Mysterious OFF signal from Zigbee2MQTT

Configuration Zigbee
1

I am not very conversant with Zigbee, so please excuse if I have not provided enough information. I have the following Zigbee Gateway and three of Zigbee LED Controller.

Smart Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle plus Universal Wireless Gateway Hub Interface Capture for Zigbee2MQTT Home Assistant (I purchased this from Aliexpress but it looks like the Sonoff adapter)

BTF-Lighting Zigbee 3.0 WiFi LED Controller PWN DIM CCT RGB RGBW RGBCCT LED Strip Bridge Tuya Dual Mode Gateway Smart Things DC5V-24V (It shows up as Tuya TS0501B device in Zigbee2MQTT).

These controllers control under cabinet light, upper cabinet lights and tall cabinet light.

Ever since I have configured these controllers and dongle about two months ago, I have been having a problem. I have an automation which turns ON the under cabinet lights, upper cabinet lights and tall cabinet light at sunset. For few days, the automation works fine, but after few days, the under cabinet lights turn on for a second and then turn off. I have a second automation which turns on the under cabinet lights if a motion sensor detects motion at night. That automation behaves the same way. The lights turn on and then immediately turn off. I checked the Zigbee2MQTT logs and I see an OFF signal being sent to the Under Cabinet Lights controller. I have no idea where it is coming from. If I manually flip the switch in Home Assistant or use Alexa voice command to turn on the under cabinet lights, then there is no problem. The lights turn on and stay on.

There is no issue with upper cabinet lights and the tall cabinet light. I have provided the details about HA and Zigbee2MQTT versions. Any other details, I can provide. Any help or direction to look at will be appreciated.

[2026-02-17 17:40:59] info: 	z2m:mqtt: MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/bridge/health', payload '{"response_time":1771368059815,"os":{"load_average":[0.01,0.06,0.03],"memory_used_mb":2153.5,"memory_percent":27.1644},"process":{"uptime_sec":100816,"memory_used_mb":115.27,"memory_percent":1.4541},"mqtt":{"connected":true,"queued":0,"published":384,"received":137},"devices":{"0xa4c13856d45b19d9":{"messages":11,"messages_per_sec":0.0001,"leave_count":0,"network_address_changes":0},"0xa4c13866fbce2949":{"messages":3,"messages_per_sec":0,"leave_count":0,"network_address_changes":0},"0xa4c138847fe85679":{"messages":2,"messages_per_sec":0,"leave_count":0,"network_address_changes":0}}}'
[2026-02-17 17:49:01] info: 	z2m:mqtt: MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/Under Cabinet Lights', payload '{"brightness":254,"do_not_disturb":true,"effect":null,"linkquality":76,"state":"ON"}'
[2026-02-17 17:49:06] info: 	z2m:mqtt: MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/Upper Cabinet Lights', payload '{"brightness":26,"do_not_disturb":true,"effect":null,"linkquality":54,"state":"ON"}'
[2026-02-17 17:49:24] info: 	z2m:mqtt: MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/Tall Cabinet Light', payload '{"brightness":127,"do_not_disturb":true,"effect":null,"linkquality":149,"state":"ON"}'
**[2026-02-17 17:49:34] info: 	z2m:mqtt: MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/Under Cabinet Lights', payload '{"brightness":254,"do_not_disturb":true,"effect":null,"linkquality":76,"state":"OFF"}'**
[2026-02-17 17:49:36] info: 	z2m:mqtt: MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/Under Cabinet Lights', payload '{"brightness":254,"do_not_disturb":true,"effect":null,"linkquality":76,"state":"ON"}'

Zigbee2MQTT version 2.8.0
Frontend version 2.8.1
zigbee-herdsman-converters version 25.120.0
zigbee-herdsman version 9.0.2

Installation method Home Assistant OS
Core 2026.2.2
Supervisor 2026.02.2
Operating System 17.1
Frontend 20260128.6

2

I’ve seen Tuya lights do that if it happens to take too long to get to China and back during that moment.

