Zigbee: Network coordinator

Note

Support for Zigbee R22 has been deprecated in nRF Connect SDK v2.8.0 and it will be removed in one of the future releases, following the deprecation policy. As a result, the nRF52833, nRF52840 and nRF5340 SoCs are not recommended for new Zigbee designs. Experimental support for Zigbee R23 is available for the nRF54L Series as an nRF Connect SDK Add-on.

This Zigbee Network coordinator sample establishes the Zigbee network and commissions Zigbee devices that want to join the network.

You can use this sample together with the Zigbee Light bulb and the Zigbee Light switch to set up a basic Zigbee network.

Requirements

The sample supports the following development kits:

Hardware platforms

PCA

Board name

Board target

nRF5340 DK

PCA10095

nrf5340dk

nrf5340dk/nrf5340/cpuapp

nRF52840 DK

PCA10056

nrf52840dk

nrf52840dk/nrf52840

nRF52833 DK

PCA10100

nrf52833dk

nrf52833dk/nrf52833

nRF21540 DK

PCA10112

nrf21540dk

nrf21540dk/nrf52840

You can use one of the development kits listed above.

Optionally, you can use this sample with one or both of the following samples:

You can mix different development kits.

Overview

This Zigbee Network coordinator sample demonstrates the Zigbee Coordinator role and implements two clusters (Basic and Identify) that used to be required by the Zigbee Home Automation profile. It is a minimal implementation that supports only the network steering commissioning mechanism. The Basic cluster provides attributes and commands for determining basic information about the node. The Identify cluster allows to set the device into the identification mode, which provides a way to locate the device.

Configuration

See Configuring and building for information about how to permanently or temporarily change the configuration.

FEM support

You can add support for the nRF21540 front-end module to this sample by using one of the following options, depending on your hardware:

  • Build the sample for one board that contains the nRF21540 FEM, such as nrf21540dk/nrf52840.

  • Manually create a devicetree overlay file that describes how the nRF21540 FEM is connected to the SoC. See Configuring devicetree for different ways of adding the overlay file.

  • Provide nRF21540 FEM capabilities by using a shield, for example the nRF21540 EK shield that is available in the nRF Connect SDK. In this case, build the project for a board connected to the shield you are using with an appropriate variable included in the build command, for example -DSHIELD=nrf21540ek. This variable instructs the build system to append the appropriate devicetree overlay file.

    To build the sample in the nRF Connect for VS Code extension for an nRF52840 DK with the nRF21540 EK attached, add the shield variable in the build configuration’s Extra CMake arguments and rebuild the build configuration. For example: -DSHIELD=nrf21540ek.

    See How to work with build configurations in the nRF Connect for VS Code extension documentation for more information.

    See Programming nRF21540 EK for information about how to program when you are using a board with a network core, for example the nRF5340 DK.

Each of these options adds the description of the nRF21540 FEM to the devicetree. See Developing with Front-End Modules for more information about FEM in the nRF Connect SDK.

To add support for other front-end modules, add the respective devicetree file entries to the board devicetree file or the devicetree overlay file.

User interface

LED 1:

Blinks to indicate that the main application thread is running.

LED 3:

Indicates whether the network is open or closed:

  • On - The network is open.

  • Off - The network is closed.

LED 4:

Blinks when the Network coordinator is in Identify mode.

Button 1:

Reopens the network for 180 seconds.

Note

The network is also opened after startup.

Button 4:

Depending on how long the button is pressed:

Building and running

Make sure to configure the Zigbee stack before building and testing this sample. See Configuring Zigbee in nRF Connect SDK for more information.

This sample can be found under samples/zigbee/network_coordinator in the nRF Connect SDK folder structure.

To build the sample, follow the instructions in Building an application for your preferred building environment. See also Programming an application for programming steps and Testing and optimization for general information about testing and debugging in the nRF Connect SDK.

Note

When building repository applications in the SDK repositories, building with sysbuild is enabled by default. If you work with out-of-tree freestanding applications, you need to manually pass the --sysbuild parameter to every build command or configure west to always use it.

Testing

After programming the sample to your development kit, complete the following steps to test it:

  1. Turn on the development kit that runs the coordinator sample.

    • When LED 1 starts blinking, the main application thread has started.

    • When LED 3 turns on, this development kit has become the Coordinator of the Zigbee network and the network is established.

  2. Turn on the other development kits that you programmed.

    • When LED 3 turns on the development kit that runs the Light bulb sample, it has become a Router inside the network.

    • When LED 3 turns on the development kit that runs the Light switch sample, it has become an End Device, connected directly to the Coordinator.

    Note

    If LED 3 on the development kits does not turn on, press Button 1 on the Coordinator to reopen the network.

  3. Optionally, if you are testing with both the Light bulb and the Light switch samples, complete the following additional steps:

    1. Wait until LED 4 on the development kit that runs the Light switch sample turns on.

      This LED indicates that the switch found a light bulb to control.

    2. Use buttons on the development kit that runs the Light switch sample to control the light bulb, as described in the Light switch sample’s user interface section.

      The result of using the buttons is reflected on the light bulb’s LED 4.

You can now use buttons on the light switch to control the light bulb, as described in the User interface section of the Light switch sample page.

Dependencies

This sample uses the following nRF Connect SDK libraries:

This sample uses the following sdk-nrfxlib libraries:

In addition, it uses the following Zephyr libraries:

  • include/zephyr.h

  • include/device.h

  • Logging