Vendor-Neutral Zigbee Gateway with Raspberry Pi

A one-script installer that turns a Raspberry Pi + CC2531 USB adapter into a vendor-neutral Zigbee home automation gateway running Domoticz — supporting 800+ Zigbee devices from any manufacturer.

Raspberry Pi with CC2531 USB Zigbee adapter — the complete Pimoticz hardware.

The problem

Cheap Zigbee home automation devices are everywhere, but they're locked to the manufacturer's gateway — limiting you to a small set of supported devices. With commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware, you can build your own vendor-neutral gateway, but it requires setting up multiple components:

1. Raspberry Pi
2. CC2531 USB Zigbee adapter (with Koenkk firmware, ~$12 on Amazon)
3. Raspberry Pi OS (32-bit)
4. Node.js (v12 or higher)
5. zigbee2mqtt
6. Mosquitto MQTT broker
7. Domoticz
8. zigbee2mqtt plugin for Domoticz

For beginners, getting all these components working together is a challenging task. Pimoticz simplifies this with an automated installer script — in about 5 minutes you should be ready to pair your first Zigbee device.

Items needed

• Raspberry Pi
• Micro SD card
• 5V power adapter
• CC2531 USB Zigbee adapter

Important: To avoid the CC2531 programming setup, buy a pre-programmed USB adapter with Koenkk firmware (CC2531_DEFAULT_20190608.zip or higher).

Raspberry Pi OS setup

CC2531 USB adapter, keyboard, mouse, monitor, and internet connection are only needed during the initial setup.

Step 1 — Prepare the SD card using Raspberry Pi Imager and install Raspberry Pi OS 32-bit.

Step 2 — Insert the SD card, connect keyboard/mouse/monitor and internet to your Raspberry Pi, then power on.

Step 3 — On first boot, the setup wizard will guide you through:

• Language and keyboard layout (important for correct local time — Domoticz needs it)
• Set a new password for the pi user
• Black border check (not important — Raspi will run headless after setup)
• Wi-Fi setup (skip if using Ethernet)
• Software update (optional — can skip to save time)
• Reboot to apply settings

Pimoticz software stack — zigbee2mqtt, Mosquitto, and Domoticz working together.

Pimoticz installation

Open a terminal on the Raspberry Pi (locally or via SSH) and run:

git clone https://github.com/hackboxguy/pimoticz.git
cd /home/pi/pimoticz
sudo ./setup.sh -h my-pimoticz    # -h hostname is optional
# wait ~5 minutes for setup to complete
sudo reboot

Setup script in progress — installing all dependencies automatically.

After reboot, open a browser and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8080 or http://my-pimoticz:8080 — Domoticz will show the detected CC2531 Zigbee coordinator.

Domoticz running on Pimoticz — CC2531 Zigbee coordinator detected and ready to pair devices.

Your Pimoticz gateway is ready. You can now pair Zigbee devices from any manufacturer — Xiaomi, IKEA, Philips Hue, Sonoff, and 800+ more.

SOURCE CODE

github.com/hackboxguy/pimoticz — installer script and documentation

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