3

Before purchasing these devices, I had done some Google search and one reddit thread said that Tuya Zigbee devices call home (China?) only if they are configured via the SmartLife or Tuya app. If they are added to HA using a local dongle, then they are 100% local. If that is the case, then they should not reach out to anything outside of my local network.

4

The HA integration is a cloud push, meaning it talks to China.
It was originally written by Tuya themselves.

image
image539Ă—367 27 KB

Next time read the actual Docs instead of reading the always dependable Reddit or a Google AI.

5

He’s using the Tuya devices with Z2M via a Sonoff coordinator. There is no Tuya or cloud involvement even remotely possible, unless the devices are also paired to a separate Tuya hub

@ArunGupta the next time this happens, check the Activity tab in your HA left sidebar. If it’s being caused by your automation it’ll mention it in the “triggered by” part of the entry.

If that’s the case, you’ll need to post your automation & its trace if you need further help

1 Like
6

Missed that, sorry…

1 Like
7

I already checked the Activity tab. It is not being caused by any automation or script. It is as if someone pressed the off button. I asked Claude (AI) for some ideas and he asked me to turn off the do not disturb. I have turned it off. In addition, I have modified the automations to send a JSON payload using mqtt.publish since another idea proposed by Claude was that it could be caused by a rogue on_time setting in the adapter itself.

action: mqtt.publish
metadata: {}
data:
  evaluate_payload: false
  qos: 0
  topic: zigbee2mqtt/Under Cabinet Lights/set
  payload: "{\"state\": \"ON\", \"on_time\": 0, \"off_wait_time\": 0, \"brightness\": 254}"

I also observed the LQI over a period of one day and it is going wild. It keeps varying from 29 to 147. So, it is very much possible that the Z2M dongle needs to be placed closer to the adapter.

It is also possible that the adapter itself is marginally faulty because a second adapter from same source, which is placed right next to this one, keeps working fine. The second adapter also shows wildly varying LQI but does not receive any mysterious off signal.

8

If that’s what you’re seeing, then something outside HA is turning it off, and I doubt it’s anything to do with your lqi.

Having said that, maybe something in your automation is causing the under cabinet controller to trigger some internal safety mechanism.
Before you changed the automation, were the upper & under cabinet actions identical?

9

Yes, they were identical. The controllers are not configured with anything except the Z2M dongle attached to HA. So, I am at a loss to understand where else the OFF signal could be coming from. The second thing is that I have three of these controllers. They are all connected to the same Z2M dongle. So, why only one is misbehaving? The other two are working fine. I guess if direct payload publishing does not fix the issue, then I will look to replacing the controller.

1 Like
10

Before you do, share the working Vs not working automations here.
Curious to find out what’s causing it.

Edit: might be simpler to troubleshoot if you flip controllers around. If the issue follows the controller, then it’s definitely a hardware error

11

So, the automation is pretty simple. Based on time of day and light sensor, it calls a script which just has a bunch of switch.turn_on and light.turn_on statements. Script waits 5 seconds between turning on each switch/light.

The reason I am suspecting hardware is that these controllers work with Philips Hue hub also. I had initially configured all three controllers with Hue hub. I had observed the same issue with Hue hub, one controller just turning off immediately after automation calls the light.turn_on. I assumed that it might be because of some incompatibility between Hue hub and third party controller. Since I am having same issue with a dedicated Z2M dongle, all fingers point to hardware. It is very random. Issue appears, then I do a power cycle of controller, issue gets fixed for few days and then reappears.

Unfortunately, I had got the controllers installed by the electrician when they were remodeling the kitchen. He has installed it in a kind of not so easy to access spot under the sink. But worst comes to worst, I can crawl under the sink and swap controllers.

The automation and script are a bit longish. If you want to see, I can definitely post them here.