi SoC and access the ESP NCP via UART. Although we still recommend our customer to use the Host+RCP mode if they use ESP Wi-Fi SoC as the host.
Generally, for the Zigbee Gateway solution, we will have two options for our customers:
- ESP Wi-Fi + Zigbee SoCs: https://github.com/espressif/esp-zigbee-sdk/tree/main/examples/esp_zigbee_gateway, It's the Host + RCP (Radio Co-Processor) design, application and Zigbee Stack run on an ESP32 series Wi-Fi SoC (ESP32, ESP32-C, ESP32-S, etc), with an 802.15.4 SoC (ESP32-H2, ESP32-C6) loaded with Zigbee RCP, the two communicate via UART
- ESP Zigbee + 3rd party host It's the Host + NCP (Network Co-Processor) design, Zigbee Stack runs on ESP 802.15.4 SoC, and user application runs on a 3rd party SoC. The host could access NCP via the ESP Zigbee serial protocol (https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-zigbee-sdk/en/latest/esp32/application.html#esp-ncp-guide). We will provide a esp-zigbee-host example as a reference for customer.
xieqinan
Hedda
Is your feature request related to a problem?
@lhespress (and @chshu) not sure if should post a request here or zigpy-espzb repo at https://github.com/lhespress/zigpy-espzb
Duplicate/cross-posting of https://github.com/lhespress/zigpy-espzb/issues/4
Feature request for "ESP Zigbee NCP serial proxy SDK" example similar to "Gateway Example" (Zigbee gateway with RCP firmware):
https://github.com/espressif/esp-zigbee-sdk/tree/main/examples/esp_zigbee_gateway
So please consider making and maintaining an "ESP Zigbee NCP serial proxy SDK" example design to be used with zigpy-espzb
The example should demonstrate how to build an ESP Zigbee NCP serial proxy server. Using a Wi-Fi SoC such as ESP32, ESP32-C3 or ESP32-S3 running a serial-to-network proxy relay server service (similar to "ser2net") allowing for a remote socket connection, used in combination with an 802.15.4 SoC like ESP32-H2 or ESP32-C6 running ESP Zigbee NCP to provide 802.15.4 radio via ZNSP (Zigbee NCP Serial Protocol) interface.
That is, a software solution that would make the two hardware designs from the "ESP Thread Boarder Router SDK" project usable as a network-attached remote Zigbee Coordinator NCP adapter, and as such instead offer a UART-to-IP serial streaming tunneling proxy relay solution (i.e. a remote Serial Port over TCP/IP) that works the same way as TubesZB’s Zigbee Gateways and ZigStar’s Zigbee Gateways solutions, meaning that it would present Espressif Zigbee NCP with ZNSP (Zigbee NCP Serial Protocol) interface as a remote serial communication port that can be used with Home Assistant's ZHA integration (which depends on zigpy):
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha
Such solutions based on ESP32 are commonly also referred to "Serial to TCP Bridge" and Tasmota is also a popular choice for it:
https://tasmota.github.io/docs/Serial-to-TCP-Bridge/
That is, just offering a pass-through tunneling of the UART port using a "ser2net" type Serial-to-IP proxy solution for relay connection:
Preferably announcing the proxy service on the network via Zeroconf for automatic network discovery which is supported inside ZHA:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#discovery-via-usb-or-zeroconf
Otherwise, the end-user has to manually configure IP address and TCP port for the socket so Zeroconf makes it very user-friendly:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#zigate-or-sonoff-zbbridge-devices
FYI, Zeroconf (Zero-configuration networking) in the ZHA integration in turn depends on the Zeroconf integration:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zeroconf/
PS: TubesZB Zigbee Gateways and ZigStar Zigbee Gateways solutions as just examples as there are many ESP32-based solutions for this which shows that there are real-world use cases for "ESP Zigbee NCP serial-to-IP proxy" type products:
https://tubeszb.com/
https://zig-star.com/projects/
https://shop.codm.de/automation/zigbee/40/zigbee-cc2652p2-tcp-ethernet-coordinator
https://gio-dot.github.io/Z-Bee-Duo/
https://smlight.tech/
https://github.com/cyijun/OpenZ3Gateway
https://shop68536829.taobao.com/
Describe the solution you'd like.
No response
Describe alternatives you've considered.
No response
Additional context.
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