Cod.m's Latest Zigbee Module Turns Your Raspberry Pi Into a Coordinator for 50 Direct Children

German Internet of Things specialist cod.m has launched an open source module that turns a Raspberry Pi or compatible single-board computer into a Zigbee 3.x coordinator — simply by pushing onto the 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header.

"The CC2652P is Texas Instruments current multiprotocol 2.4GHz chip with built in +20dBm amplifier, in this case used for Zigbee 3.x communication," the company explains of the chip at the heart of its compact module. "It is designed to be used as an coordinator for your Zigbee Network/Mesh on the GPIO header of the Raspberry Pi (UART) and comes pre-flashed with the latest Z-Stack 3.x from Koenkk."

"The coordinator can be used with a variety of home automation systems, including the zigbee2mqtt, Home Assistant (zha), io.broker, Homegear and even ser2net. The module sports a u.FL socket to attach an external antenna (2.4GHz) to get the best coverage possible. It employs a dedicated LDO for the 3.3V power supply to be not dependent on the internal voltage regulators of the Raspberry Pi."

While the module comes pre-flashed with Z-Stack 3.x firmware, it's also directly updatable on the host Raspberry Pi using a simple command-line utility. According to testing, the module should support 50 "direct children" and up to 200 routes. The hardware design is open source, too, published under the reciprocal Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike-NoCommercial license.

The module is now available on cod.m's Tindie store for $44.60, though the company warns that some of the instructions are currently available exclusively in German pending in-progress translations; the design files are available on GitHub.