Home Assistant SkyConnect (Home Assistant Connect ZBT-1) - official Zigbee and/or Thread USB radio dongle from Nabu Casa

Today I recived my SkyConnect!

My current setup was using Phoscon+Conbee II, so I took a backup of my conbee II with zigpy tool to get Open ZigBee Coordinator Backup Format since I did not want to repair every zigbee device I own.
Added ZHA choose my new SkyConnect and restored my backup, found lots of devices and renamed them as my old entities from Phoscon, eveything looking fine. So I thought.

Now to my problem :smiley: I cant add any Ikea light bulbs or TRÅDFRI Control outlets, my first time using ZHA is there anything that I need to know? I can pair Hue bulbs and other Aqara smart plugs without problem, even several meters away from the SkyConnect. My old Conbee II is unplugged so that one does not interfere. Does not matter if I am 1 cm from the SkyConnect, tried multiple USB ports and currently using usb2.0. Anyone got any tips? :slight_smile:

Some Zigbee Coordinator dongles do have better range than others when distant devices communicate diretctly to the Zigbee Coordinator and not going through the closest Zigbee Router device, but that should not matter as is not how Zigbee it meant to work, instead you are suppose to extend your Zigbee network by adding many Zigbee Router devices that that use mesh networking that take care of the total coverage. That is, the actual range between the Zigbee Coordinator and devices that connect to it directly should not matter as it should rwally only need to talk to the closest Zigbee Router devices, as all you should need to do is add more Zigbee Router devices (and maybe re-pair devices that have range issues if they do not automatically connect to a closer Zigbee Router device).

So if distant devices connect directly with the Zigbee Coordinator then something is wrong and you should probably try re-pairing that device to a closer Zigbee Router, but first add more Zigbee Router devices if needed. Personally I recommend buying a few IKEA Trådfri Signal Router devices (or reflash Sonoff Zigbee dongles with Zigbee Router firmware) and add them spread out in your house to act as the backbone of your Zigbee network with them creating the core of the mesh network.

I also mention that in this other best practice guidelines thread → https://community.home-assistant.io/t/guide-for-zigbee-interference-avoidance-and-network-range-coverage-optimization/515752

Zigbee technology uses mesh networking (a type of network topology/architecture), which means that most mains-powered devices are a “Zigbee Router” that can act as a signal repeater and range extended by transmitting data over long distances by passing data messages through the Zigbee network mesh of intermediate devices to reach more distant Zigbee devices. Thus the key to a great and healthy Zigbee network is to add/have many “Zigbee Router” devices relatively close to each other in order to achieve good coverage and range. So you more or less just need to add/have several mains-powered Zigbee devices in the network that act as “Zigbee Router” devices.

  • Add more and decrease the distance between Zigbee devices in Zigbee network mesh to get better range and coverage:
    • Zigbee uses mesh networking and depends on having many “Zigbee Router” devices to extend range and coverage:
      • Recommendation is to add additional mains-powered Zigbee devices known to be good Zigbee Router devices.
        • Add more Zigbee Router devices and reduce their distances to extend network mesh coverage and range.
          • Note that not all mains-powered devices have firmware that makes them act as a Zigbee Router device.
          • Some brands/models of Zigbee Router devices are known to only work well with the same brand of devices.
      • Buy a few known good dedicated Zigbee Router products (for example the “IKEA Tradfri Signal Repeater ”).
        • Search community forums for more “Zigbee signal repeater” or “Zigbee range extender” Zigbee Router tips.
      • Buy a few additional new Zigbee USB adapters to use after re-flashing them with Zigbee Router firmware.
        • Reflash/reuse modern Zigbee USB adapters to act as Zigbee Router devices by changing Zigbee firmware.
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General tips → https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#best-practices-to-avoid-pairingconnection-difficulties

The only specific other tip I have for that is to make sure do a factory reset of the devices, but if does not help then it is probably best if you open an new issue for the ZHA integration in the Home Assistant’s core repository and provide diagnostics / debug logs in that issue.

I have the same issue after migrating from zha (conbee ii) to skyconnect. I will open an issue.

Very strange! I successfully added all my IKEA stuff if I searched for it this way:
zha > devices > SkyConnect > Add devices via this device

Can you try if that works for you too? “Add device” from the default ZHA landing page does not find my IKEA stuff.

