Ad: Buy ready2use zigbee2mqtt stick - flashed, antenna mod and printed case

I talked with @Koenkk about placing an ad here and he’s fine with it.

You may ask yourself the following questions:

Do I need this?
If you are not into flashing devices and/or soldering you might be interested in buying a ready-to-use stick for your home automation solution. This way you don’t have to buy a CC Debugger to get started with zigbee2mqtt. Also if you want a CC2531 with a better range and you aren’t into soldering/modding it with an antenna… I’m your guy.

What is the benefit of this ready2use Zigbee2mqtt-Stick?
Mainly I do three things with the CC2531:

  • I add an antenna to the device to maximise the range. As you can see on the pictures I solder it directly to the traces and cut the old antenna. This is the only right way to do it, soldering an antenna with a cable (other mod) will most probably lead to loss because of impedance mismatches.

  • I designed a nice looking case. You can choose from around 10 different colors (see pictures below) and you can also choose from a white or black antenna.

  • Flashing the device as coordinator with the newest firmware release.

Do you also sell devices flashed as routers?
Yes, I can flash the modded CC2531 as router too. I am also selling a modded CC2530, if you like to have another design for routers placed in your house/apartment.

So the CC2531 is available as coordinator or router.
The CC2530 is only available as a router. For the CC2530 I desolder the pin-headers (to make it as small as possible) and mount a CP2102 to it. This way you can plug it into any USB-Port to power it up.

Ok fine, I want one, how can I contact you?
Contact me in this forum or in the home assistant community forum (same user name) with a PM
OR
You can also contact via email here: h4nc.zigbee(a)gmail.com

Where do you ship from? How much is the shipping fee?
I ship from Austria (Europe). So depending on where you live, the shipping fee might be considerable. Tell me your country and I can look up the shipping fee for you (with or without tracking).

Will I be able to update the Firmware without a CC Debugger?
Yes, this is possible, but I for myself have no experience with that. So I cannot help you.

Do I need a CC Debugger?
No, to start with zigbee2mqtt your are fine with the preflashed stick. However, I would recommend to buy a CC Debugger to be on the save side. Of course I sell a preflashed device here, so you might wonder why should I get a CC Debugger. Well my device is more about the Antenna mod (+range) and the pretty case (+style) than about flashing. Flashing is easy, well documented and should be possible for everyone of us. I preflash the device to make it easier for you to start and because I already have the devices in my hands. There is no reason not to flash it.
So the reason why I write this is the following:
There are a small amount users (but none of my customers yet) who’s CC2531 crashed for some reason. See link in one of the posts below to get to the thread where people reported crashed devices. With the the CC Debugger you are able to flash new firmware’s and if (in that uncertain case) your device crashes sometime, you have the tool to fix it.
Keep in mind that the shipping time from china often takes very long. Waiting for a Debugger for weeks with a crashed Coordinator could make you crazy.

I do not sell the CC Debugger, this is just a recommendation and you don’t have to have one. You can get one at aliexpress, ebay, etc.

Pictures of the CC2531

Please see my posts below for more pictures.

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More pictures of the CC2531:

Currently I can only post one picture per post. Is it possible to unlock this @Koenkk
I’d like to add some more pictures of the Router.

Pictures of the CC2530 (Router):

@h4nc your second post contains more pictures, right?

The second one got approved somehow. Don’t know why it can contain more pics.

However I can’t even edit the second post, because than it says something like „only one picture allowed“.

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Edit: Added CC Debugger question to the first post.

Do I need a CC Debugger?
No, to start with zigbee2mqtt your are fine with the preflashed stick. However, I would recommend to buy a CC Debugger to be on the save side. Of course I sell a preflashed device here, so you might wonder why should I get a CC Debugger. Well my device is more about the Antenna mod (+range) and the pretty case (+style) than about flashing. Flashing is easy, well documented and should be possible for everyone of us. I preflash the device to make it easier for you to start and because I already have the devices in my hands. There is no reason not to flash it.
So the reason why I write this is the following:
There are a small amount users who’s CC2531 crashed for some reason. See link in one of the posts below to get to the thread where people reported crashed devices. With the the CC Debugger you are able to flash new firmware’s and if (in that uncertain case) your device crashes sometime, you have the tool to fix it.
Keep in mind that the shipping time from china often takes very long. Waiting for a Debugger for weeks with a crashed Coordinator could make you crazy.

