ConBee ZigBee Stick and HA, will this work together?

Yes I have a RasBee in one RPi3 and I have connected some IKEA Trådfri and som Philips Hue and my Hass see the RasBee as a Hue Bridge.

I haven’t connected any remotes and my Firmware is old, so I haven’t upgraded it to latest where you can use IKEA remote.

It’s time for a small update!

Yesterday I have received my Raspbee.
The Xiami motion sensors are supported out of the box.

The Xiaomi swich (round one’s) are working as well, for now it only reports the states on / off (double click long click etc.) needs to be added.

The Xiaomi smoke detector is able to connect and recognized, I’ve created an issue on github and the developer is working on support for the smoke detector.

The Xiaomi smart plug (zigbee) as able to connect and recognized. Working out of the box, however I have created an issue regarding the power consumption / mains voltage reporting. The developer responds within 5 minutes and is working on adding those fields to the API as well.

So far so good :sunny: it realy looks promising.

I’ve contacted the supplier regarding my questions about the difference between the Conbee(usb) en the Raspbee (rpi shield). They both support zigbee pro, so all devices are supported. The chip is the same the usb version just uses a ftdi connection while the RPI shield uses the RPI RX TX pins.

The RPI image is just burn and boot :slight_smile: there is no need to connect it to a tv or usb keyboard. Out of the box they have installed a VNC server, you can connect using a free vnc server or ssh. Deconz start on boot and they have installed a watchdog to keep things running.

So all relevant hardware is supported, no need to buy a hue bridge, xiaomi gateway or ikea bridge, this gateway does it all. As the developer told me;all Zigbee devices that use the Zigbee standard can be supported. The next big question is, how to integrate this into HA.

At the moment there are multiple ways to get it connected. It would need a component witch is able to do two things:

  • Poll the REST-API and add / update devices to HA
  • Bind to the websocket interface allowing instant actions on motion / switch events.

I’ve issued two feature reqests, one to deconz: adding mqtt support. Another on HA, websocket client sensor support. Both might come in handy.

Deconz replied he will investigate the MQTT request. But first they will focus on bugs and a new web interface.

HA user @donnib has created his own custom component. He uses both the rest-api and websockets. I have asked him if he is willing to share his work with us. As I have read somewhere he wants to clean up his code before publishing it.

Any questions? please let me know!

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Update two;
I have migrated all my Xiaomi motion sensors to the Raspbee. Works great, even the range is better.
I’ve noticed there is even a solder pad for an external antenna, so who knows what the range will be when mouting an extra antenna.

What I did to get it all working with HA is this.
I have decided to create a Deconz to MQTT gateway using Node-Red.
Node-Red listens to events on the websocket and publishes those messages to the MQTT broker.

I’ve created the sensors in HA like this:
Motion:

  binary_sensor:
  - platform: mqtt
    state_topic: "/Deconz/motion/6"
    name: "Motion Kitchen"
    device_class: motion

Switch:

switch:
- platform: mqtt
  command_topic: "/Deconz/switch/1"
  state_topic: "/Deconz/switch/1"
  name: "Switch 1"

Node-red publishes the states using retain = true, so no polling is needed. The gateway automatically checks the last MQTT state when booting.

Motion sensors, temperature sensors and switches are all compatible and working like this.

I will share the node-red flow when someone is interested.

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Could you please share the link to RPI image. I found only guide how to install Rest API on their GitHub.

The image can be found here.

However after imaging your SD card you should upgrade to the latest (beta) version using the information found here.

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The result so far. This is my flow:

A little explanation might be handy:

  • On the left the websocket binding. Here you should fill in the IP of the Deconz RPI.
  • Then the conversion to a JSON object.
  • Then multiple switches, based on the existence of various keys we can identify what kind of sensor is submitting the event.
  • The function element generates the MQTT topic and converts the value to preferred HA state, for example, motion sensors should be ON while motion and OFF while no motion. This was a little bit weird. At first I used the HA rest-api to set the sensor. Because this meant I had to create all sensors in HA and Node-red I switched to MQTT. However, the HA rest api accepts “on” and “off” while the MQTT sensor wants “ON” and “OFF” in order to work :wink:
  • At last publishing the message to the broker.

One thing I should add, is filtering on the input to process only events with changed states. The events with new device added or sensor x is reachable should be ignored.

I’m posting this because one might find it handy. Switches and Motion sensors are working and have been tested. Light sensors and open close sensors will arrive soon :slight_smile:

(The debugging elements can be removed. I kept them because they provide some nice info.)

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Thanks @rtenklooster,

I undust an old raspberry pi, imaged the SD, did some tests (philips dimming switch with osram lightify plug).

Works great, now I’ll start moving forward:

  • testing aqara switch
  • connecting it to hass

Thanks! Much appreciated.

Could you explain a bit more how to link raspbee-gw with hass?

It’s still a bit cryptic for me :smiley:

Do you use HASS.IO or normal HA?

Normal HA right now, but planning to move to HASS.IO in the near future.

I have MQTT enabled & working though.

In that case it should be fairly simple to get started.

  1. Install node-red
  2. import this flow: Node-red Flow - Pastebin.com
  3. Edit IP Addresses of MQTT broker and websocket client
  4. Add the corresponding sensors / switches in your HA conf.

Like this for a motion sensor with ID 2 in deconz:

binary_sensor:

  • platform: mqtt
    state_topic: “/Deconz/motion/2”
    name: “Pir woonkamer”
    device_class: motion

Thanks!

I’ll try that.

Right now I just tried to compile as described in the doc but it failed on my Raspberry 1 B:

Makefile.Release:712: recipe for target 'release/rest_groups.o' failed
make[1]: *** [release/rest_groups.o] Error 4
make[1]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/pi/deconz-rest-plugin'
Makefile:34: recipe for target 'release' failed
make: *** [release] Error 2

Could it be because of my raspberry 1 instead of 3?

@rtenklooster sorry I don’t want to hijack the thread about this. I logged an issue on the github, we’ll see what the answer is. On the page it’s stated that RPi1 is supported.

I don’t know. What I know is the RPI 1 isn’t supported.
rpi 2

For those interested in sniffing zigbee packets…

My $8 zigbee sniffer. I’ve used a Xiaomi wireless switched, flashed the firmware and voilla:

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I don’t understand, in HASS I just noticed that it detected a “Hue” gateway. I configured it and now I can pilot my raspbee from HASS!

Is that expected? What is the difference with what you described?

(sorry I’m quite at a loss :D)

Yes, this is expected. Deconz supported in hue component but only for lighting as far as I know. But Deconz supports much more than just lighting.

You are right. What I did however was enabling motion sensors and switches. If you don’t use those devices there is no need to use mqtt / node-red.

FYI, Dresden Elektronik have offered to donate RaspBee and ConBee hardware to developers of Home Assistant if they would like to implement native support for them (to use without seperate DeConz bridge), see comment from manup here:

ConBee is the USB-variant of the RaspBee.

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I see some traffic coming to my blog from this link, so just wanted to link my two guides that are about setting up Conbee in Home Assistant (with Trådfri lights) and setting up a Trådfri motion sensor to work in Home Assistant with Node Red as middleman to ensure immediate updating of sensor status (otherwise it takes about 30 s for the state to switch).
The guides are in Swedish (sorry :frowning: ), but there are pictures / screenshots for every little thing and Google Translate should work well for you to understand the rest.

https://snillevilla.se/styr-ikea-tradfri-lampor-i-home-assistant-med-conbee/

https://snillevilla.se/anvand-ikeas-rorelsesensor-med-home-assistant/