Can anyone confirm if there is a difference while adding devices that way, or did I just get lucky :slight_smile:

I will try that as well. I have opened an issue and provided data to devs. :grin:

Running latest HA on a VM in Virtualbox running on windows 11 host on an 8th gen NUC.

Only have wifi devices but looking to go down zigbee path. Don’t have any zigbee sensors yet.

Will SkyConnect have any limitations with my setup? I put off buying a conbee stick as wanted to see how matter adoption progresses.

I am not aware of any current limitations related to computer hardware, no matter if running it in a virtual machine or not, though it is recommended to run in a Home Assistant Operation System installation to easily be able to use the Silicon Labs multiprotocol add-on for firmware updates in the future and such. Regardless of which adapter you buy be sure to use a USB extension cable and follow these guidelines-> Guide for Zigbee interference avoidance and network range/coverage optimization

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@agners I just updated to 7.1.4.0 (I have a notification on the nabucasa silabs fw repo). In general, after a scan of the release notes, I am guessing these updates are somewhat safe to do (or atleast as safe as any firmware update) now that things seem to be stabilizing a bit?

I reverted to Conbee II and now everything works as before. I assume it is a firmware issue with the Skyconnect unit.

I just received the skyconnect , I hope that I can migrate the Zigbee devices that are already connect to Sonoff-usb-dongle E version, which have been working fine.

My HA session is running on UTM on my M1 Mac Mini, again, it has been working fine.

Once I have the skyconnect, I plugged that into the same USB external cable with the Sonoff dongle removed.

However, I cannot get the integration to work as the Skyconnect device is not detected

Just wondering anyone here has detection issue or is it more relateed to UTM issue?

Had the same issue. You need to install the ZHA integration too. Then physically remove the SkyConnect and plug it in again.

but it appears that the integration would not be installed until the Skyconnect is detected in HA, this is the issue I am facihg now

Strange. But i have deconz too, so maybe this is why it was working for me

Not clear by your question exactly what you want to migrate from or what you want to migrate to? For startars, are you today using the ZHA integration, Zigbee2MQTT, or something else?

To clarify one thing first; it is not supported to migrate from Zigbee2MQTT to the ZHA integration, or vice versa. If you want to move from Zigbee2MQTT to the ZHA integration then the currently is no other migration path than to remove each device from Zigbee2MQTT, then factory reset each device following the manufacturer’s instructions for that, and only then join/pair the device to the ZHA integration, i.ei. doing it all from scratch. And the same thing goes if want to move from the ZHA integration to Zigbee2MQTT.

If you want yo migrate from another Zigbee Coordinator that already uses the ZHA integration to a other Zigbee Coordinator inside ZHA then you can do so, (recommend first download backup from ZHA). Do not remove you original Zigbee Coordinator yet, instead start the ”MIGRATE RADIO” available under ”Network Settings” and follow the instructions. There are many step-by-step guides available on YouTube as well as written articles specifically about radio migration inside ZHA.

If what you instead want to do is to migrate from another Zigbee Coordinator adapter in Zigbee2MQTT to the Home Assistant SkyConnect as Zigbee Coordinator adapter in Zigbee2MQTT (or vice versa) then see this related discussion in the Zigbee2MQTT community → migrating coordinator from ZBDongle-E to ZBDongle-P · Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt · Discussion #16478 · GitHub

Migration from deCONZ/Phoscon is not supported. Covered that previouly in this thread. More details here in this request to deCONZ/Phoscon developers → [REQUEST] Standard "Open ZigBee Coordinator Backup Format" support for Zigbee network backups and restoring from and to ConBee/RaspBee (deCONZ based adapters)? · Issue #12 · dresden-elektronik/deconz-rest-plugin-v2 · GitHub

I migrated some of my devices manually from deconz to zha

currently I have all zigbee devices connect to Zonoff usb dongles via ZHA. The issue is that after I unplug the Sonoff and plug in Skyconnect, the Skyconnect is not recognised by HA, so the integration would not be installed. I am at a loss how to fix this

@Hedda , this question may be relevant.

do I have to start the radio migration and after it is completed then I unplug the Sonoff and then plug in Skyconnect, and only then the Skyconnect would be recognised ? so did I jump the gun and plug in Skyconnect and it would not be picked up by HA? but I was just trying to follow the instruction from here

Maybe not the right place to ask, but anyone with experience with HUE Outdoor motion sensor?
It’s alive for 5h, then it stops reporting back to the SkyConnect…