Zigbee Repeater

A Zigbee repeater that pushes the network further into the building. Small and USB powered, it that sits between your Zigbee gateway and the devices at the edge of its range, taking the signal on another 20 to 30 metres.

• When you need a Zigbee repeater
• Any USB source will run it
• Where to place it
• It behaves like any other Tuya device
• What it needs

When you need a Zigbee repeater

When a sensor in the back room reports sometimes, or a switch at the end of a corridor takes three attempts. Those symptoms look like faulty devices and almost never are: they are devices sitting at the edge of what the gateway can hear. Replacing them changes nothing. Putting a repeater between them and the gateway takes the signal another 20 to 30 metres and the problem stops.

Any USB source will run it

A phone charger, a socket with a USB port built in, the back of a television, or a power bank while you are testing where to put it. That last one is the useful trick: carry it on a power bank, try three positions, see which one fixes the sensor, and only then commit to a socket. It costs nothing to test properly and it saves the usual routine of plugging it in somewhere convenient and hoping.

Where to place it

Roughly halfway between the gateway and the device giving trouble, with as few walls as possible in each direction. Not beside the gateway, where it adds nothing, and not beside the problem device, which is usually already too far from the gateway to be heard. Concrete and steel are what stop Zigbee, so a repeater on the near side of a thick wall is worth more than one two metres further along the same room.

It behaves like any other Tuya device

It adds to the app the same way everything else does, and it can be reset, renamed and used in Zigbee group control alongside the rest of your kit. It also supports third party control, so it is not locked to one app.

What it needs

An existing Zigbee gateway; this extends a network rather than creating one. Ours are the Tuya Zigbee gateway and the version with an IR blaster and Bluetooth.

Worth knowing before you buy one: every mains powered Zigbee device already repeats, so fitting a Zigbee wall switch or a Zigbee relay in the right place does the same job and switches a light as well. On Z-Wave the equivalent part is the Aeotec Range Extender. Zigbee itself is described at csa-iot.org.