Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 Worked Yesterday

OK, I have a Home Assistant Green that I received a month or so ago. I got it running and connected to my Kasa devices and a couple Matter devices (AC unit, mostly)… So I’m working with the standard out of the box Home Assistant Green and the standard out of the box Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 USB dongle connected to the included USB extender. Everything is standard and I’m not running in a docker container or Pi or any set up other than the basics.

Unfortunately, I think I’ve reached the point where I’m ready to unplug everything and burn it.
After 2 weeks of frustration, last night I finally managed to get my Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1 running, one Hue bulb connected and working (as a test), and ready to start working on my other Zigbee devices.
When I looked at HA tonight, there was a firmware update for the ZBT-1. So, I loaded it and restarted HA. After that, the Hue device could be controlled through the Dashboard without any problems, but ZHA couldn’t see the ZBT-1 anymore and it kept returning me to the Configuration page. No matter what I entered, it couldn’t see the ZBT-1 anymore. Everything seemed to be working, but ZHA kept trying to run through the configuration.
So far tonight, I’ve spent the better part of 4 hours uninstalling everything Zigbee & ZBT-1 related and started over from scratch at least 3 times, made copies of the config files and removed them to prevent them from picking up any old configurations. Nothing works anymore.
All I can get is the oh so very helpful message “Failed to connect” when trying to add a device. And actually, when I do that, it tells me I need a Zigbee radio and asks if I want to configure it. The ZBT-1 shows up in the Serial Port list:


So I select it and hit Submit, then I get the “Failed to connect” message. It obviously sees it.
I’ve worked on corporate networks and servers for years, and I have never been this completely frustrated and stumped. Everything looks like it should be working, but no matter what I try, it won’t.
Can anyone point me to a straightforward set of instructions to completely remove the ZBT-1 from HA, so I can start completely fresh with it?
It’s either that, or I’m just going to have to figure out how to do a hard reset on the Home Assistant Green and just start with a blank slate.

I apologize for rambling a bit. But I’m super frustrated and would really appreciate ANY advice at this point… Tonight is the second night in a row I’ve worked on this until after 1am, and I’ve got to get up and get ready for work in about 5 hours.
Thanks to anyone who has read this far.

Hi, sorry to hear if your problems. You say you also have some Matter devices and talk also about ZHA which is used for Zigbee. The Matter devices, are they using Matter over Thread?

The ZBT-1 initially was supposed to be able to do Thread and Zigbee with the same radio. This was never a success, it proved hard to impossible to do that reliably.

Because of that, there are three types of firmware you can have on the ZBT-1:

  • Multiprotocol, the version that is not longer supported because combining Thread and Zigbee doesn’t work well
  • Zigbee
  • Thread

So depending on the firmware you chose, it can do Thread to support your Matter devices, or Zigbee, but no Thread. So if your adapter is currently in use for Thread, it cannot also be used for Zigbee. Then you’ll need a separate adapter for Zigbee.

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Perhaps rollback a working backup, just to get it working again? Next step would be what made the stuff fail, perhaps wrong firmware?

Matter over Thread, no. I read about it possibly using both, but before trying that, I did some checking and dismissed the idea after reading about the problems it had.

The dongle firmware is only configured for Zigbee. The AC unit that’s Matter is connected to Google Home over WiFi and from there into HA. Right now, I don’t have anything that works with Thread connected. I may add another adapter for Thread at some point, but I don’t have a need for it yet.

After getting everything working Monday night, I realized I had missed a step, and I thought I finally understood the problem.

I don’t think it’s the firmware. It was the firmware update offered by home assistant and was just an incremental update. Old version 1.4.4.0 new firmware 1.4.4.1.

I know I made a backup Monday that would probably be working. And I’m open to rolling it back, can you point me to how to do that. My brain is fried at this point.

I do not think a backup is going to fix the fact that ZHA can’t connect to the usb adapter. Or did you mean a backup of the firmware? That is not part of the HA backup.

I assume you tried unplugging the adapter and plugging it back in, and restarting the whole HA Green just to be sure?

I mean a backup of the configuration from Monday when everything was working.
Yes. I have unplugged the zbt-1 and done a hard reboot of HA.
Is it possible to hard reset the Home Assistant Green back to “factory”, so I can start over clean? I feel like somewhere in the settings there’s a lingering configuration that I don’t know how to find. Every time I reinstalled last night, it seems like it skipped a step or showed some configurations already entered that I remember having to set on Monday.

ISSUE SOLVED:
I decided to give it another try before choosing the nuclear solution and taking it back to fresh.
I restored back to an update that I made on Monday before everything went pear-shaped. Re-flashed the ZBT-1 with the previous version of the firmware and started over. After couple of hard reboots and some fiddling with it, I got everything working like it should. Looks like I was missing the same piece of the config process each time.

EmberZNet Zigbee
Installed version: 7.4.4.0 - This is the version that was working.
Latest version: 7.4.4.1 - This one is still showing as an available update in Home Assistant

Anyway, crisis averted.

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