Loss of Zigbee - Conbee II

Configuration Zigbee
1

It would be wonderful if someone could put me out of my misery!

On 27th December all my Zigbee devices stopped working. It appeared that something went wrong with my Conbee II coordinator.

I’ll point out at this stage that I seem to surf between understanding and complete ignorance when it comes to Home Assistant, setting up my system with the help of YouTube videos and instructions on web pages.

I’ve been through various things unplugging and reconnecting the Conbee stick, rebooting the system numerous times, recovering to a backup before Christmas when I knew everything was working, all without success. I’ve even flashed the Conbee stick with the latest firmware. I removed the Zigbee integration in HA in the hope that it would reinstall the Conbee stick and fix the problem that way.

Using the deCONZ software on a laptop I can see that the stick is functioning, recognizing plugs etc. in the house. Also using the Phoscon Gateway portal I can see the Conbee stick and even went as far as resetting it.

After all my attempts I am at the stage where HA automatically discovers (in Integrations) the Conbee stick plugged into the NUC I run HA on, but when I click on ‘Add’ I get “unknown error occurred”.

I don’t understand the system well enough to interpret the log files for any meaningful indication of the problem.

Running ZHA.

Any suggestions of the solution or a plan of diagnosis would be very much appreciated.

Thanks
Philip

2

Hi Philip,

Some things to consider, if you haven’t already:

  • Do you have any way to build a separate instance of HA on an alternate system that would allow you test your Conbee/ZHA combination. That might help narrow down a hardware v software issue.
  • Has anything else changed in your network on or around the time things went pear shaped? New devices etc.
  • Have you considered interference from the USB hardware on your HA system? Do you connect the Conbee via a USB extension cable? When you did your Deconz software test on the laptop, was the laptop in the same physical location as your HA server?
  • Based on your testing so far its feeling like a software issue but that’s just a gut feel. Is it an option to try installing the Deconz integration as a comparison to ZHA.

Hopefully that gives you some other testing options.

Cheers
Nick

3

Hi Nick

Thank you for your response.

I did consider setting up another instance of HA. I’ll need to dig around and find a bunch of bits, but I agree that would help.

I can’t be sure exactly when the fault occurred, but I do run updates to the system and add-ons as they become available. This is why I restored a backup from about a week prior to the fault, knowing that all was working fine then. Alas the problem remained.

I had read that you should plug the Conbee stick into an extension lead to avoid interference from the host computer, especially when using an SSD. This I have always done. During my attempts to diagnose the problem I replaced the USB extension lead and tried two different USB ports. When I tested the Conbee stick on my laptop using the deCONZ software it was approximately 2-3 feet away from my HA server.

Like you, my gut feeling is that it’s a software issue. I did wonder if installing the deCONZ integration would help, although I was loathed to do this as I am not sure what this offers over ZHA and what other implications it would have on the system. As stated in my original post, my understanding is limited yet growing.

I really appreciate your thoughts and will try a couple of your suggestions. Unfortunately I am away this weekend so won’t be able to do anything until early next week.

Thanks again Nick
Regards
Philip

4

Just setup deCONZ in HA and my Conbee II stick appears to work perfectly. So I have no idea what is wrong with the ZHA default integration. Very frustrating.

At least I will have a working system once I get round to reintegrating all my zigbee devices and editing all the automations I have running. The deCONZ method is more of a faff, but it works.

Thank you again Nick.

If anyone has any idea what caused my original problem and how it could be fixed I’d really like to hear.

Cheers
Philip

5

That’s funny, with my system deconz last firmware conbeeII and ha still 2024.12 the same thing happened last week no more zigbee network, then network but no values ​​are updated currently no network again, I haven’t changed anything in the system. I want to switch to zigbee2mqtt but am still waiting because of problems with ha 2025.1

6

Found this topic through search after having issues with my Zigbee devices after 2025.01 update. Conbee II (ZHA integration) giving errors. Log shows this:

