ESP32 Zigbee Coordinator (ZBOSS) ZBOSS

Firmware that turns a stock ESP32-C6 into a full Zigbee coordinator — the ZBOSS NCP protocol for Zigbee2MQTT, over USB or UART.

Version v1.5.77  runs on: ESP32-C6, ESP32-C5, ESP32-H2

ESP32 Zigbee Coordinator (ZBOSS)

This open source firmware turns a stock ESP32-C6 (or -H2) into a full Zigbee coordinator. It implements the ZBOSS NCP serial protocol, so a host such as Zigbee2MQTT drives the chip as its coordinator over USB or UART. No dedicated dongle is needed — a plain development board works, tested among others on the Seeed XIAO ESP32-C6.

This fork (tostmann/esp-coordinator) is the actively maintained line; the original andryblack/esp-coordinator repository is archived.

Features

• Up to 200 direct children — the firmware uses the 512 KB of SRAM on the ESP32-C6 and is configured for 200 direct children, against the 20–40 of older chips such as the TI CC2531.
• Transmit power up to +20 dBm — the ESP32-C6 has an integrated power amplifier; no external PA required.
• Wi-Fi 6 and Zigbee on one chip — both radio layers on-die.
• Native NVRAM backup and restore — the complete network state (PAN, extended PAN, channel, network key, frame counters, neighbour table) as a backup. Replace a dead chip, restore the backup, and the paired devices come back without re-pairing.
• USB and UART in parallel — the NCP frame stream is available on USB-Serial/JTAG and on a hardware UART at the same time (default TX = GPIO22, RX = GPIO23, 115200 8N1). That lets the coordinator hang directly off a host’s TTL header — an OpenWRT router, a Raspberry Pi header, ser2net.
• ZBOSS stack — a commercial, certified stack.

Flashing

• Web installer (recommended): ESP-Coordinator web flasher — straight from the browser (Chrome / Edge / Opera), nothing to install.
• CLI: esptool.py --chip esp32c6 write_flash 0x0 binaries/factory.bin

Zigbee2MQTT

The firmware works with stock Zigbee2MQTT (adapter: zboss). For automatic NVRAM snapshots and smooth hardware migration, the adapted Docker image ghcr.io/tostmann/zigbee2mqtt-esp32:latest is the better fit.

serial:
  port: /dev/serial/by-id/usb-Espressif_USB_JTAG_serial_debug_unit_...
  adapter: zboss
advanced:
  transmit_power: 20

Details, UART wiring and the migration guide are in the documentation and the GitHub README.

Experimental

• Native Wi-Fi (coexistence): a separate build lets the coordinator join a WLAN itself and offer the NCP over TCP, with no USB host at all. Wi-Fi coex flasher. Single-radio coexistence — a test setup, not production.
• Home Assistant ZHA: through the tostmann/zha-zboss-esp component (zigpy-zboss). For production use the Zigbee2MQTT path remains the recommended one.

Availability

The firmware is open source and runs on off-the-shelf ESP32-C6 boards — no dedicated hardware required. As of this page, no busware hardware for it is listed in the shop.