Some of the newer Espressif Systems wireless SoCs such as the ESP32-H2 and ESP32-C6 support Zigbee through their built-in 802.15.4 radio. It’s been working since the release of the ESP-IDF 5.1 framework along with the ESP-Zigbee-SDK for a while, but Arduino support was less straightforward.
But this is about to change as an Espressif engineer nicknamed P-R-O-C-H-Y has recently added a Zigbee wrapper library for the ESP-Zigbee-SDK to Arduino Core for ESP32 that works with ESP32-C6 and ESP32-H2 as standalone nodes and other SoC can be used as radio co-processor attached to an RPC (802.15.4 radio layer).
The wrapper library currently supports the following:
- Zigbee classes and all Zigbee roles
- Zigbee network scanning
- Allow multiple endpoints on the same Zigbee device (not tested yet)
- Supported Home Assistant devices
- On/off light + switch
- Color Dimmable light + switch
- Setting Manufacturer and model name
Other tasks currently planned include supporting “Temperature sensor + Thermostat” Home Assistant devices, updating ported examples to use the Zigbee library, and writing documentation… While the latter is still missing, you’ll find four basic Arduino code samples for the following Zigbee devices: a light bulb, a light switch, a temperature sensor, and a thermostat.
You can follow the progress of the port on GitHub or even contribute if you are interested in adding to the features. Over time this could potentially benefit open-source Arduino projects such as Tasmota which could add support for ESP32-C6 and ESP32-H2’s Zigbee connectivity on top of existing support for Zigbee MCUs from Texas Instruments (CC253X, CC26x2, CC13x2) and Silicon Labs (EFR32MG12/EFRMG21).
Thanks to Hedda for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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P-R-O-C-H-Y has now pushed this Zigbee API feature as a pull request to Espressif’s arduino-esp32 -> https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/pull/10265