Error setting up entry ConBee II - /dev/serial/by-id/usb-dresden_elektronik_ingenieurtechnik_GmbH_ConBee_II_DE2438476-if00, s/n: DE2438476 - dresden elektronik ingenieurtechnik GmbH - 1CF1:0030 for zha
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/config_entries.py", line 640, in __async_setup_with_context
    result = await component.async_setup_entry(hass, self)
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/zha/__init__.py", line 132, in async_setup_entry
    async with radio_mgr.connect_zigpy_app() as app:
               ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/contextlib.py", line 214, in __aenter__
    return await anext(self.gen)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/src/homeassistant/homeassistant/components/zha/radio_manager.py", line 182, in connect_zigpy_app
    app = await self.radio_type.controller.new(
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        app_config, auto_form=False, start_radio=False
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    )
    ^
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/zigpy/application.py", line 239, in new
    await app._load_db()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/zigpy/application.py", line 111, in _load_db
    await self._dblistener.load()
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/zigpy/appdb.py", line 684, in load
    device = zigpy.quirks.get_device(device)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/zigpy/quirks/__init__.py", line 43, in get_device
    return _DEVICE_REGISTRY.get_device(device)
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/zigpy/quirks/registry.py", line 130, in get_device
    return quirk_entry.create_device(device)
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/zigpy/quirks/v2/__init__.py", line 430, in create_device
    return CustomDeviceV2(device.application, device.ieee, device.nwk, device, self)
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/zigpy/quirks/v2/__init__.py", line 91, in __init__
    add_meta(self)
    ~~~~~~~~^^^^^^
  File "/usr/local/lib/python3.13/site-packages/zigpy/quirks/v2/__init__.py", line 164, in __call__
    endpoint: Endpoint = device.endpoints[self.endpoint_id]
                         ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

HA restart, intrgration reload and Conbee II firmware update (via other device) didn’t result in anything. Anyone who can decifer the log and point me where to fix/change anything?

EDIT: solved after 2025.1.1 update

7

Same kind of issue but after an upgrade from ha core 2024.12 to 2025.1.2
Conbee II with long USB extension cable, PI 4, SSD disk. All was working like a charm with 55 Zigbee nodes before the move to 2025.1.2.
The unfortunate thing, is that the downgrade to 2024.12 did not fix the issue.
Would it be because I upgraded also HAOSS to the latest release ?

So, still unable to communicate to my Zigbee nodes (send requests) but receiving requests is working fine.

(Other post : Loss of Zigbee - Conbee II - #2 by nickh66 )

8

Hi all,
No reaction so far but here are anyway my outcomes so that it may help describing my interference between Zigbee and TpLink DecoX50 Wifi mesh.

So …

At a first glance, my issue would not be related to the upgrade to 2025.1.2.

The problem I met seems to be an unfortunate sudden interference between my Wifi Mesh (3 pads) and the Cobee II Zigbee dongle.

The issue matches the description of Vertigo722 on Reddit.

In summary, I did not get a good idea buying a Tplink DecX50 Wifi-Mesh (3 nodes) in regard at least with my Zigbee based HomeAssistant (as a Wifi mesh, this works very well).

The problem is that the Deco configuration is fully automatic and you have no way to influence how the Wifi channels are selected on each Wifi node. This is a black box supposing Deco is supposed much clever than you to find the best channel apart that apparently, it does not take (well) Zigbee under consideration.

While it worked perfectly for several months without interference (at least not detected on my own) , suddenly Deco selected the channel 4 ( 2427MHz on a 22MHz range) which is the same as the Zigbee Channel 15 (2425 MHZ on a 2 MHZ range) used by default on Conbe II.

By shutdowning all Deco Wifi Mesh nodes, Zigbee gets it back to normal after a few minutes.

What I still don’t understand is that now, after restarting all the Deco X50 Wifi mesh nodes, I don’t get interference even if the selected channel is still back to 4 on all nodes. Still a mystery for me.

I’m afraid right now, if I don’t want to change the Deco X50Wifi mesh, I could get back in trouble again and the only possible fix I would have is to turn the Wifi mesh OFF and ON hoping it will fix the situation. Unless I reconfigure the Zigbee channel to another port but as part as understand, I will have to redo the pairing on each of the 55 nodes.

Now, I evaluation to redo the update to HA 2025.1.2.

Cheers