A bit more than a year since my last project log entry... shame on me. COVID-19 pandemic got me stuck in an unpleasant and depressfull work - eat - sleep repeat cycle. My procrastination reached it's highest of all time level and even completing or starting a new DIY project didn't seem to motivate me enough.

But I decided to put things in order and deal with my procrastination: completing this project while taking care of myself (personal training gym? skin care? improve my wardrobe?). Once this project is done, I will move to automate the other air conditioner I have and finally the small heater I bought last winter for my bathroom. From then I'm thinking to hack and improve the video intercom (bigger screen, adding a recording function, adding an auto-response function in case nobody is home, ultimately link it to HA?) but that's a story for another time.

Okey now let's talk about what's new since ... well since last year: last time I successfully flashed a cheap CC2530 based module with Z-Stack 3.0.2 but not knowing a thing about Zigbee I didn't know what to do next. So I went on a frenetic search of information, hoping I would be able to gather enough material from articles/forum messages/videos or whatever to understand how to properly communicate with a Zigbee router and implement that in a structure I could program.

Unfortunately the result was frugal:

• TI application report: Developing a ZigBee System Using a CC2530-ZNP
• Arduino program: water heater control using Xbee module
• NXP document: ZigBee Home Automation User Guide
• Github page of DIY Zigbee devices: DIY zigbee devices
• The same from the original author (Russian?): https://modkam.ru/

With that arduino program along with TI and NXP documents, I thought I could understand what should be done, in which order and manner but it turned to be far more difficult that I imagined and I gave up (at least for me it was too time consuming and fruitless). 

So I turned my attention to public available litterature and bought the following book:

which turned out to be a waste of time and money as it isn't a practical development handbook as stated in the front cover but rather a book that explains in depth Zigbee standard, its functionality and its radio signal implementation.