“Installed behind light switches, the Philips Hue wall switch module lets you use existing switches with your Philips Hue smart lights. Your lights always stay powered on and reachable — and you can even use the switch to set multiple scenes on an individual light or in a Room or Zone.”
Philips Hue Wall switch module are however not yet compatible with ZHA but think it’s being worked on:
Zigbee and Z-Wave dimmer/switch modules with no “smart lightbulbs” is my solution for all ceiling lights.
I only use “smart lightbulbs” for window lights which do not have a switch at all (not even cord switch) so they they are always powered-on and there is no chance for accidental switch-off (unless unplugged).
Believe limit was set based on available RAM and Flash Storage on first-generation CC2652/CC1352. Reason for limits is latest security routines for Zigbee 3.0 devices take a lot of RAM/storage overhead:
“Due to new security requirements in Zigbee 3.0, Zigbee 3.0 coordinators can only support a limited amount of Zigbee 3.0 devices. For Zigbee 1.2 coordinators there is no limit on the max number of Zigbee 3.0 devices that can join.”
Texas Instruments has however since then release of the first revisions of CC2652/CC1322 released with CC26x2/CC13x2 models that feature more RAM or Flash Storage than the first revision models:
Note the newer CC2652R7 for example feature 704KB flash memory and 152KB RAM which is double compared to CC2652R1/2, CC2652RB1/2, and CC2652P1/2, (so is hope for a future “CC2652P7”).
While I am not sure, I do however not think the limit could be raised for this first revision of Sonoff Plus dongle because the CC2652P it uses do not have more RAM and Flash Storage than first-generation CC2652R/CC2652R, but in the future if there is a demand they could release a second-generation as “Sonoff Plus 2 dongle” which would use a newer CC2652P that have more RAM and Flash Storage.
PS: The reason why no limits for Zigbee 3.0 devices in Z-Stack Home 1.2 coordinators is that Zigbee 3.0 devices connected to it will run in backwards compatibility mode so not used as Zigbee 3.0 devices.
Totally hear you on this. I ended up with some ceiling mounted ones for two reasons:
I had big rooms where many cans were on a single switch, so breaking them up is very nice for things like media viewing vs using an accent lamp.
Tunable “white” light. I live in a city and have classic street light colors drenching my house at night. It’s nice to be able to tweak these colors at night and have a nice bright white light for doing certain projects during the day.
Dimming/dimming noise. I have yet to find any combination of high quality, LED specific dimmer, and LED dimmable bulb, that has no audible hum. I haven’t experience any of those issues with the zigbee bulbs I have bought.
@Kallenator By the way, the rumour is that Silicon Labs upcoming EFR32MG23 and EFR32MG24 will probably come with more onboard RAM and flash memory storage than any of Texas Instruments chips.
I believe those were already scheduled to be released a year ago but Silicon Labs suffered more than most in the current worldwide chip shortage situation and thus they have been delayed until next year.
EFR32MG12 Series 1 SoCs already featured up to 256KB RAM and 1024KB flash storage memory but think they were not designed to act as Zigbee coordinators (or at least no one made such adapters yet)
I tried using the router firmware on one of my sonoff zigbee 3.0 USB dongles and I successfully flashed it however when I power it on to pair with the coordinator that’s also a sonoff zigbee plus 3.0 USB dongle it does not appear to be found.
It’s supposed to on first boot go into pairing mode isn’t it?
It started pairing and then never finished pairing it kept timing out. Does it only attempt to pair once? As I moved it and plugged it back in however it’s not pairing any longer? I assume I have to reset it or flash the firmware again to get it to pair on start.
I followed the same steps to flash as you would for the coordinator firmware. Then plugged it in and it took a few tries to see it pop up as a new device but then it never finished pairing. Not sure if the issue was that it may have been too close to the coordinator or what the issue was. I tried moving it further but it is not being found any longer presumably because it needs to be reset or reflashed.
It randomly appeared hours later on the network. Too bad I only noticed after I re-flashed the firmware. It repaired fast the other router that didn’t pair before successfully and got stuck was found quickly but it never finished the interview. Presumably it may take a few hours as well.
Thanks for this video. On a whim I got this device to replace by hue bridge v1. Using the linux directions at the end of his video, 10:30 mark, I was able to flash the latest firmware in the dev branch, no need to open up the dongle!
I was able to use zigbee2mqtt to touchlink unpair my 3 hue bulbs (change device to /dev/ttyUSB0). Put bulb next to dongle, then turn bulb off and on, then do touchlink to unpair. Without turning off/on you get weird errors. I then removed bulbs from z2m and used the built-in zha integration. May try z2m if have any issues with zha.
Good evening. I purchased a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus to use as a router. I was able to flash the router firmware; however, Home assistant ZHA will not detect the device. I am currently using a CONBEE 2 as my coordinator. Any suggestions on why the Sonoff device is not being detected in Home Assistant? Appreciate your time and consideration.
