Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus - New Devices Won't Pair

Configuration Zigbee
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1

I’ve been using a Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus since February and it’s worked great up until today.

I was adding additional window and water leak sensors and it stopped pairing new devices.

I was able to get 3 more devices to pair after re-flashing the dongle with Sonoff Dongle Flasher - Sonoff Dongle (FW Zigbee 7.4.4 as a coordinator), but after those 3 new devices paired, the dongle stopped allowing new devices to pair.

I have 35 devices paired currently to the one dongle.

I run Zigbee2MQTT on my Home Assistant OS running on a PI5.

I don’t see anything in the logs to indicate there are issues.

Anyone got any ideas? I’ve seen some posts with people saying they’ve had up to 80 devices on one dongle with now issues in the Home Assistant forms.

2

Did you try pairing devices through another router?

3

Reached maximum of allowable devices on one receiver?
According to THIS discussion 32 devices are allowed per receiver…

4

How many of your devices are router devices?

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It is 32** direct connections for the Plus-model out of the box but that is only the limit of devices directly connected to it.

If a device that is a router is connected, that device can also have a number of devices connected to it. I don’t know if there is a hard limit to the total number of devices. I currently have around 150 connected and haven’t had any issues so far.

**According to THIS if flashed with Z-Stack firmware this changes to 50 direct children and up to 200 children.

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6

So I only have the one dongle, none of the Sonoff devices act as routers. I ordered another Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus and plan on flashing it as a router, because I was assuming that might be the issue.

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I’d suggest a few more than that. It will depend on the size of your home, but a dozen at least.

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A question: i also have only one usb zigbee receiver present in a network (this one is connected via usb to proxmox —>HA). If i add another one and flash it as router - is only power needed (like 5v phone charger) for a second one and it will connect wirelessly to master, or must a second one also be connected phisycally?

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A phone charger is enough

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10

A phone charger is all that is needed.

Get one that will allow the dongle to be parallel with the wall, something like this or this or this.

Not a reccomendation for any of those specific models (they may not even be for the right country), just trying to illustrate the idea.

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11

Great, thanks to both! I’m a total noob in zigbee… so far all my things are on wifi. Sadly there are not many trv valves made for wifi, so i bought sonoff TRV for a start, together with zbdongle E. But i will need more or them, and all won’t be in the range of a single receiver,
that’s why i asked.
So all that is needed is that subsequent receivers “see” either master device or one of slaves (with decent signal strength) and all but one must be prgrammed as router, correct?

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Yeah, based on the house layout I would need to add at least one more. Each floor will have its own router. Older house, so signal strength is always a problem.

13

Have you looked at the Zigbee section in the Cookbook?

The Home Assistant Cookbook - Index

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You might want to consider to buy a few SONOFF ZBMINIR2 Extreme instead of adding a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus and go through the hassle flashing it as a router.

I just got 3 of these ZBMINIR2 and was suprised about their router capatibilities especially when “Turbo Mode” is set to “On”. Allowed sub-devices are 64 children.

Besides of being less expensive compared to the Dongle you don’t need to do any manual firmware upgrades because available upgrades are directly handled by Z2M. And they are small enough to hide them away.

zbminir2_01
zbminir2_011330×661 201 KB

zbminir2_02
zbminir2_021066×1095 115 KB

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15

Aha, so zbminir2 can also act as router? That’s great, i’ll get one or two, thanks.

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Yes and it’s performance as a router is excellent. Much better compared to the Zigbee Dongle flashed with router firmware.

Make sure to activate “Turbo Mode” after installation.

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17

How so? I thought Turbo mode was just boosting to +20db, which I thought the ZBDongle-E router fw already defaulted to. I would think the Dongle-E’s antenna would give it the edge.

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Dongle P here as the coordinator.

I have 4 router firmware flashed zigbee dongles within the mesh (all set to +20db). Took the time and did some testing by removing them one by one replacing them with zbminir2’s monitoring the behaviour of the mesh. Connectivity, signal strength and stability seems much better with the zbminir2. Maybe caused by the SoC used (Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 vs. TI CC265P + CP2102(N))? I don’t know. Maybe Hedda knows more about such insights.

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19

You sir are fantastic! And yes those devices are way cheaper than the dongle.

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If LQI is the basis, comparing between ZStack(ZBDongle-P) and EZSP(zbminir2) devices is meaningless, they use different scales. Zstack numbers will always appear substantially lower. My Dongle-P routers have been very good for me. They are the backbone of a half dozen of my installs and have been triuble free.

OP was looking at ZBDongle-E, coordinator version of EZSP chip in the zbminir2, with a better antenna than the zbminir2. Between those two devices I would expect the Dongle-E to have the overall edge.

Otherwise, price is better for the zbminir2, but with the inconveniece of a more difficult install.