I am brand new to Home Assistant and not a coder. I have Home Assistant Green and I purchased the following co-ordinator
SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus MG24, Zigbee Gateway with EFR32MG24, Thread & Zigbee USB stick, Zigbee controller for Home Assistant or Zigbee2MQTT.
My challenge is to get an effective operating in sync lighting group and for that I wish to group at Zigbee (ZHA) level and not use the HELPER at HA level.
My understanding and goal is to make a ZHA group show as a useable Entity at Home Assistant level. My understanding is that will then utilise one signal out from the co-ordinator and the group will talk with each other via zigbee. Its also my understanding that this is indeed possible.
I can easily make the ZHA group and I am led to believe that when doing so, I should see a TICK Box to show the group as an Entity in HA, but I have NO tick box.
Incorrect. Not sure where you got that info, but it’s wrong.
I just created a ZHA group for you and didn’t get any tick boxes, yet I can see the group when searching under Entities. It also shows up as an entity under your Zigbee Coordinator device.
Try filtering your entity list by Integrations > Zigbee Home Automation. Your group should be visible under the coordinator. My group is named Kitchen Island (I deleted the phil group after I replied to you):
Hang on a second. In your original post, you said that your…
Now you’re saying that you can’t find the group…
Those are 2 totally different concepts. You will find the group as an Entity under ZHA and NOT as a Device.
Also, the below is wrong:
Those are the original (source) Devices. Your group will only exist as an entity in ZHA. The only zigbee integration I know of which presents groups as both a Device AND an Entity is Zigbee2MQTT.
Please read up on the difference between a Device and an Entity - you had me confused for a minute there & I had typed all the crossed out post above before I realised the source of your issue.
Okay thanks for your replies, I guess I have a lot more learning to do. Having a quick look again I am wondering if its a ‘Groupcast’ i need. So one HA signal and all grouped bulbs listen. I’ll do some research.
No, if you’ve created a ZHA group, you’re all done.
What problem are you trying to solve exactly? Please tell me it isn’t the fact that you can’t see a device when creating an automation, because that could have been fixed a week ago
What I am trying to solve is the fact that my 10 kitchen bulbs are not synchronised when I turn on and off. I made the assumption that was because (as forums have indicated) I chose to create a Group of bulbs by using HA Helper. So in that Group I have multiple devices (bulbs) that are ZHA Integrations. I believe that the approach I have taken is sending 10 commands out from the HA.
I thought that if within the Sonoff ZHA configuration, that I created a group of devices at this level, the Group would show up in the HA Entities tab. Switching this would cause one signal out from the HA.
Now as I have been typing this, there are some developments. I discovered that actually one of the groups was there, but it was named wrong, so I changed the name and now it works.
So then I created a brand new group within Sonoff ZHA for the lounge lights. And even after a reboot it does not show in entities. and I have tried searching and clearing filters.
So progress in a way but still frustrated. Really appreciate you’re responses thanks.
