News items for tag zigbee - Koos van den Hout

The zigbee stick I ordered for environmental monitoring at home is making its way over here and I received an sms about the duty and tax to be paid for importing it from the United Kingdom. Indeed, since brexit taxes have to be paid.

My first reaction when receiving an sms about a package was to think of malware attempts since that has been in the news recently. So I checked carefully. It's good dpd also sends an e-mail with the same information, and I can check the validity of the links and the source of the e-mail a lot better on a computer.

Since January 2008 I measure temperatures and other environmental data in and around the house with 1-wire sensors and adaptors. These work fine but need wires between the sensors and that isn't ideal for quick spot measurements.

So I looked into other options recently, and found affordable zigbee temperature/air pressure/humidity sensors. And an USB zigbee interface which works with linux and with a lot of the available application software. Because the next problem is going sensor - zigbee network - zigbee usb interface - some magic - database of measurements.

Because I see myself wanting long series of measurements from a number of places in the house and testing without breaking those series I ordered two USB zigbee interfaces and eight environmental sensors. I guess I want production and development enviromental monitoring.

• Zigbee interface: zzh! CC2652R Multiprotocol RF Stick (tindie)
• Sensors: Xiaomi Aquara smart home sensor air pressure temperature humidity (aliexpress)

The zigbee stick is not the cheapest solution but it is documented to work with zigbee2mqtt and buying one supports work on that software.