update on my situation. Whist this works fine, when i reboot HA, i lose the connectivity to the USB conbee device. Loads of issues with reliable USB pass thru using virtual box. Lots of stuff on the forums but no conclusive fix. If anyone has a conbee working with HA using ZHA running on virtual box in windows, please can you share how you configured this? Mine is really hit an miss…with more miss than hit!
1 Like
If you want some stable/production stuff, just go with an Intel NUC running HassOS, I’ve never been so satisfied of Home Assistant since then !
1 Like
Silly question: Does the device running HA need to be by the lock (as in physical proximity) or can it just be connected to the same network?
@ickam no, the HA device doesn’t need to be near the lock. For my setup, HA is installed in a virtual session (Proxmox) many meters away. I do however have a router (zigbee plug) within about 1m away from the Danalock to repeat the zigbee mesh
I only have a single zigbee hub, at the moment servicing just the danalock. It does not seem to be very smart though (it’s a tuya hub) and it only tells me when the door has been unlocked, will that work with home assistant or does it need to be able to read status of the lock by itself?
Your best bet is something like a Conbee 2 rather than Tuya hub. Or even something such as Tubes zigbee coordinator. I went from Conbee to Tubes as it is so much better which can be found here Tube's ZB Coordinators and Routers (was Zigbee router on steroids?).
The lock should be sending its status back all the time, regardless if locked or unlocked. The main reason I went to Tubes ZB was due to my Danalock loosing connection to Conbee every night and automations not working next day without pairing the lock again
I’m from the UK though and TB zigbee doesn’t seem to be available at the moment anyway. But just so I get proper understanding
- how is TB zigbee powered?
- TB zigbee needs to be near the lock but can be paired with a homeassisant instance on the same network, regardless of where the machine is actually placed.
@ickam he delivers to the UK (when he has stock). My order took a week or 2 a few months ago (I’m also UK based).
The one I went with was the following:
It’s USB powered so just plugged into your HA device. Like I say, I have a wall plug very close to the Danalock and have had no problems with the setup - the plug socket just acts as a repeater and my as shown in the map:
I’m using a Conbee II and it’s super stable, never any issues.
If you’re having problems with connectivity you might need the Conbee stick or a router closer to the lock.
For instance IKEA Trådfri lights acts as routers in the network so installing one of those in the room with the lock is one way to improve the network quality.
Edit; should mention I’m not using zigbee2mqtt, I’m on Deconz.
@nikler and @ickam the plug in using near the lock is actually the ikea plug. When I was on Conbee II I was using ZHA so maybe that was the problem rather than the stick itself? The Tubes zigbee device however is much more stable (according to multiple posts on these forums) and signal strength is much higher as well apparently. I was originally on Deconz way back when I got the Danalock but as I recall, it wasn’t compatible at that point so moved to ZHA for tighter integration in HA and ability to control the lock
I would love to try this out, but I live in a sizeable house with breeze block walls, where wifi signal is not travelling greatly and any device that I could run HA on is very far from the doors, so I don’t think even one plug would cut it for me 
I assume you have lights in all the rooms?
Try IKEA Trådfri.
@ickam to put it in perspective, the more zigbee devices that are plugged in, the stronger the mesh network. For example, I have 12 ikea plugs scattered around the house and 5 hue lightstrips. All of these devices just enhance the mesh network and make it more resilient
has anyone managed to operate this lock with both bluetooth and zigbee modes enabled? My experience so far is the following:
A) when included via click commands, it operates well.
B) when included via the app (bluetooth pairing is present as well), it stops accepting zigbee commands after a while.
LQI/RSSI are reported as 255/-75 so this doesn’t look like to be a signal issue. After all, it works seamlessly when included via the (A) way.
I want the Bluetooth pairing to be present cause i need to do some configurations (hold back the latch/turning assistance). There is no way to do these via click commands
@Dionisis what do you mean by Click commands? I have had the lock work with Bluetooth via the app and also paired with HA at the same time. However in the end I turned off proximity usage with Bluetooth as it wasn’t reliable enough - people would be standing at the door for 30+ seconds before phone bluetooth registered so I now have that turned off and just use zigbee via HA - when one of the registered phones connects to WiFi HA will send an unlock
@Townsmcp thanks for your reply! You can apply some settings by pressing the button inside the small hole on the top of the lock. Danalock has named this procedure “click commands”
So you mean you havent noticed any device freeze issue like the one im talking about.
Are you using ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT? Which zigbee dongle you are using?
@Dionisis ah ok. I know the small button is used for HomeKit version but personally haven’t used it to configure the lock.
So I have experienced similar to point B. Every few days (in the end every day) HA would loose connection and I would have to go back into the app and put the lock in pairing mode, back to HA and device joining. This was with ZHA and a Conbee II stick. I put up with it for a couple of months and the WAF (wife acceptance factor) went through the floor. I resolved it in the end by switching to a Tubes USB stick and zigbee2mqtt. Since changing a month ago I haven’t had any problems.
USB stick found here: CC2652 Zigbee Router | Tube's ZB Store
HA thread found here: Tube's ZB Coordinators and Routers (was Zigbee router on steroids?)
The difference using Tubes device compared to Conbee is night and day. My zigbee network is so much more stable and reliable now
Ok so this sounds like a signal strength issue.
But… i have my doubts. Some more notes:
- The lock stalled even without being paired via bluetooth so my previous assumption was wrong. It turns out that bluetooth pairing coexistence is unrelated.
- The lock stalled even when it was re-included and placed right next to the coordinator (1m away). LQI and RSSI were again exceptional at the time of the disconnection/stalling. Zigbee log just reported a failure to deliver the locking command - and any subsequent command
3)Im using ZHA and Nortek HUSBZB-1 via bellows lib. Below thread claims the issue was fixed by migrating to zigbee2mqtt and setting a configuration parameter to a different value. Unfortunately i dont have the time to move to zb2mqtt at the moment. I searched the clusters of the lock but i wasnt able to locate this configuration value. Found some similar ones though, ill try to alter them and see what happens.
@Dionisis it couldn’t have been a signal strength issue - the lock was connected by an IKEA smart plug which was less than 1m away (which it is connected to now after all the change of device and shift to z2m).
Good luck with finding the issue. For my own setup, I think it was ZHA rather than the stick.ZHA is still pretty young in comparison to Z2M, Deconz etc. The easier solution though might be to change the stick to rule that out? I have no experience of the stick you use though so don’t know how reliable/forgiving it is.
For everyone’s information, this is the reply i got from the official danalock support after raising the zigbee freezing issue to them. You can judge by yourselves whether you want to defer from buying this lock.
Hello Dionisis,
When lock becomes unresponsive, remove one battery from the lock and reinsert. Now connection should be restored.
Best regards
Danalock support