SkyConnect Setup with HA OS, missing official documentation

Installation
1

I miss any official documentation on the Home Assistant SkyConnect.

Some other people seem to have the same issue:

Currently I already have a Conbee II running deconz/phoscon connected to a RPi running Home Assistant OS with HA Core 2022.12.5. It works okay-ish with 30+ devices on the network.

As I learned, currently there is no way to migrate from ConBee to SkyConnect. You have to re-pair and re-build everything, which would be fine for me.

Currently I plan to run both dongles in parallel, using the Conbee for (legacy) ZigBee devices while switching over devices to Matter/Thread from time to time and connect them to SkyConnect, when the support for it is ready.

But I read concerns, that using both ZigBee and Matter/Thread with a single dongle is not a great idea, since with larger ZigBee networks the EFR32MG21 may perform not that good in this multiprotocol environment.

So NOT migrating all ZigBee devices over to SkyConnect and instead running both adapters seems to be the way here I guess?

I maybe will test the ZigBee capabilities of the SkyConnect dongle before the Matter/Thread integration is ready for HA Core.

BTW thanks to @Hedda for the amazing information in the various mentioned forum threads regarding the SkyConnect.

Four things I need to know at the moment:

  • How do I integrate SkyConnect to HA Core running on HA OS? ZHA is mentioned briefly somewhere.
  • How do I setup the ZigBee network in terms of channels so that the SkyConnect and ConBee don’t interfere?
  • Also is there an alpha/beta build I can test the matter/thread protocol with? I will provide feedback to the devs tho.
  • When will the SkyConnect page or the FAQ will get updated with important questions like migration paths from existing ZigBee networks, compatibility with addon/integrations/other ZigBee dongles, state of the matter/thread integration/addon etc.

Maybe someone from Home Assistant / Nabu Casa can have a look?
@agners maybe?

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My SkyConnect arrived today. I’m a little concerned to plug it, without breaking the system.
Has anyone tried the “migrate Radio” functionality so far?

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@TNT_Larsn
What is this menu? How do you get there?

“HA > Settings > Hardware > Configure Home Assistant Sky Connect” was disabled in 2022.12.1
Is is maybe behind this “configure” button, which is disabled at the moment?

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config_zha

But thank you for the Info on " Multi-pan". I’ll wait with the migration then…

1 Like
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Yep, tried it. Did not work for me.
Luckily, I did
a) a full backup of my installation
b) stored a backup of the Zigbee stick
This is a must, because “radio migrieren” will reset your Zigbee stick.

Also tried to have both the “old” Zigbee stick and SkyConnect installed through ZHA. Though, apparently, just one device is supported through ZHA.
But hey, likely it is me being too stupid. :slight_smile: So, I’ll investigate a bit in how to run multiple devices concurrently …

Anyway, it is big fun to play around with this stuff.

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Agreed, but having basically zero official documentation on it is just not great. I need a starting point and after that I can ask the community.

I paid 33€ for that product, so I can expect at least a little bit of support and/or documentation.

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It’s not you. ZHA only supports a single instance.

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That’s the joy and thrill of being an early adopter, I guess. =8^)

So, I’ll read as much doc as I can; I’ll be patient and confident, the current issue with the multi-protocol support will be resolved some time. To those involved in the dev: keep up the great work!

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Hopefully they will merge this pull request for Home Assistant’s own ZHA integration component documentation as an introduction that explains that and some other basic Zigbee concepts that I think all ZHA users should know before installing it as I think that this pull request suggested does explain this about the current ZHA integration component limitations as it stands today → Add a short introduction to ZHA by Hedda · Pull Request #24494 · home-assistant/home-assistant.io · GitHub

FYI, anyone in the community can submit pull requests via GitHub (web interface or Git) to contribute to the documentation for Home Assistant’s ZHA integration component, edit markdown here → https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant.io/blob/d27770b4da3d2788eeb90520da1505026a0e820e/source/_integrations/zha.markdown

IMHO they have however been a little restrictive/limiting to what they will accept into the documentation, (they do for example not accept any detailed steps/guides on how to do things in the ZHA integration).

I also do not expect that Home Assistant SkyConnect specific things will be documented in the docs for the ZHA integration as that component is designed to be a to a hardware-independent solution so in the ZHA integration it should not really matter which SoC manufacturer or the firmware users are using.

