I have a HA Green that was working perfectly with a Zigbee dongle (Conbee II) and a ZWave dongle (ZST39 LR) but over the weekend I tried to add a Bluetooth adaptor as well. I bought a USB hub recommended on this forum (USB 2.0 without power), removed the Zigbee dongle, added the hub, and put the Zigbee dongle with the Bluetooth adaptor into the hub.
Interestingly, the bluetooth adaptor worked perfectly, but suddenly both the Zigbee and ZWave coordinators were broken in HA.
I was able to restore them this morning by removing the hub and bluetooth adaptor entirely, but I’d like to add bluetooth functionality back. What is the best way to do this? Do I need a powered USB hub?
Well I would have recommended one that brings power, because you probably are drawing more than the few watts that the port can supply. The working one is probably the only that can run on the reduced voltage available.
Also make sure the radios are on separate extension cables to keep the radios away from each other.
Are you sure that the recommendation was for a hub without power.
A powered hub is always recommended for HA and RPi devices, because their internal power system is just too weak to supply anything more than the internal parts, so a powered hub is the recommended solution even for one USB device.
The Amazon notes for your [unpowered] hub say
"Please Note:
For a stable connection, the devices connected to the 4 Port Hub must not exceed a combined current of 5 volts 500mAh."
That is pretty standard for a normal USB 2.0 port - 5volts at 1/2 amp. Not all USB Driver chips shut down gracefully when more power is drawn, often overloading the main board, producing strange and intermittent errors as the voltages sag and the heat rises.
How much current is being drawn from the port by the connected devices? I note the Conbee is noted for amplification, a sure sign it uses added power. I also note power consumption is not mentioned on the vendor web page, and didn’t want to search much deeper on any spec sheets.
Where in these forums was the recommendation made for that particular USB hub? A precautionary note may have to be added.
Is this thread useful?
Your HomeAssistant Green power supply is rated for 12volts at one amp. Not sure without looking how that gets stepped down to 5volts showing at the USB port, but the onboard voltage regulator and power supply may be getting a tad warm and running close to design limits, just keeping the ‘green’ device from turning a charcoal color, without the added load of other devices that have been plugged in.
Suggestion: return hub to Amazon and get a powered one. Use individual port switches wisely. Not all devices respond well to abrupt power interruption, both software and hardware. Data loss or configuration corruption can be one undesirable side effect.
Aside from the suggestions of getting a powered hub, your issue could most likely be the fact that the USB path for your devices changed when you plugged them into a different USB port.
It’s explained here in the ZHA integration docs and likely also applies to ZWave integration config. Basically, change the config to use serial/by-id and you shouldn’t be affected by USB port changes:
I’d definitely go a powered hub for any device, never sharing power from a computer based USB port as these are never high powered. Path is definitely something to check too.
One thing I never really understood on both the Yellow and the Green is why Nabu Casa went for only 2 USB Ports. Especially on the Green, if you wanted Z-Wave, Zigbee and Thread you’d need a minimum 3 ports (one for each Radio) and with Nabu Casa releasing their own devices ( ZWA-2, ZBT-2 and the old ZBT-1/SkyConnect) I’d think they’d want to make sure we had as many options as possible. It is what it is though. The ports are all USB 2.0 so a cheap powered hub will do a nice job usually.
