Hedda
commented
2 years ago Note that ZiGate should have changed orientation of ESP32 module/antenna if intend to use WiFi so will interfere less with Zigbee:
Good non-interfering/non-conflicting antenna alinement orientation versus bad interfering/conflicting antenna alinement orientation
Examples of good non-interfering/non-conflicting antenna alinement orientation in Tube's products:
The simplest solution would have been to change antenna alinement orientation on the next PiZiGate PCB radio board revision.
This would have made PiZiGate antenna alinement orientation match antenna orientations of some other Zigbee PCB radio boards:
Elelabs/Popp Zigbee shield (based on Silibas EFR32MG12 with EZSP serial interface) use other antenna alinement orientation:
https://elelabs.com/products/elelabs-zigbee-shield.html
https://www.popp.eu/zb-shield/
So does your ZigStar shield and also RaspBee and RaspBee II (RaspBee 2) Zigbee shields by Dresden Electronik:
https://zig-star.com/projects/zigbee-shield/
And the same goes for the Texas Instruments CC2562P Zigbee shields by Egony as well as the ZigStar shield by mercenaruss
https://github.com/egony/cc2652p_E72-2G4M20S1E/wiki/Home-EN
https://github.com/egony/cc2652p_cc1352p_RF-STAR/wiki/Home-EN
Might also be a good option to combine that with a thicker PCB copper weight to add electromagnetic shielding to radio board?
Would like to suggest designing your next ZigStar Gateway to have a pin-header compatible with the standard Raspberry Pi GPIO.
Similar to what fairecasoimeme did with this ZiGate-Ethernet platform which is primarily designed to be used with his PiZiGate:
https://github.com/fairecasoimeme/ZiGate-Ethernet
https://zigate.fr/documentation/descriptif-de-la-zigate-ethernet/
https://zigate.fr/produit/zigate-ethernet/
https://zigate.fr/produit/pizigatev2/
As a bonus users could then buy ZigStar Zigbee Shield separately and use it on the Raspberry Pi GPIO header without the gateway.
"The GPIOs are compatible with the Raspberry Pi GPIOs. Here is the correspondence of the GPIO with the ESP32":
Because of this design ZiGate-Ethernet gateway can not only be used with PiZiGate but also with other Zigbee shields for RPI.
Including technically supporting adapter shields from other manufacturers such as PiZiGate, RaspBee I/II, and Elelabs EFR32 shield:
https://zig-star.com/projects/zigbee-shield/
https://github.com/egony/cc2652p_cc1352p_RF-STAR/wiki/Home-EN#shield-for-single-board-computers
https://github.com/egony/cc2652p_E72-2G4M20S1E/wiki/Home-EN#shield-pi-hat-for-single-board-computers
https://zigate.fr/produit/pizigatev2/
https://phoscon.de/en/raspbee2
https://phoscon.de/en/raspbee
https://elelabs.com/products/elelabs-zigbee-shield.html
https://www.popp.eu/zb-shield/
And while not tested it should in theory also work with Aeotec and z-wave.me Z-Wave adapters and other radio adapters as well
https://aeotec.com/z-wave-home-automation/development-kit-pcb.html
https://z-wave.me/products/razberry/
Meaning that the ZiGate-Ethernet platform could really be used as a serial stream server proxy for any serial shield for RPI.