I do not sell the CC Debugger, this is just a recommendation and you don’t have to have one. You can get one at aliexpress, ebay, etc.

Link: crashed devices

@Koenkk unfortunately I couldn’t add the link to my first posting, because I’m still seen as a new user, who is restricted to add only one link per posting.

Another picture:

Nice !
What is the rough range you manage to get with the external antenna ?

I think talking about range in an absolute way isn’t very professional, because it depends on so many things (walls, material of the walls, wifi, …).

Originally my own CC2531 had a very bad range, so I searched for a solution to get a better range.
What I can tell you is that after the antenna mod I did not have any problems with devices regarding range any more. In fact now I also mounted an aqara door sensor in my yard (about 30m with walls in between; yes outdoor, this device isn’t recommened to be used outside, but … they are cheap and no issues so far).

Maybe it helps you when I describe my setup
My setup looks like this (2 floor house + yard):
1x CC2531+antenna as a coordinator (“burried” in a cabinet, I don’t want to see it, even if the case looks good, it works like this so why put it outside)
2x CC2530 as routers

I had both of those routers before I did the antenna mod to the CC2531. I think I could skip at least one of those routers, because the CC2531+antenna ist good enough.
But… don’t fix it if it ain’t broker, so I never tinkered with that.
Before I had the mod I had connection issues even with the two routers.

Hope that helps.

I had the same issue with range as h4nc did so I decided to give this ad a go. My setup was kind of similar as my RPI sits on top of a bookshelf in the middle of my 2 floor house. I tried to extend my network with the Ikea sockets. This way the original CC2531 which I had kind of covered most of the house and the sockets might help near edges. Except it didn’t work too well as I had constant near edge issues.

I wanted try out CC2531 with antenna attached to it. This is when I contacted h4nc in the first place. I ordered one CC2531 w. coordinator firmware to see if that would help resolve my coverage issues and oh yes it did. And it looked nice too compared to the plain CC2531.

My network includes bunch of Xiaomi Aqara temperature, water and door sensors and some Ikea lamps and those two sockets. When using the original CC2531 everything close to the bookshelf worked OK but going 1 floor up and near the edge of the house already gets difficult. I use those temp sensors in each room so ie. my kids bedroom sensor used to lose connection quite often. At a point it became even difficult to pair devices next to the coordinator.

I got the one from h4nc in about week from sending and swapped to replace my old one. It is hard to describe how surprised I was with the improvement on functionality. All my near edge issues seemed to have gone away and my network was responsive again. In my opinion this is how the network should work and what the stick should look like. Build quality of the case and antenna mod were really excellent.

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New sticks available.

I’m trying the CC2531 first as a router, and then as a coordinator… and this last one did the trick. After a day of use, I’m reading an increase of about 30% on the strength of the signal, and the responsiveness of the network is much better, with reliable responses on the farthest away end devices.

I’m using a mix of Ikea and Xiaomi devices (14 total), and all of then are working ok. Using z2m addon on Hassio.

(Yes, I know. It’s not an orthodox setup, but (i hope) is temporary) :slight_smile:

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I’d like to add that I also offer a ready2use RFLink. The case inspired by other cases but also drawn by myself. I don’t have one available, but I can do them on demand (so orders of the RFLink will take some time).

Some pictures:

Highly recommend these! I bought one and Hans made sure it was up to his standards.
I got a communication range with the zigbee stick next to the outer wall of the house up to 20 or so meters, to the horse stables where I put a Xiaomi Smoke detector. First I checked with the magic cube and got a signal of around ‘23’. That’s line of sight with one outer wall and part of the horse stable metallic roof in between, not bad at all!

All in all a good buy for those who require that extra zigbee coverage on your property. Shipping took about 1 to 2 weeks.

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Hi,

I will update my color table soon, because I ran out of two colours.

What I want to tell you now is that I have a new special color.

It’s called Filametal and it has aluminium particles in it. It makes it look much like aluminium.
I only have a small spool and I think FFFWorld doesn’t sell it any more.

So we could call it a Limited Edition Case :wink:

Here are some pictures:

Unfortunately it is not possible to change the first post any more.

The colortable above is deprecated.

Those are my current colors. Colors I to M are new.
Alu ist a special PLA with aluminium particles.