I just bought a couple of Zigbee devices, with the intention to use them in home assistant:
Sonoff dongle E
Aqara mini switch
Aqara radiator thermostat
Using ZHA, the dongle connects fine and I can include the thermostat in the network. However, except for firmware no other entities are found - which makes it pretty useless. And I couldn’t get the switch to be included at all.
So next I tried to set up zigbee2MQTT. But that fails with the message “Error: SRSP - SYS - ping after 6000ms”. Yes, I’ve seen the 5 common reasons for this message, but I think none of them explains the message in my case.
And get some more mains-powered routing devices. Zigbee is a mesh network - it relies on a large number of devices passing messages from one to the other.
Welcome to Zigbee. It works well once setup, but can take a while for new people to appreciate the differences from Wi-Fi and get their mesh operating properly. Most common first issue is getting enough routers to cover the area and provide alternative links through the mesh. there have been several good threads with lots of practical advice.
How far is the switch from your dongle ?
Is the Thermostat also operating as a router (my guess is no, especially if it’s battery powered) ?
Zigbee has a shorter range than Wi-Fi, and uses weaker signals on the same frequencies as Wi-Fi … so if the switch is further away it may be that the signal isn’t getting from the dongle to the switch. Weaker signals also don’t penetrate wall as well.
My bad. First mistake: I didn’t include “adapter: ember” in configuration.yaml. And when I did add that, I saw the real culprit: protocol version not supported… My Sonoff adapter came pre-flashed with firmware 6.10. After upgrading to 7.4.4 Z2M started flawlessly, the radiator and the button are recognized.
As to adding more mains-connected zigbee devices: yes, that is my intention. But the range was at this moment not the issue.