Apologies in advice…
Can I get a friend who can help 30 years IT vet disabled; guess I am the old confused guy which is embarrassing AF…
I have smartthings v2 hub, 73 zigbee/z-wave devices nest&alexa devices. Saw the Sonoff no neutral required to add a switch badly needed to use the ceiling light for the pantry (previous homeowner remodel.)
Cool, so I bought a SONOFF ZBMINI Extreme Zigbee Smart Switch to finally fix this issue. Tried adding to smarthings/google/Alexa. No worky.Researched for days - confused still so posted for help on Sonoff site, and was told I need a Zigbee dongle. OK, added that today, but looks like it only works with Home Assitant? I spun up a VM and installed HA, but god I have to learn a variant of Smartthings IDE. I will eventually, but my wife needs this light as she is also disabled.
Takes me weeks to implement things that took hours in the past.
Can someone point me in the right direction? I want to be able to adopt matter and it looks like I need the v2 for that? I need to update firmware to file discovery I read, but Ideally just need no neutral “miracle” working on my ST/G/A setup, or am I in for an uphill battle?
thank you all greatly
@Cocokola please understand that questions about help on the setup of Home Assistant and assistance with getting started with Zigbee in Home Assistant are both at the very least slightly off-topic here.
In order for you to get better help with getting started to suggest that you instead start your own separate new topic as a dedicated discussion for all your specific questions regarding your personal setup. Suggesting this as sounds as if you will probably have many follow-up questions and how to get started with different general things Home Assistant, which is either generic or setup unique questions is a little too off-topic for this discussion. This existing discussion which already has around 200 posts is not the right place to ask for step-by-step instructions and try to start a dialogue for help with your unique setup.
Anyway, generally recommend that beginners start by installing the ZHA (”Zigbee Home Automation”) integration under Home Assistant. See → https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha
A tip is to search on YouTube for videos on how to set up the ZHA integration for Zigbee, (no need to search for help there on any compatible Zigbee Coordinator adapter as the ZHA integration is more or less hardware agnostic). Getting started with the ZHA integration should not be hard at all as long as the Home Assistant can see the Zigbee Coordinator USB radio adapter, however getting USB pass-through working to a Virtual Machine can be complicated and is totally off-topic here for sure, which again is another reason why you should really start a separate new topic, (for getting USB passthrough working to a VM you should post to other external third-party community that helps with the virtualization hypervisor / virtual machine manager that you are using. As for getting started with the ZHA (Zigbee Home Automation) integration in Home Assistant, there are basically just a few written guides like this → https://skyconnect.home-assistant.io/new-zigbee/
Also to make it easy for yourself recommend subscribing and make use of the paid “Home Assistant Cloud” service which makes it much simpler to connect to Amazon Alexa (e.i. Amazon Echo devices) and/or Google Assistant (e.i. Google Home devices) as well as remotely connecting and controlling your Home Assistant instance via the official companion app and/or proxy in via Nabu Casa website → https://www.home-assistant.io/cloud/
“Home Assistant Cloud” service is provided by Nabu Casa, which is a company that is operated by Home Assistant founders and employed some of the lead developers to work full-time for Home Assistant (so you are sponsoring the project by using their paid service), and getting remote access and Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant working with that “Home Assistant Cloud” service can be a hassle.
Regardless, YouTube is your friend for step-by-step guides. For example, check out these for starters:
This community forum is more for deep-diving details issues once already tried and then got stuck.
Suggest that just stick with only Zigbee for now. As most people say today ”Matter does not yet matter”. Trying to get started with Thread/OpenThread (with or without Matter) now is a sure way to stumble in the dark with sharp objects (and there are not even any available Thread/OpenThread devices that can do anything that existing less inexpensive Zigbee devices can not already do).
This dongle also ships only with Zigbee Coordinator firmware and Zigbee should be enough to get you started, and regardless there is no official Thread/OpenThread firmware for this radio dongle, even though the hardware supports Thread/OpenThread and there is unofficial Thread/OpenThread firmware for it I would not bother looking at that yet as it is very bleeding-edge stuff that is likely to change a lot in the coming year or so, so at least that will be an uphill battle if you want to jump on that today. See → https://www.home-assistant.io/skyconnect
If you only want to use Zigbee then is very probably there is no need to update the firmware right away.