Copy of my reply → https://community.home-assistant.io/t/multiple-zha-integrations-possible/478588

You can currently only have one instance of the ZHA integration per Home Assistant installation, that is for sure. So for now it will only be the first instance of ZHA that you choose to configure that is used.

For now what most people who need two parallel installations do instead as solution to get two Zigbee gateways is to just install Zigbee2MQTT (stand-alone Zigbee implementation which support integration with Home Assistant via MQTT) and use it as a separate Zigbee implementation (which requires a second Zigbee Coordinator adapter) → https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io

The only current way I can think of getting two working instances of the ZHA integration per Home Assistant installed today as a workaround for that would be the hacky option of manually copying the zha component to a new folder/directory and edit the manifest JSON file on the second copy so that its domain and name is named something else which is unique, which in practice would make it into a completely separate integration component, (and doing so would currently mess up the USB/Zeroconf discovery function for initiation the initial config flow).

That might change in the future if the ZHA developers work on a ZHA WS (zhaws Websocket Server) project is continued and comes to fruition, see https://github.com/zigpy/zha-websocket-server/ and https://github.com/zigpy/zhaws-addon + the beginning of a matching thin frontend client component https://github.com/dmulcahey/home-assistant/tree/dm/zha-ws (which is the basis for a similar client-server architecture model that the existing Z-Wave JS implementation uses in Home Assistant).

Regardless, a Zigbee device can only be connected to a single Zigbee network / Zigbee Coordinator.

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Great response, thanks!

Yeah, meanwhile read the doc about one coordinator, one net … Creating a second copy of the ZHA component is a bit too smelly for my taste… So I actually went for the Zigbee2MQTT addon as I have the MQTT broker up and running for other reasons (some Tasmotas) anyway.

So far not much success: while the device appears in System/Hardware (means: I know device path/id at the USB0 port) the zigbee-herdsman won’t come up no matter how I specify the "port: "
Will figure it out somehow =8^)

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For Zigbee2MQTT better if ask for help here → https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt/discussions

As a bonus that will also let Zigbee2MQTT developers know there is an interest in this specific adapter.

PS: Zigbee2MQTT 1.28.1 mention it → https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt/discussions/14760

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Since I’ve received my SkyConnect I’m having nothing but troubles with devices becoming unavailable for some reason. In screenshots below it shows a plug with power measurements being interrupted. I can’t recall having that with my Raspbee. Is there a solution for this?

image

image

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I’ll advice you to create a separate issue for this, but is it individual devices or your skyconnect dongle that goes offline? Does it happen randomly or when you reboot, what does the log say?
On the skyconnect (via integration page) you can enable debug logs to gather more information.

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I did make a topic regarding connectivity issues, nobody replied. :sweat_smile: For now that I see its just my plugs, all of them. Lights and sensors etc, don’t seem to drop at consistent intervals. To be sure I ruled out the wifi signal interfering, this is not the case. As you can see below its every other minute it drops.

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Edit:
Just looking back just now, it seems when drawing power for a longer duration it doesn’t seem to go unavailable

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There are instructions in the box. They’re limited but do exist…

https://skyconnect.home-assistant.io/

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Disregard my replies… It was caused by the mains timeout set in ZHA. Not sure why this applies to plugs but problem solved! :sweat_smile:

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I received the USB dongle yesterday and plugged it in, but I see the warning in the hardware settings that there is a bug.

So I cannot use the stick? Does it already work with ZHA, Zigbee2MQTT or Deconz?
I didn’t get a popup to add the device

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FWIW - I migrated from my Conbee to SkyConnect using ZHA

  1. Backup ZHA config
  2. Go to settings of ZHA and select “Migrate Radio” - (!) It will reset our Conbee stick
  3. Follow the prompts
  4. Replace Conbee with SkyConnect

I have a small setup (19 devices) - some Ikea lights, Ikea repeaters, Lumi temperature & security sensors

All automations continue to work. Have not noticed any issues.

3 Likes
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I Have the same warning, so I’m waiting the update.
No more news since then.

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I migrated today, Initially all seemed to work fine.
28 devices, Aquara Door/window, Aquara motion, HUE motion & HUE lamps

After some hours I noticed 2/7 of the Aqara Door and Window Sensors became unavailable.
I could solve it quite easily by re-pairing the sensor with the SkyConnect. Naming stayed the same so the automations kept working without changes.

1 Like