Sonoff ZBBridge - Sonoff Zigbee Bridge from Itead

Hardware
21

Which Zigbee devices do you use?

I have a bunch of Aqara/Xiaomi sensors (door sensors, motion sensors, Temperture+humitidy sensors, buttons, two plugs) that I wish to move over at some point.

Did any of your Zigbee device IDs change in HA?

22

Iā€™ve flashed my Sonoff and updated firmware as per online tutorials. Everything looks ok and I can set-up in HA. Iā€™m just unable to pair any devices. I have Sonoff Buttons, temperature module etc, but I canā€™t get either to pair. Am I missing something really simple? Iā€™ve enabled debugging and get this about every 10s:

2020-09-06 17:13:29 DEBUG (MainThread) [bellows.ezsp] Send command nop: ()
2020-09-06 17:13:29 DEBUG (MainThread) [bellows.ezsp] Application frame 5 (nop) received: bā€™ā€™

Iā€™m using HA on a Hyper-V VM - maybe Iā€™m missing some libraries?

I can also only see TCP traffic on the Tasmota Console. To and from the MCU - which appears to match the debug output in time.

Something tells me I should be seeing something other than TCP i.e. radio traffic also?

Thanks,

Phil.

23

It sounds as if you are only talking with Tasomota serial server and not at all with the EmberZNet NCP.

ZHA with this Tasmota is only meant to act as a transparent serial-port (UART) pass-through server.

Suggest to reflash upgrade to the latest tasmota-zbbridge.bin and then try reflashing the Zigbee radio.

http://thehackbox.org/tasmota/release/

ZHA needs to be able to talk to the Silabs EmberZNet NCP application which runs on that Zigbee chip.

Recommend testing the newer ā€œncp-uart-sw_6.7.6_115200.otaā€ with ZHA in Home Assistant 0.114

https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota/tree/development/tools/fw_zbbridge

24

Yup - tried that again and the same result. I was just about to give up and it appears to have started working. I have the Temp unit and Motion Detector set-up. Doesnā€™t seem to want to know about the switch but its a start!

25

Mine Sonoff ZBBridge stopped working. I canā€™t add any device to ZHA or Z2T.

26

I canā€™t find the maximum of clients/nodes that the zigbee bridge can handle. In the orginal documentation a maximum of 32 clients is advertised. Is this also the limit for the tazmotized version?

27

Limited of 32 ā€œdirect childrenā€ is currently hardcoded in the bellows library source code, but you need to understand that ā€œdirect childrenā€ means devices directly connected to a Zigbee router and that is not how Zigbee is designed to be used.

Because all Zigbee chips have low-power radios they have limited range and to workaround this Zigbee by design utilizes mesh networking (mesh topology) to extend the range and total number of devices.

As such, the limited of ā€œdirect childrenā€ does not have anything with the total maximum of Zigbee devices that you have connected to your Zigbee network mesh that the coordinator is controlling.

Zigbee is designed so that you first connect Zigbee routers (a.k.a. signal repeaters / range extenders, which are normally any mains-powered device) and then you connect additional devices to them

So the Sonoff ZBBridge can control hundreds of devices, however, they can not be ā€œdirect childrenā€, as some must be Zigbee routers which in turn have children of their own connection to them.

You can look at this overview Z-Stack coordinator firmware to get an idea about direct children vs maximum but note that bellows is for Silicon Labs EmberZNet stack and not Texas Instruments Z-Stack

28

Can I flash this with a UNO R3 MEGA328P CH340G I already purchased for something else?

29

Hi!

A couple of weeks ago I flashed the sonoff ZBBridge with tasmota, and I paired one temperature sensor to home assistant and everything worked fine. Now it has stopped. Suddenly the sensor get the ā€œunavailableā€ status on all entities.

The only thing I have done is update HASS to version 0.117.6, someone else has passed it on?

To see if it was solved, I upgraded the firmware to version 9.1.0 (zbbridge), but the problem persists.

I have tried to restart hass, downgrade to the version it worked on, unpair and pair sensor ā€¦ and nothing, entities keeps showing the same status.

Thanks for help

1 Like
30

Sorry to hear :frowning:
Which integration are You using- ZHA or Z2M?
Best. JR

31

ZHA.

I follow this https://www.digiblur.com/2020/07/how-to-use-sonoff-zigbee-bridge-with.html?m=1

EZSP = Silicon Labs EmberZNet protocol: Elelabs, HUSBZB-1, Telegesis

por ZHA

32

OK, do You have more Zigbee devices and what device Yours is (manufacturer)?
I run ZHA OK on 117.6 (not tried beta yet) and all my 30+ devices appear to be OK.
Best, JR

33

Have you tried changing the battery in your sensor?

34

For the moment one unique device: SONOFF SNZB-02. I wanted to try it before buying more.

Can I run any command, or subscribe to any mqtt topic? So I can give you more information.

35

Mmm not really, the last data on the battery was 100%, so I interpret that is not that.

36

Strangeā€¦
Did You integrate ZHA with UI? What info does ZHA provide for this sensor (lqi etc.)?

37

Yes,

Bridge info:

EZSP = Silicon Labs EmberZNet protocol: Elelabs, HUSBZB-1, Telegesis
IEEE: 60:a4:23:ff:fe:1d:b7:b6
Nwk: 0x0000
Device Type: Coordinator
LQI: Unknown
RSSI: Unknown
Last Seen: 2020-11-12T12:59:47
Power Source: Mains
Quirk: bellows.zigbee.application.EZSPCoordinator

Sensor info:

IEEE: 00:12:4b:00:1f:87:6c:f9
Nwk: 0x55e6
Device Type: EndDevice
LQI: Unknown
RSSI: Unknown
Last Seen: 2020-11-12T07:41:51
Power Source: Battery or Unknown
38

Only difference I see from mine is that my bridge shows lqi=255 and that Your sensor has been lost for at least 4+ hours :frowning:
It must be something very simple that I can not reproduce :slight_smile:
And I guess no errors in log eitherā€¦
BTW did You try deleting the sensor in ZHA and adding it again while short-pressing the sensor button in some 5 sec intervals during that- it made miracles with my Xiaomisā€¦ And of course open ZHA log console during that.

39

Well, itā€™s solved, in the end I removed everything (sensor, bridge & battery of sensor) and when I pair it again the sensor worked!!! (partiallyā€¦ hahaha)

At first the humidity and the battery worked (although the 100% that it showed before, now it shows 40%) but the temperature did not work. After several times unpairing and pairing the sensor, the temperature finally worked!

It has been running for 2 hours and now it shows 55% power :open_mouth: (awesome)

Thanks for all!!

P.S.: I upgraded to 0.117.6 and it works.

40

All good then :slight_smile:
Some remarks:

  • maybe the sensor was too close to the bridge when pairing?
  • You could extend the pairing time under Developer Tools->Services->zha.permit and change duration from 60 e.g . to 120 secondsā€¦ helps sometimes when Wifi or another sensor are interfering.

All is good that ends well.
Best, JR