Intel NUC with Integrated Z-Wave and ZigBee
The power of undocumented expansion ports!
October 10, 20242 min read
I loved the performance that I got with my ESP32 powered home hub, but it was pretty complex to keep up-to-date. I've been running Home Assistant on an older Intel NUC that I purchased off of eBay for about $50, and noticed that it had a few extra Molex microFit connectors on the main PCB.
I designed a super tiny PCB that would connect to one of the USB expansion ports and provide a dual USB to UART bridge, along with a ZGM230S Z-Wave radio, and a MGM210P Zigbee radio.
I programmed the ZWave radio with the example provided in Simplicity Studio to create a network coordinator that communicated over UART, and did the same for the Zigbee radio as well.
And, it actually showed up in Home Assistant!
I also designed a NUC lid in Fusion 360 that had space for the expansion board