I recently purchased the above stick due to it being highly recommended. After getting it setup (aka - plugged in), I stood up my first few Zigbee devices to test. Everything seemed to work, but overnight the controller went offline (though Z-Wave stayed up). After looking into it, I’ve applied the various fixes that I found online, all to no avail.
Used a USB extension to move the dongle away from interference - No Change
Tried various ports and USB extension cables - No Change
Updated the firmware to the latest available - No Change
Changed my AP’s channels to not interfere with Zigbee - No Change
Changed the channel within HA to 11 - No Change
To be fair, despite increasing the logging, I can’t see if the stick has accepted the new channel, though I did delete the integration and recreate to be safe. I am honestly out of ideas and am considering just getting rid of the stick and purchasing to separate ones to save myself the headache. This is a hail mary in case I missed something obvious.
Thank you for replying @NathanCu , I appreciate it! You’ll have to pardon my ignorance, but the only question I can answer of yours is that I’m using the ZHA integration. I’m not sure where to pull the version or the specific integration logs from, but am happy to learn.
That said, I was able to confirm (via the HA logs) it’s using channel 11 for Zigbee now.
Couple of things to note is that the ZigBee part of this stick isn’t the strongest so it’s recommended to get something like a CC2652 based stick. That being said it’s still possible to use this stick if you have enough ZigBee routers in your network, this will increase your range if your battery powered devices are too far away.
I would deleting the ZHA integration, deleting the zigbee.db file found in your base HA directory, rebooting, reinstalling zha, and then resetting your devices to pair. Give it some time to build up the mesh (about a day or two) and it should be more responsive after that.
Who is recommending HUSBZB-1 as a new purchase today and why? Sure if you already own one then you can still use it if you flash the latest available firmware, but its hardware is based on an old EM3581 chip which has been deprecated is the very latest firmware from Silicon Labs.
Anyway, suggest that try to upgrade HUSBZB-1 to the very latest Silabs EmberZNet 6.7.10.x firmware.
Note however that you will never be able to upgrade the old EM35x chips to EmberZNet 7.x.x firmware.
Note that with grobasoz EmberZNet 6.7.10.x firmware images uses 115200 as the default baud rate.
People recommending this should understand Silicon Labs EM35x/EM35xx and ETRX35x Zigbee chips hardware have already been end-of-life for many years while and should now almost be considered obsolete as Silabs have started that they are deprecated as in removed from any firmware newer than EmberZNet 6.7.10.x so should not be bought any longer.
There may come a few updates bug-fix releases for EmberZNet 6.7.10.x but otherwise it is end-of-life.
PS: I understand that even some of the specific models Silicon Labs EFR32 Mighty Gecko Series 1 modules (i.e. EFR32MG1x e.g. EFR32MG12/EFR32MG13/EFR32MG14) based chip which does not feature enough flash storage size to fit firmware built with the newly released EmberZNet 7.0.0.0 Zigbee release have also reached the end of their planned lifecycle and been scheduled for obsolescence and discontinued by the manufacturer (Silicon Labs). So only the Silicon Labs EFR32 Mighty Gecko Series 1 module model variants which feature more flash storage size is be supported by EmberZNet 7.0 Zigbee.
PPS: Know that also the Z-Wave 500 chip in HUSBZB-1 has been replaced with Z-Wave 700 chips:
@hedda Thank you for the detailed reply, I really appreciate it. I suppose “highly recommended” came from searching the interwebs from various sources. I’m loving HA, but the speed of the development sometimes makes finding up-to-date info a challenge.
All that said, what would you suggest then for a Zigbee & Zwave coordinators?
USB dongles based on Silicon Labs and Texas Instruments both work in either ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT on paper, but Silabs adapters in Zigbee2MQTT is still only experimental while TI is very mature in both.
Also, due to the current worldwide chip shortage, it is also very to find Silicon Labs based USB adapters with the later EFR32MG21 chip, however, we know that upcoming EFR32MG23/EFR32MG24 chips will be released soon so that is worth keeping an eye on as Silabs is still the industry leader for Zigbee. The best available Silabs-based adapters are therefore currently the slightly older ELU013 from Elelabs however they said that they are working on EFR32MG23/EFR32MG24 adapters which will hopefully be released once Silicon Labs sorts out their supply chain issues.
So if want flexibility to migrate between ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT then a CC2652-based option today.
Electrolama’s zzh (CC2652R based) offer the best support as their developers are active contributors to the community, however ITead SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus (CC2652P based) is the least expensive and thus most bang for the buck if only looking at the price but understand that they only make/sell the hardware without offering any post-sale support and leave supporting it to the community. ZigStar gateways and Tube’s gateways are two alternatives if want a network-attached adapter.
Do not get a 700-series based Zwave stick until the issue below is cleared. I just had to reverse migrate to a 500 series stick because of it. and No, I will not sell my 700 stick.
Well it appears after much googling, and trial and error, I’ve got the HUSBZB working with Zigbee2MQTT.
While it appears that it may be outdated, realistically, what is the con with continuing to use it? I mean, the reality is that whatever I get is eventually going to be outdated. Do I need to justify the expense now, or can I put it off?
You can continue to use it, but as mentioned, EmberZNet 6.7.10.x is the last firmware release for it so it is very unlikely to get any further bug-fixes or security fixes via firmware updates in the future for it.
So just understand there that some issues and bugs in firmware can not be worked around or fixed in Zigbee software application implementations lika ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT, as even some compatibility issues with certain devices can sometimes only be fixed in low-level firmware by the original manufacturer who makes the Zigbee stack and its SDK (in this case Silicon Labs who declared EM35x/EM35xx and ETRX35x Zigbee chips end-of-life for good).
But you do not need to buy new hardware today if you already bought it as ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT does not yet use any features only available in newer firmware, though that will happen sooner or later.
Remember that even with the current ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT is it relatively easy to backup your existing Zigbee Coordinator hardware to a file and then restore that file to new Zigbee Coordinator hardware. Both ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT developers are also working together on making backups easier and more compatible between different Zigbee stacks and Zigbee implementations, see example GitHub - zigpy/open-coordinator-backup: Open Zigbee coordinator backup format and https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy-cli/pull/2
Conclusion; sure you can postpone buying newer Zigbee Coordinator hardware for now, but if you continue using Zigbee then you will probably want to buy a newer Zigbee Coordinator hardware in a year or two from now.
How can I confirm that my HUSBZB-1 had the 700 series chipset vs the 500? Didn’t see anything definitive in those links. Would love to know if this applies…
META-Issue: Problems with 700 series (healing, delays, neighbors, …)