Home Assistant Blue purchase

Have you tried plugging the Conbee into a USB extension cord? I know that’s more for Zigbee interference with USB3 frequencies, but maybe the separation from the USB controller would still be beneficial.

My Home Assistant Blue is set to arrive later today, and I’m going to be going through the same process as you; moving my Conbee II using deconz to the ODROID. If you figure it out today, please report back, and I’ll let you know what I find tonight or tomorrow, depending on when it arrives.

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I plugged in Conbee II on an extension cord.
Uploaded my previous snapshot.
Restarted HA.
Zigbee over Conbee II fully operational including Hue light, temp sensor and switches in deConz.

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Thanks, i’ve ordered an extension cable. Will let you know when I know more!

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@RiJanssen @ronaldheft

Just received the extension cord and connected the Conbee II with it. It was recognised instantaneously! Now i’ve also uploaded my snapshot and all Zigbee related stuff works great now, thanks!

Do you have any idea how can we help others with preventing this issue? I couldn’t find a support page other than this topic about the Home Assistant Blue, nor anything related about this issue.

I still can’t find a solution for my issue with the HDMI-CEC scanner. I see the message on the integration page, but for what I can see this is related to a self managed installation. Anyone has any ideas?

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Glad to hear your Zigbee network is up and running! I managed to get mine going this afternoon.

Good point regarding there being nothing in the documentation about the possible interference. It’s not an exclusive issue to Home Assistant Blue nor the ODROID; from my understanding it’s an issue with all Zigbee radios and USB3 ports. The Zigbee and USB3 frequencies are close enough that they can interfere with each other.

I’ve seen it mentioned in documentation online with the ConBee stick, so I know the information is out there, hence why I’ve always used an extension cord. If anything, it would be great if ConBee bundled an extension cord with the stick.

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Just received my HA Blue today 27-Dec from ameriDroid here in the U.S. I ordered it on 13-Dec at 14:18 for those of you wondering where yours is. It was shipped from north of me in California on 22-Dec with FedEx two-day shipping, but FedEx has had issues with handing shipping volume so it kept getting rescheduled for delivery.

Unit looks great. It’s about twice the width of my RPi 4B but looks much better with the branded case. Also, I will not miss the light fan noise from my Pi.

Just completed the migration. I chose Restore Everything instead of Restore Selected after I pointed to my PC’s snapshot copy. I was a little concerned that I couldn’t access the Blue after a few minutes, but I just needed to be patient. After I logged on, everything was working as it was on my RPi4 except: 1) MariaDB has to be reinstalled and configured from Supervisor Add-ons, 2) SSH & Web Terminal had to be reinstalled and configured from Supervisor Add-ons and 3) I notice my Configuration logs now have a new error I didn’t have before: Error saving events: (sqlite3.DatabaseError) database disk image is malformed [SQL: INSERT INTO events. Turns out the DB recorder wasn’t working properly so I had to go into the /config directory and rename/remove home-assistant_v2.db. Lost my history, but that cleaned up the error log!

Performance compared to my RPi4 that had HA on a USB 3.0 SSD overclocked with fan: 1) CPU usage now idles at 3-5% instead of 6-9%, 2) CPU temp is about 31C instead of 45C, 3) HA Benchmark is now about 3 instead of 4.5. The experience is definitely more crisp when watching IP camera video or changing between Lovelace views.

I also had to update the OS from 4.20 to 5.9.

So far…very happy with the upgrade!!!

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I wobbled on whether to pull the trigger on this so I guess I missed the boat for the first batch.

Did they announce a second run? I was just able to order one from ameridroid - expected shipping in March/April?!?

image

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It sounds like you could have experienced the same problem as described here?
https://old.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/kr1zw1/home_assistant_blue_underwater_rocks/

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Wait, what?
I looks like you are right! The backplate is to thick so the USB was not connected properly… Without backplate my Deconz stick works perfectly!

That is veeery ugly…

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Well, yeah that is quite dissapointing and embarassing. I also have a Home Assistant Blue on the way…

So… does anyone know where we can purchase these now and have them delivered to Europe?
To some degree it is ridiculous that you have 2 or 3 EU suppliers and they do not seem to sell to other EU countries…

Hi @Pyro I live in Sweden and have 2 resellers for the device. However, I’m gonna buy it directly from South Korea when available to save cost (I hope :slight_smile: ).
Have been in contact with HardKernel and they expect to have the N2+ in stock in Feb again. Also they are planning on a bundle in Mar/Apr.

Hi @Dennis_Nilsson, Thanks for the information! :smiley:
I might have a look at the Korean website, or wait for HardKernel to restock :slightly_smiling_face:

Isnt that a complete downgrade depending on which NUC you got beforehand?

I downgraded from i5 NUC too. Was on Ubuntu but when HA elected not to play nicely with that I moved it to Blue. Too many other bits working nicely on Ubuntu to consider a Debian reinstall. So HA got kicked out.

Did you find a solution for HDMI-CEC? I have the same problem / error message with CEC Scanner on HA Blue:

failed to open vchiq instance

Also, strangely, 10-15 switch.hdmi entities are created - none of which are working.

I only find solutions like granting permission by adding ha to group video - which is not possible on the HA Blue supervised setup.

No, besides asking here that was all I did. Hope we can somehow find a solution!

I just deactivated the HDMI-CEC integration. Main use for me was to detect when the TV was turned on and off to trigger scripts, but even on the Pi this didn’t work consistently for more then 3-4 days after a restart. Issuing commands to turn on / off the TV was a nice bonus. I will now do the detection with a smart plug that detects energy consumption and be done with it…

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Just for fun and giggles I am now using a new HA instance on my old RasPI3b with Remote Home Assistant to transmit the switch state and service calls to my new main instance. :slight_smile: Seems to work fine so far…

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For anyone still looking around the UK, I have just today received a 4gb unit from odroid, which I ordered last week and until I had the shipping notification last night I wasn’t sure would turn up! Seems the 4gb versions are currently out of stock (but they expect more in April) and they still have the 2gb version at the time of writing: Home Automation (odroid.co.uk)