Synology NAS 7.2 and Zigbee dongle no longer supported

Configuration Zigbee
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I am running a Synology DS1821+ NAS with DSM 7.2 (the latest) on it. Since DSM 6.2 Synology no longer supports a number of USB devices, and dongles is one of them. And by ‘no longer supports’, I mean the USB system does not even see them

I recently bought a Sonoff USB ZIGBEE dongle and since I am running Home Assistant in a VM on my NAS, I fully expected that I could plug this dongle into the NAS and all would be good. Not so.

There are a lot of posts around where the user can SSH into the NAS and install the USB drivers themselves. My NAS is a V1000 chipset and I have downloaded the required drivers. The normal install process for these drivers no longer works (at least for me) because a required system driver is missing. ie
cdc-acm

Since this is part of the initial driver setup, before you install the other specific drivers for your chipset, installation fails.

I spoke to Synology Support about this, and they basically said NO. This driver is not available and they would not help me in anyway. These guys are usually very good at support, but in this case they simply do not want to support USB for some reason.

I post this here as I am wondering if it is just my system. Other recent posts seem to work ok, so these people must have the cdc-acm file in /lib/modules?

I am currently musing on dumping the Synology NAS and getting myself a small NUC and running on that. Or even a Home Assistant Green setup, but I think the NUC is a more flexible and powerful option. Might be better to run Frigate on as well, etc.

If someone DOES have this cdc-acm.ko file, then perhaps they could send me a copy? Mind you, still pretty keen on the NUC idea…

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I got a cheap laptop and use that instead of a NUC. Saves me the hassle of having to have keyboard/monitor when needed and has a built-in battery. But if you do that, make sure you get one with a BIOS that lets you limit charging to 80%. Otherwise the battery will die long before the machine…
-David

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Have you considered one of the ethernet based coordinators? Would be way easier than trying to hack USB support back in.

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For VM, I don’t think you even need any drivers, just plug it in and check in VM device manager to map it to USB port.
But also, check for alternative - Ethernet based coordinators are great, they are not impacted by magnetic interference from devices etc.
I’ve tested few of them and SLZB type or UZG-01 are awesome and should work great.

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Yeah. I have an ethernet based co-ordinator now. Works just fine. I might just stick with that.

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I have just ordered a small mini computer (a NUC basically) for about $200. Seems like a good option. Also takes a lot of load of my Synology which I will leave as my NAS and Plex server.

1 Like
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I have a network based Zigbee gateway at the moment. Links in to my Tuya/Smart Life system. I was looking more to remove the devices from the Tuya app as it is getting pretty crowded in there! Some 80 odd devices. I am trying to move to more Zigbee devices (as opposed to Wifi) as it frees up the Wifi system and Zigbee is a mesh, so better coverage.

The other reason is that I am seeing that some attributes are not being propagated through the Smart Life interface into HA. Not sure where the problem is there, probably the Tuya implementation. So moving onto a separate Zigbee system (ZHA perhaps) seems the way to go.