Anyway, if you wanted Thread/OpenThread support today then you should instead really have bought the Home Assistant SkyConnect USB dongle which has official support for it but even it only offers very early beta support for it.
Personally, I recommend that when you think you are ready to experiment with Thread/OpenThread (including Matter over Thread/OpenThread) just buy a separate radio USB dongle dedicated to only Thread/OpenThread so as not to risk messing up your stable Zigbee network, and the official the Home Assistant SkyConnect USB dongle is the obvious choice there as it will be the best-supported adapter.
FYI, for those wanting to experiment with Multi-PAN RCP firmware for OpenThread/Thread on ITead’s Sonoff ZBDongle-E USB dongle you should know that user skgsergio on GitHub has compiled and published unofficial SiLabs Multi-PAN RPC firmware images for ZB-GW04 USB dongle (competing Zigbee Coordinator USB radio adapter from EasyIoT / eWeSmart Store) which used the same EFR32MG21 SoC and has a board that is pin-compatible so theoretically if flashed to Sonoff Dongle-E it should enable you to use Thread/OpenThread with the Home Assistant’s Silicon Labs Multiprotocol Addon, and while not optimized for the antenna used on the ITead’s Sonoff ZBDongle-E USB dongle board it should at least on paper technically work for a lab if want to test it. Check out → [REQUEST] ZDongle-E Silicon Labs RCP (Radio Co-Processor) firmware concurrent multiprotocol Zigbee and OpenThread · Issue #5 · itead/Sonoff_Zigbee_Dongle_Firmware · GitHub
Disclaimer for this is that I have not tested this myself, and keep in mind that unofficial firmware and use case is of course all highly experimental so use at your own risk and do not expect anything around Thread/OpenThread or Matter and HomeKit devices that uses Thread to work out-of-the-box even with the right type of firmware. To look at native Thread support in Home Assistant right now at this time you really need to be willing to go down the rabbit hole. For diving deeper see:
I am struggling to get the router firmware flashed on my Dongle-E. I have managed to flash coordinator firmware with no problems (v6.10.3) using secureCRT. with the file downloaded from ITEAD git for the router i get nowhere though (it gets stuck on transferring)
I ended up trying to use ELELABS utility to get a better log here is what i get back:
C:\elelabs>py Elelabs_EzspFwUtility.py flash -f Z3RouterUSBDonlge_EZNet6.10.3_V1.0.0.gbl -p COM3
2023/03/09 16:44:49 Elelabs_EzspFwUtility: EZSP adapter in bootloader mode detected:
2023/03/09 16:44:49 Elelabs_EzspFwUtility: Gecko Bootloader v1.12.00
2023/03/09 16:44:49 Elelabs_EzspFwUtility: Allready in bootloader mode. No need to restart
2023/03/09 16:44:50 Elelabs_EzspFwUtility: Successfully restarted into X-MODEM mode! Starting upload of the new firmware... DO NOT INTERRUPT(!)
send error: expected ACK; got b'\x18' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'\x18' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'\x18' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'\r' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'\n' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'S' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'e' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'r' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'i' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'a' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'l' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b' ' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'u' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'p' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'l' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'o' for block 1
send error: expected ACK; got b'a' for block 1
send error: NAK received 17 times, aborting.
2023/03/09 16:44:57 Elelabs_EzspFwUtility: Firmware upload failed. Please try a correct firmware image or restart in normal mode.
I’m guessing that the firmware version is not correct for my device although i have downloaded this from the ITEAD git. Any help appreciated…
All recommendations I read online suggest to connect these ZigBee dongles to USB 2 ports, however, my server is equipped only with 3.0 USBs. Therefore, I used a USB 2 extension cable. Is this supposed to work and fix the interference?
To summerize it is easier to just recommend a powered USB 2.0 hub over a unpowered USB 2.0 hub because many users commonly use a single-board computers with a power-supply that is just barley has enough power to power the single-board computer itself, without any pheriphials, then they normally connect an unpowered harddrive + radio dongles (all of which adds to the total amount of power needed) and then it very common to get get intermittent issues which the root cause turn put to be power related problems.
