SkyConnect unstable

I have my Home Assistant running on Proxmox making use of full HA OS and passing through devices to the guest. This has worked for over 12 months with a range of hardware. I have recently received my SkyConnect and migrated my fairly (but not entirely hence the desire to see if SkyConnect was any better) setup comprising a Sonoff Zigbee stick and Zigbee2MQTT.

The migration went well and generally devices seem much more responsive, however there is a killer flaw for me which is devices will randomly become unavailable - it’s happened twice in as many weeks and it’s all devices that go offline.

The “fix” is not only rebooting the host but also physically disconnecting the SkyConnect from the USB port and then re-connecting it and booting the host. Restarting or powering down the host without physically removing the device does not resolve the issue - seemingly the device crashes and needs to be cold-booted which is only possible by physically disconnecting it.

I’ve seen other reports of the device randomly becoming unavailable but none that mention Proxmox, but that gives me some hope that Proxmox is not the source of the issue, as if the stick is crashing on real hardware then it’s likely to be the same cause in my setup.

EDIT: Running latest HA with a mixture of devices (Philips, Ikea, Aqara, TuYa etc.)

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I am having an even worse issue…since I plugged in the sky connect stick my RPI4 is randomly crashing conpletely… becoming unresponsive. Only way to revive is to unplug power. My external SSD running the OS loses power since the skyconnect is plugged in. Something appears to be seriously wrong …

Are you following these relevant general guidelines about avoiding EMF/EMI/RMI interference and adding many Zigbee Router devices? Among other things Zigbee best practice include the tip to use a powered USB 2.0 hub for the Zigbee dongle if your computer only has USB 3.0 ports (since connecting directly to a USB 3.0 port will cause serious interference) → Zigbee networks: how to guide for avoiding interference and optimize for getting better range + coverage

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I have the same issue, did you end up finding a solution? (The stick is connected to a usb 2 port with the included cable)

Add a few known good Zigbee Router devices, and you could also try using a longer extension cable as well make sure the Skyconnect dongle as well as all your Zigbee is not close to any other electronic devices. Again do read and follow all tips here → Guide for Zigbee interference avoidance and network range/coverage optimization

I am using the SkyConnect dongle for both thread and ZHA. I found myself needing to reboot the rpi 3 which is hosting it. (Previously, I was using it on a VM in a rpi 4, I thought the instability was somehow due to my use of the VM, so I took it out and give it its own rpi 3).

Quite frustrated, I just ordered a Sonoff Dongle-E and hope this fixes it (as opposed to the problem being the s/w, eg the OTBR integration or the Silicon Labs Multiprotocol addon). If it turns out later that the issue is fixed, I don’t mind having 2 OTBRs.

If anyone has any ideas, would be glad to hear them.

Cheers
Joe

I am also having some severe issues with the SkyConnect. I am running a Home Assistant Image on an Oracle VM VirtualBox in a Windows host and ZHA regularly fails with SkyConnect and the only way to fix it is just as you described. Unplug the SkyConnect and reboot the whole Virtual Machine. Restarting from the interface doesn’t quite do the trick. I am fairly new to Home Assistant so I am considering trying a different Zigbee stick because unfortunately SkyConnect seems to be unstable hardware.

I had tons of issues with SkyConnect when using the multiprotocol mode but with Zigbee alone it’s fairly stable (my skyconnect is in my HA Yellow but should be the same)

When I plug in the SkyConnect with the dongle into a USB2 or USB3 it locks up my machine and I have to reboot. Anyone heard of this?

Just to add some weirdness in here, i use proxmox too and it seems unstable. Only a host vm restart will fix it. But when it is broken i can still install a different firmware on it so it still communicates just fine. Now testing with zigbee only, funny thing when i downgraded to zigbee only my devices started working again so the connection seems fine.

I’m using SkyConnect on a Proxmox machine and plugged directly to a powered USB hub with an extension hanging fully way from the machine with the USB being passthrough and even blacklisted in Proxmox and seems like everyday at random the integration goes down for the Zigbee portion (multiprotocol setup). Restarting the integration does not fix the error. The only solution is to restart HA (don’t need to restart the VM from Proxmox, just from HA) and it fixes it; for a while.

The thread integration portion seems to stay stable. No errors. But I do not have any thread specific devices, but the Zigbee was going down even without devices. It has happened at least for the past few core upgrades at least. Was happening even when I didn’t have any Zigbee devices on the network (just got some a week ago, so now I’m able to look at the history to tell when it goes down, hence how I know it’s random). The longest I’ve had was about a day and a half or two. Shortest was a few hours. I do have another stick I can try (Z-wave and Zigbee) that I’m willing to use for testing to see if it is device specific (might do it anyways and post the results here in a few days because I’m a tech and always troubleshoots). Have all of y’all that’s been having problems also having the integration error out randomly?

Right now I’m rolling back to just Zigbee firmware to see what happens.

Rolled back to the regular Zigbee firmware since last post and it has been completely stable, even through the latest updates between my last post and this post. So I must assume it is the multi-protocol firmware causing the issue. Going to make sure none of the updates fixed it, but I did not see a mention of it in the update logs.

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SkyConnect on a Proxmox […] Restarting the integration does not fix the error. The only solution is to restart HA (don’t need to restart the VM from Proxmox, just from HA) and it fixes it; for a while.

Thanks, same error occurs in my installation on Proxmox and SkyConnect. This error occured some time ago. Restart HA helped but sometimes it is between 4 hours or 36 hours that ZHA is not working again.

Rolled back to the regular Zigbee firmware since last post and it has been completely stable, even through the latest updates between my last post and this post. So I must assume it is the multi-protocol firmware causing the issue. Going to make sure none of the updates fixed it, but I did not see a mention of it in the update logs.

Thanks for your experience and solution. This will bemy try too. I will give you feedback.