I’ve been having recurring issues where my Home Assistant Green becomes unreachable. In the FRITZ!Box interface, it also doesn’t show as “online” under active connections.
At first, I suspected a faulty FRITZ!Box and have since replaced it with a new one. The IP address of Home Assistant has remained the same.
This morning, the issue happened again:
Home Assistant was no longer reachable, but it still showed up in the FRITZ!Box under active connections with the IP 192.168.178.68 but not “online”. Both in the FRITZ!Box and in Home Assistant, this IP was configured as a static address.
I then tried restarting both the FRITZ!Box and Home Assistant, but that didn’t help.
I connected a monitor to Home Assistant and noticed the following:
I’m getting a low voltage warning, even when using the supplied power adapter
During boot, I see the error: “failed to start network manager wait online”
It does not obtain an IP address
I also tried switching to DHCP (end0), but now it just shows “no address”.
At this point, I’m completely stuck and starting to wonder if the device might simply be defective.
The included power supply is rated at 12V, 1.0A (12.0W). I tried also a power suppy with 2A. Same problem.
Raspberry Pis and the variants there of, which include the Home Assistant “colors”, all suffer from a underrated power design.
The power input circuits are near max of what is needed to run the device itself, so connecting powered devices, like USB devices, but not limited to those, can quickly cross the limit of what the device can deliver.
The design is sadly limited in the power input, so a bigger power supply will not help.
If you have USB devices directly connected then try to inject a powered USB hub in between.
HA Green consumption: ~3W under load = 0.25A at 12V
Included power supply: 12V 1A
The power supply delivers 12W, the Green needs a maximum of 3W – plenty of headroom.
The ZBT-2 is connected via USB to the Green, and according to the specs the Green’s USB ports deliver up to 0,5A combined at 5V. The ZBT-2 is a very low-power device (2,5W) – no problem at all.
Conclusion: The included 1A power supply is more than sufficient for Green + ZBT-2 combined. The power supply is not the cause of your problems.
But:
I’ve now inserted a battery into the Home Assistant Green, and I get the impression that was the problem “low voltage” message was solved ?
The supply might deliver 12W, but if the Green’s input circuits only handle 4W, then the last 8W is of no use.
A 12W power supply might still be supplied, because a 12W supply with a load of only 3-4W is a lot more stable than a 4W power supply with a load of 3-4W and Raspberry Pis need a rock stable power supply or you get those low voltage warnings too.
It should be enough for just the ZBT-2, but if you have a fan connected too, then that will take some too.
Yes, that might be a cause too.
I missed the exact error message in the picture though, so I did not know it was the RTC message.
It should not have affected the network then, so watch the HA monitor output and check, and maybe raise the log level, on the logs on the router.
The “failed to start network manager” message, might just be because the port settings have not been negotiated between HA and the network device yet.
It can be a defective/underrated network cable, so replace it.
It might be a defective port, so try to switch it, if the above does not help.
It might help to set specific port settings in the router, like speed, duplex and so on, if the above does not help (it might actually still be a good idea, but first after the bug have been found)
Yes, it’s completely unclear why Home Assistant Green was no longer accessible. It did display the correct IP address during bootup, which was also set as a static address in the FritzBox.
The network cable came with the Home Assistant, just like the power adapter, and should (hopefully) work correctly.
I now have the battery installed and IPv6 disabled in HA. Additionally, I assigned a static IP outside the DHCP range in the Fritzbox but set HA to DHCP.
The LAN ports on the Fritzbox should also work, since the box was replaced. Green mode is off.
Since I can’t really think of anything else, I was worried that the HA itself might be defective.
I’ve now reconnected the old power supply as well.
Its not the power supply, it’s the power available to usb ports which is 0.5a across them all, or 2.5w whichever way you want to measure it.
Your USB ports have a max output of 2.5w if you use a 1000w PSU to power your green the usb ports will still only be able to supply 2.5w. So as suggested if you have a fan connected as well, when the fan kicks in you will have power issues.
Ah, ok.
Since only the ZBT-2 is connected, that should work.
If that were a problem, I would have expected issues with the ZBT-2 (thread) rather than network issues.
That’s the issue the power circuits on the pi’s are not the best, and it’s been a long time since I played with one and have never touched a green or looked into it’s design, but it could well be the power for your LAN connection is coming via the same supply as the USB ports, and its the lan that fails first. I am just guessing on this. But with anything pi based the issues are almost certainly power or SD card.
