Home Assistant Yellow - builtin ZigBee

Hey! I received my Yellow today, super happy :slight_smile:
Old RPi4 Setup is already migrated, everything works perfectly, except for my wish to of course also switch to the builtin ZigBee Radio. I restored from my old setup which used a DresdenElektronik ConBee II, attaching the USB-Stick works perfect. I would have assumed I can just migrate via the builtin ZHA option ā€œMigrate Radioā€ - sadly no radio appears.
Is there a Firmware to flash for the Radio module to become active or anything else Iā€™m missing?

Thatā€™s a co-incidence - hereā€™s a post on my migration from a Sonoff 3.0 Zigbee USB stick to the on-board Yellow SkyConnect SilLabs device:

Hey James,
thanks for the writeup! I tried it with ttyAMA1 and the builtin migration feature, I was even able to keep the names and locations (by never removing it). Control only seems possible after a few minutes of waiting - patience I didnā€™t have in quite a few tries before this final succesful one :smiley:

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Solution for those stumbling upon this:

  • Take a backup with ZHA via ā€œDownload Backupā€, reachable under Devices, ZHA, Configure
  • Use the ā€œMigrate Radioā€ feature to migrate to /dev/ttyAMA1 (at least for me), wiping your old radio on the way. Install the previously taken manual backup
  • Wait a few minutes for your devices to become accessible again
  • Unplug the old radio

I migrated from a Raspberry PI 3b to Home Assistant Yellow today. I used the procedure Tim has kindly documented here to migrate my Zigbee devices from the Conbee II to the Silicon Labs EZSP choosing /dev/ttyAMA1 from the list. The migration appeared to be successful but, alas, I am seeing some strange behavior.

Most of my Zigbee devices are Sonoff MINI Smart Switches that are installed behind light switches on the wall. The light switches work as normal to turn the lights on and off and the light on/off state shows up correctly in HA. But I can no longer turn the lights on/off using the switches in my HA dashboard. I also have some Sonoff S31 Lite outlet plugs. Same behaviors. All of this worked fine with the Raspberry PI 3B and Conbee II. I see the following in the logs:

Logger: homeassistant.components.zha.core.channels.base
Source: components/zha/core/channels/base.py:486
Integration: Zigbee Home Automation (documentation, issues)
First occurred: 4:38:35 PM (12 occurrences)
Last logged: 4:38:41 PM

  • [0xB6B7:1:0x0006]: async_initialize: all attempts have failed: [DeliveryError(ā€˜Failed to deliver message: <EmberStatus.DELIVERY_FAILED: 102>ā€™), DeliveryError(ā€˜Failed to deliver message: <EmberStatus.DELIVERY_FAILED: 102>ā€™), DeliveryError(ā€˜Failed to deliver message: <EmberStatus.DELIVERY_FAILED: 102>ā€™), DeliveryError(ā€˜Failed to deliver message: <EmberStatus.DELIVERY_FAILED: 102>ā€™)]

Iā€™m hoping someone has some suggestions as to how I need to go about diagnosing the problem.

There are also some issues I see in the diagnostics report - like the Title of the Controller in the Integration is still ā€œConBee II ā€¦ā€. I have no idea where to fix that. The radio_type is ā€œezspā€ which is probably the important thing. But I have no clear idea what Iā€™m looking for in this report. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Update: False alarm. Itā€™s all working now. I donā€™t really understand why but I noticed that two of the Sonoff S31 outlets were offline. Not knowing what to do I unplugged and then plugged them back in and voila! Not only did they come online but the issues with the other devices disappeared. Perhaps they were crucial nodes in the network?

Does Home Assistant Yellow have an external antenna option for Zigbee? I am not keen on the clear plastic enclosure, my preference is an RFI screened enclosure but this would require an external antenna.

Not as delivered, but the blank pads for J9 strongly suggest an IPEX / U.Fl connector would solder on (bottom left):
https://yellow.home-assistant.io/yellow-v1.2-standard/

The circuit diagram confirms RF_SIGNAL does connect to J9, but no idea if thereā€™s a software antenna select.

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THANK you!

Has J9 been confirmed yet as an antenna connection and if so, how we could use it?

Thanks!

Sadly, you have all the information I have - basically the hardware docs for Yellow.

Solder on a PCB mount IPEX / U.Fl connector (very common, even Amazon has many options), clip on an antenna pigtail, and see if range improves?

If not, the next step would go digging in the datasheet and radio driver code, but antenna select could be in a closed-source SiLabs firmware blob with an unpublished API. Donā€™t know what has been published so far, given the radio is under development to add Thread to the existing Zigbee protocol stack.

Hi, used your solution. THNX.
Did you change the name of your zigbee radio afterwards??
I dont like its stil called conbee.

No, I have not. I donā€™t like it either, but I am working hard to suppress my obsessive tendencies. My advice is to reframe it as a stoic challengešŸ˜‰

Hi,

I have an issue with the built in deviceā€¦

I added then removed a deviceā€¦ when I tried to re addā€¦ than I face with thatā€¦

ā€œDevice seen - marking the device available and resetting counterā€

I donā€™t know how to fix thisā€¦

Tried to remove Zigbee radioā€¦ and add again, but it wasnā€™t helpingā€¦

Any update on this? I am desperately trying to find a way to improve my zigbee reception. I am willing to give an external antenna a try. All my Google searches indicate it is possible to solder on an external antenna, but I havenā€™t found any posts indicating that anyone has successfully done it.

Whilst it may be possible to add a higher gain antenna to a Yellow, donā€™t concentrate on the co-ordinator (and the driver software setting to switch antenna may not exist).

Mesh networks work better with more nodes. Add more mains powered Zigbee devices to pass messages along more reliably.

There are many guides in this forum on this of you search.

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I had issues with my internal Zigbee radio on my Yellow. I just bought a skyconnect and a USB extender and itā€™s been working solid ever since.

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Might have to do this myself. Having so much trouble with zigbee2mqtt right now and the Yellow on-board chip.
Pains me to have to get an external dongle though since part of the ā€œsellā€ of the HA Yellow was that it ā€œcame withā€ Zigbeeā€¦

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Hi Chris, Iā€™m actually facing very similar problems - Yellow build-in zigbee signal is very poor and unstable. It surprised me already so many times that I believe itā€™s simply not really usable. I mean, there are 3 Shutters that are withing 5 meters to Yellow, those works without problems, but all others not really optimal.
I though to solve it by using usb with SkyConnect, but somehow Yellow do not recognize it, or at least I do not know how to even check it. From what I read forum, itā€™s not possible to use multiple Zigbee adapters/coordinators on Yellow, so I guess the only way is to somehow deactivate build in Zigbee and activate the one on usb cable?

I just did that ext antenna adding for test.Only little better without selecting/setting the ext antenna in use. This built in is really poor.
Connector

Then some base for wlan antenna.