Simply put, if you use a powered USB 2.0 hub then you have at least secured powered to the radio dongle so any issues you might still get should not have to due with that radio dongle not getting enough power.
I see.
I’m using Intel Nuc server with 4 usb 3 ports and it has enough power so I guess in my case powered hub is not needed.
Last question - does it really needs to be a hub? Can i
I just connect the dongle to a usb 2.0 extension cable? Why use a hub at all?
There are several links to references there and more. Short answer is that all USB 3.0 ports and devices emit interference that seriously affect Zigbee.
How about this - you can try the long usb 2.0 (not usb 3.0) cable, and see if that works for you.
If there is still strange behavior happening to your setup, maybe 1 or 3 or 6 or 60 months down the road, then you know what to do.
What Hedda said is still true.
And no, plugging a USB 2 cable to a USB 3 port does not “effectively make the connection usb2”. There will still be interference.
But, sure, it does not hurt to try - everything is relative… so who knows… maybe you will find the interference relatively acceptable.
Yes, that is the whole point. The device is nothing more than a Serial to USB adapter that operates at a speed of 115,200kbps, far below the speed of even USB 1.0 speeds of 1.5mbps.
Again, I think that it would be much better if the interference discussion could be moved to that other thread since that i not specific to this dongle as it applies to all Zigbee dongles and devices, and would be better if questions and feedback on the suggested best practice in that guide were collected here instead → Guide for Zigbee interference avoidance and network range/coverage optimization
But for reference read this whitepaper PDF from Intel on usb.org → https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/327216.pdf as see this video (that is posted there) about how extremely sensitive Zigbee really is, and understand that just because it works does not mean that it works well, as for example battery powered devices will draw much more battery if they have to resend messages due to interference, so a common symptom of interference a “seemingly working” Zigbee setup is that batteries last only for weeks or months instead of for years:
Thank you so much for your clear instructions. Got Dongle E working as a router connected to my Dongle P coordinator within 5 mins after finding your post. I did get stuck with the boot button part as my led did not flash no matter how many times I tried, I read further and checked my device manager for the correct com port. I had to use COM5 and then it worked straight away. Would have saved some time if you had put check com port before connecting to device but we got there so all good
Hi. What firmware did you use to make your E dongle to work as router please? I have been trying to flash the Z3RouterUSBDonlge_EZNet6.10.3_V1.0.0.gbl with SecureCRT but it gets stuck when starting to load. I only manage to flash the coordinator firmware without any problems… however router firmware not at all. Nothing… (also tried Com5 but nothing) Thanks
Oki, I give up. Thanks for all the suggestions but sorry, not helping me at all. I’ve manage to achieve loads of stuff in my days considering my low level of knowledge in programming and computing. This is only for peeps with very good knowledge and experience. This is way to complicated and time-consuming.
Yes that is the firmware I’ve used and tried to flash. I have tried with Python, used several guides, followed step by step on Youtube… I’ve looked at your suggestions and tried to proceed with two of them. I will scrap the E-dongles and maybe consider to get the P-dongles instead. Look like more people are more successful with these…Seems to be working for others (at least cost less considering all the hours I spent on this). Good luck to everyone.
@kidnor I think the most common problem/solution is using/trying different baud rate speeds. When talking to the bootloader for flashing firmware then a baudrate speed of 9600 is more commonly used, while a higher baud rate speed like 115200 is used when actually using the application firmware. So try manually enter baudrate speed of 9600.
Then I believe the second most common problem/solution is installing good device drivers for the USB-to-Serial converter/bridge chip, which is not the same on ZBDongle-E and ZBDongle-P, as the ZBDongle-E board uses the WCH CH340 chip and the ZBDongle-P board uses Silicon Labs CP2102 or CP2102N chips. For WCH CH340 see → http://www.wch-ic.com/downloads/category/30.html
Third, I would generally suggest trying to flash from an other computer and/or other operating systems if you are having that many issues with trying to flash when using your existing computer and operating system. So if you are having problems using a Linux OS then try on a Windows OS, or vice versa.
