Digi AnywhereUSB Plus hubs - will they work?

Dal · October 16, 2020, 9:42am

Hi.
Has anyone used the Digi AnywhereUSB Plus hubs with Home Assistant?
Here is a link: https://www.digi.com/products/networking/infrastructure-management/usb-connectivity/usb-over-ip/anywhereusb#partnumbers

I’m planning on running HA as a virtual appliance, and there I need some kind of USB over IP to connect ZigBee and Z-wave USB dongles.

Thanks.

Burningstone · October 16, 2020, 9:48am

Depending on your setup, you could also put your sticks on a separate Pi and use already supported MQTT to get the data into home assistant instead of USB over IP. I did this in my setup, you can read more about it here if you like.

Dal · October 17, 2020, 9:09am

Hi, and thanks for answering.
Not the answer I hoped for, though.

But you have described a clever solution.
I’m new to HA, but if you need to have a PI anyways, why don’t you just run the whole thing from there?

Thanks.

Burningstone · October 17, 2020, 9:12am

I don’t run HA on a Pi, I run it on a NUC, which is in a rack in the office. Therfore I didn’t put the stick there as the range is limited. In addition when Home Assistant fails for some reason or I need to restart the host, I don’t need to shutdown the Zigbee and Z-Wave network.

Dal · October 21, 2020, 5:29pm

I see.
But for the sake of argument, there is nothing wrong with running it all from the mentioned PI?
There are no different versions or anything?

Thanks again

Burningstone · October 21, 2020, 5:58pm

You can run it all on the same Pi, This was my setup before I moved to the NUC. Pi 3 with Home Assistant a ConBee ZigBee stick and a Aeotec Z-Wave stick.

NoClaim · November 15, 2020, 1:52pm

I have the same requirement: HA as an virtual instance on a NUC. Both Zigbee (Conbee II) and Zwave (Aeotec) are on the USB ports of the NUC but the reach of the Zigbee stick is not ok.
I have multiple Zwave devices in my house to build a reliable network, but with Zigbee and the number of powered devices the network is poor.
I have red the possibility for using a pi and configure it for USB over IP, but not yet implemented… allthough using mqqt is an option it is not my preferred option… so if anyone has a working nuc with usb over IP implementation… please share

Burningstone · November 15, 2020, 1:55pm

With the ConBee and deCONZ you don’t need MQTT or USB over IP. DeCONZ already supports running on a different machine than Home Assistant out-of-the box. The connection is done via Websocket.

why?

NoClaim · November 15, 2020, 2:28pm

let’s call it ‘age’
I’m used now of using the deconz add-on and don’t want to set-up my Zigbee network over again.
So my thought is: replacing Conbee to a Pi using some kind of software telling my VM to look in another place than the standard USB port (/dev/ttyACM1)

I will check the websocket part… running the Conbee on a Pi3

Burningstone · November 15, 2020, 2:33pm

See my detailed guide here, how I setup a ConBee II and an Aeotec Z-stick on a separate Pi, Home Assistant is running inside a VM on an Intel NUC far away from the Pi.

NoClaim · November 17, 2020, 11:46am

Hi Burningstone, thanks for the guide. It was easy to follow. Only downside for me: when I have installed the integration in HA and go to http://myip:8080/pwa it doesn’t give me the option to go to the advanced settings of the gateway.
When I go the url I need to create a password, next get to connect lights. When I proceed without lights I receive a ‘Network was not found…’ screen.
Any idea what’s causing this… I have gone over the steps multiple times, but I can’t find a mistake

lsusb resulted into: 1cf1:0030 (dresden)

Burningstone · November 17, 2020, 3:43pm

Try using the actual path instead of the udev path for the device. There were some issues with udev in the latest versions.

NoClaim · November 17, 2020, 8:58pm

2 Q’s here (sorry for being a n00b):

following your detailed description “Create docker-compose.yml file and directory deconz to store the config”. Do I need to create de deconz directory and put the docker-compose.yml file in it or will the directory deconz automatically be created by just copy your lines into ssh (only I changed was the super secret password)
if all the steps are followed and the udev path is the issue, what do I need to change (where to find an put the actual path)? Do I need to skip the SUBSYSTEM line? Do I only add the actual path to the docker-compose.yml?

Thnx for supporting this old guy

Burningstone · November 18, 2020, 7:58am

The docker-compose.yml file is not in the ddconz folder, it’s on the same level. You can just create an empty folder, later when you start the docker deconz, it will write the database, config, etc. to this folder, because it is mounted in the docker-compose file.

Replace /dev/zigbee with the actual path, (something like /dev/ACM0) in the docker-compose file (it appears two times, make sure to change both).

NoClaim · November 18, 2020, 5:49pm

If I only change the path /dev/zigbee to /dev/ttyACM0 i get an error on the docker-compose. I think it has something to do with the 99-usb-serial.rules I created.
Do I need to skip this file creation or do I need to have a different line in this file? (changing SUBSYSTEM==“ttyACM0” or something like this)

Burningstone · November 18, 2020, 7:08pm

Can you please show your docker-compose file? What does ls /dev/ttyACM* show?

NoClaim · November 18, 2020, 7:16pm

problem solved.

this step needs to be skipped:
sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-usb-serial.rules.

docker-compose file is completed with /dev/ttyACM0 (2 locations) and it works

me is happy…

(now trying to move zwave :-))

NoClaim · November 18, 2020, 9:13pm

knock - knock I’m back…

Zwave…

First I had OZW and MQTT Broker (add-on) and ozwave integration.
MQTT broker can stay on HA instance, so only ozwave addon is removed.

When I add the text to the docker-compose (copy/paste and change IP, USB path and mqtt credentials) and start: docker-compose up -d I get errors.

so my simple guess is not to copy and past both tekst files as-is in the docker-compose file. Is this correct or am I missing something somewhere?

Burningstone · November 19, 2020, 8:38am

Can you please show your complete docker-compose file and also the errors you got?

NoClaim · November 19, 2020, 5:39pm

to start with the docker-compose file

Preformatted text`version: "3"
services:
  deconz:
    container_name: deconz
    devices:
      - /dev/ttyACM0
    environment:
      - DECONZ_WEB_PORT=8080
      - DECONZ_WS_PORT=443
      - DECONZ_VNC_MODE=1
      - DECONZ_VNC_PORT=5900
      - DECONZ_VNC_PASSWORD=MyPassword
      - DECONZ_DEVICE=/dev/ttyACM0
      - TZ=Europe/Amsterdam
    image: marthoc/deconz
    network_mode: host
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - ./deconz:/root/.local/share/dresden-elektronik/deCONZ	  

version: "3"
services:
  ozwdaemon:
    container_name: ozwdaemon
    devices:
      - /dev/ttyACM1
    environment:
      MQTT_SERVER: ip-of-home-assistant-machine
      MQTT_PORT: 1883
      MQTT_USERNAME: myMQTTname
      MQTT_PASSWORD: myMQTTpassword
      USB_PATH: /dev/ttyACM1
    image: openzwave/ozwdaemon:allinone-latest
    network_mode: host
    restart: unless-stopped
    security_opt:
      - seccomp:unconfined
    volumes:
      - ./ozwdaemon:/opt/ozw/config

Errors will be posted later when I arrive at home