ITead's "Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus" (model "ZBDongle-P") based on Texas Instruments CC2652P radio SoC/MCU

Configuration Zigbee
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608

Hi everyone!

Coming from a Conbee II where everything was almost fine, I’ve decided to switch to a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 (ZBDongle-P) after migration from an old laptop to a small Lenovo M715q.

The dongle is upgraded to the latest version, plugged on an USB 2.0 port, with a ~1.5m shielded USB cable, almost as the same place as the Conbee II. I switched my Wifi to 6 and 11 (2 Ubiquit APs) as the default Zigbee channel is 11 (~ channel 1 on Wifi).

I know it has been discussed on many places but I haven’t found any relevant “numbers”. I noticed a HUGE drop on link quality from my Conbee II to this one.
On the Conbee II, almost all of my +70 devices were at 255, with the Sonoff, even the closest Zigbee device at around 1m is at 170-180. The lowest one is around ~30-40.

I’m still making some tests, especially the transmit power. Currently I set it at 0 to avoid distant peripheries to try to reach him directly.

So here are my questions:

  1. Does the quality number really matter as long as it work?
  2. Should I need to wait for the network to stabilize, like for a week of so? And hence, should I stop repairing/modifying transmit power?
  3. Does anybody had a similar drop?
  4. I’m ready to switch to a more powerful/stable coordinator if needed (EmberZNet?)
  5. Any other advices?

Thanks!

609

I have many devices with a very low LQI (<20) with my Dongle P in z2m that work perfectly fine, and have done so for a long time, so I don’t really pay attention to that metric (I have one device that’s almost out of range of my network, a contact sensor in the letterbox at around 12m from the nearest router, and that has an LQI of 140…).

I personally wouldn’t mess with transmit power as it only goes one way and it’s easy to cause issues. I also wouldn’t touch EmberZNet devices with a 10 foot pole, they seem way too unstable.

1 Like
610

The power supply can wear out too. When my router had those symptoms, another USB charger fixed it

611

Link quality number are probably not comparable between different sticks (especially of different chipsets).

I have two battery devices with lqi at 5-10, and they work fine also. Yes I was concerned in the beginning also, but hey they work.

2 Likes
612

Why would they fail (so quickly at that)? I suppose nothing lasts forever, but I’ve been using the same schlage zwave hub for almost 20 years now without issue.

613

FYI, there is a new experimental Z-Stack 20250321 firmware builds available for those want to test the latest beeding-edge version and also give feedback to the Z-Stack firmware developers there:

Understand it is experimental Zigbee Coordinator firmware based on the latest Texas Instruments SDK so only try it out if you either already have problems this is suppose to fix or if you just want to help the Z-Stack firmware developers test stability with it and troubleshoot possible issues.

Note! Always remember to do a Zigbee network backup saved to a file before upgrading firmware.

Changelog (compared to 20240710)

  • Attempted to fix some BUFFER_FULL errors
  • Updated SimpleLink SDK to 8.30.01.0

PS: Before testing and posting there remember that it will be assumed that you are already following all the best practices for the physical setup and that you have enough Zigbee Router devices. Read:

1 Like
614

FYI. SONOFF has launched an online firmware flashing tool called SONOFF Dongle Quick Flasher , which supports ZBDongle-P and ZBDongle-E .

SONOFF Dongle Quick Flasher: Effortless Firmware Updates in 1 Minute - SONOFF Official

5 Likes
615

I have exactly the same issue after upgrading the firmware, I’ve reinstalled HAOS and tried reverting the firmware but not a single device will join. I setup zigbee2mqtt on a synology and it works fine so no idea…