Help required! Ideal Halo Boiler Control + Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus

Configuration Zigbee
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1

Hi,

I’ve had an Ideal Halo based boiler fitted about a month ago. I bought myself a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus from Amazon (it connected automatically) and I’m now trying to connect the two.

The [documentation[(https://idealheating.com/uploads/documents/halo-wifi-installation-223828-2.pdf) for the Halo system says to just press the “pair” button until the pairing light flashes red - I’ve done that. Then in Home Assistant, I’ve gone to Settings → Devices & Services and clicked on “1 device” under “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus” then “Add devices using this device”. That then shows on “Searching for Zigbee devices” and then says “Search again”…

Does anyone know what I’m doing wrong? Has anyone got it to work? Is the fact that I’ve already paired it to the Halo device mean that I can’t also pair it with another Zigbee device?

Thanks in advance!

2

I’ve tried to go the same route and to me it seems to me that the Ideal devices (Halo and smart interface) will not pair with non-Ideal devices. I tried for quite a while to connect the Halo to my own zigbee networks and the other way around, and it looks like their devices are locked down to secret network and installation keys. I asked Ideal support via email, but haven’t received a response…

Both the Halo and the smart interface have a number of (mostly standard) debug connectors on the back, but I wasn’t able to get any keys out of them. They use standard/well-known radio interfaces, which unfortunately also provide good security to keep the keys safe. I’m happy to run more experiments though, if someone has a good idea.

3

So I’ve just got a new Ideal C40 boiler and already have a wifi thermostat not opentherm. So I’ve bought a cheap Ideal Halo light with the intention of putting in an opentherm gatway. But looking at the halo light there is some pretty interesting connection on the back

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Anybody hooked up the 6pin that is attached to the PIC tx2/rx2 or the tx1/rx1 pins to see if interfacing directly to it is possible?

4

Has anyone managed to get any further with interfacing with the Halo and Zigbee via HA and ZHA? I’ve tried and although ZHA can pair with it and therefore sees the device, no data is available. I’m assuming from comments before its because Ideal lock down their keys etc.

5

If you manage to pair it sucessfully with the ZHA integration then chances are good that it can be made to work even if none or not all attributes are exposed as entities in ZHA, but it means that the device will probably need a custom ZHA Device Handler (also known as a ZHA Quirk) coded for it in order to expose Zigbee clusters and attributes are not exposed as standard by default, however you either need to code such a custom quirk yourself or request device support hoping that someone else can help coding of a zha-quirk for it. See:

Also read the section above that for additional information on why custom zha device handlers are not needed for all Zigbee devices:

And some additional info here on what to do once a custom device quirk is written:

6

Thanks for the reply. I’ve given up on the idea now though and decided to implement an Opentherm solution with HA. It will give me much more and remote access too.