Network & IoT Environment

Physical Network & IoT

This section details the hardware layer that provides connectivity and sensory intelligence to the smart home.

It will track:

• Switch ports, VLAN logic, and PoE capacity profiles.
• Topologies for the Zigbee/Thread networks.
• Inventory and placement of smart plugs, presence sensors, and security cameras.

Smart Home Fabric

The smart home radio fabric is built on two physically identical SONOFF Dongle Max MG24 sticks attached via USB. They are distinguished only by serial number and mapped to stable udev symlinks by modules/nixos/system/usb-aliases.nix so that binding never depends on USB enumeration order.

Symlink	Radio	Coordinator Role	Consumed By
/dev/SONOFF_Dongle_Max_MG24-zigbee	Zigbee	Zigbee coordinator	Zigbee2MQTT (8080)
/dev/SONOFF_Dongle_Max_MG24-thread	Thread	Thread RCP	OpenThread BR (8091)

End-to-End Data Flow

graph TD
    ZIGBEE[Zigbee Devices] -->|Zigbee| Z2M[Zigbee2MQTT]
    Z2M -->|MQTT| MOSQ[Mosquitto]
    MOSQ --> HA[Home Assistant]
    ESPHOME[ESPHome Devices] --> HA
    TP[Thread / Matter Devices] -->|Thread| OTBR[OpenThread BR]
    OTBR --> MS[Matter Server]
    MS --> HA
    HA -->|Matter fabric| MH[Matter Hub - RiDDiX]
    MH -->|Matter / LAN| ALEXA[Alexa]
    MH -->|Matter / LAN| APPLE[Apple Home]
    MH -->|Matter / LAN| GOOGLE[Google Home]

• Zigbee devices join the Zigbee2MQTT network via the Zigbee MG24 dongle, publish over MQTT to Mosquitto, and are discovered by Home Assistant.
• Thread/Matter devices use the OpenThread Border Router (Thread MG24 dongle) plus the Matter Server, and are surfaced into Home Assistant through the matter integration.
• The Matter Hub re-exposes HA entities (Zigbee and Thread alike) as a Matter fabric on the LAN, so Alexa, Apple Home, and Google Home control them locally. The Matter Hub replaces the retired emulated_hue integration, which only covered Alexa bulbs.