Ok, I’ve done a fair bit with wifi devices, now I’m waking up to zigbee.
Got myself an S26 R2 to play with, but just wanted to clarify a few things…
So, if I had a few of these around the house, would they form the man backbone of the zigbee mesh network? Or do they not provide that function?
And also - possibly n00b question - I presume there’s still a need / benefit to flash with esphome? Couldn’t see anything obvious on the site and only searched online for a few mins before giving up and asking for experience rather than random sites…
Zigbee is a mesh network so it’s a bit different. Zigbee devices can be an end device, or a router device (in addition to whatever it actually does likes controlling a plug). Routers contribute to your zigbee mesh, and devices connect through the mesh. This means you need more router devices to have a strong mesh. I use a few plugs where my network is weak, but otherwise have found that devices are stable. I can’t see on the zigbee2mqtt site if they’re a router or end device, but most powered devices are routers. ZHA and Zigbee2mqtt both tell you the device type if you go digging.
If they’re zigbee devices I don’t think they can be flashed with esphome. They’re not normal esp devices and that would likely disable the zigbee networking.