The unending pain of TRÅDFRI Shortcut Buttons

So…I have set up Zigbee via a ConeBee II USB stick and then the deCONZ (Phoscon) Add-On plus integration. I’ve added a Xiaomi button and a Philips Hue Tap Switch with minimal fuss.

When I try to add the TRÅFRI shortcut button though…bad times ensue. I followed this guide and thought I had it…but then I couldn’t see press events in the Event viewer.

I am wondering if having Z-Wave adapter also plugged into my Raspberry Pi might be the issue here? or the radio channel?

Any thoughts?

Did you wait a while for the button to appear? When I paired mine originally I had to wait a few hours for it to appear and work (no idea why!)

Trying that now…

[Time passes…]

Yeah…that didn’t work. Fails in Phoscon and also never appears in the deCONZ application nor the Home Assistant Integration (and nothing appears in the event listener).

So…have disconnected AEOTEC Z-Wave Stick and removed the Z-Wave integration (I only have three Z-Wave devices at the moment so not a big deal) and it now works flawlessly.

Thanks for posting this update. I’ve been on the fence on whether to expand from ZigBee and add Z-Wave to my setup through a USB stick, my concern has been exactly this that I’ll start having problems with my ZigBee setup. I think for now I’m going to steer clear of Z-Wave unless I have some need of a smart device that I can’t find a usable local only WiFi or ZigBee solution.

Z-Wave cannot have any impact on ZigBee. It’s on a different frequency altogether - ZigBee uses 2.4GHz, Z-Wave uses 908/868/919 (etc.) MHz

Why would setting up a Z-Wave network interfere or cause any issues with ZigBee?

@ZuluWhiskey I’m not talking about the networks interfering with each other I’m talking about the configuration of the coordinator/hub in Home Assistant as well as just hardware/RF/electrical noise being caused by the USB interfaces and hardware in a Raspberry Pi for example.

If you use a seperate dongle for each network, it will likely interfere with each other, especially on a Pi. Here in the forum you can find numerous threads about connection issues without an extension cord for all the different dongles you use. :slight_smile:

I have a Zigbee dongle and a BT dongle on my Pi4. If I try to use them without extension cords, I have connection issues and breakups on all my network types (Zigbee, BT and Wifi). And with the architecture of a Pi, where sometimes USB and network ports are “shared”, I’d have no doubt, that this could cause interferences.

A quick update on where I am with this.

I decided to remove all Zigbee and Z-wave integrations and start again. I am now connecting the Conbee II via a USB cable (as most people recommend) and I also added it into HA via the device-id rather than the port. Oh - and I am now using Zigbee2MQTT rather than deCONZ.

I am yet to setup the Z-wave stuff again (or even connect the stick) but it’s all working great at the moment!

1 Like

I run both my Conbee2 (Zigbee) and Aeotec Gen 5 (Zwave) sticks on 2m long USB extension cables, each clipped up to the side of the cabinet all my I.T. gear sits in, about 1m apart. I don’t have any issues at all, however that is running on an intel NUC. You definitely want to be using the device id rather than the port, so you should have much more success now.

Also, I initially tried deCONZ when I first got the Conbee2 but very quickly realised it was a pain in the ar$e and switched to ZHA.

Regardless you will want to follow all the general tips in my signature for a best practice Zigbee set up.

What signature…? There is nothing written under your post. We don’t have signatures on here

Hmm, well I can see mine and other’s signatures here, and I have a signature here that says this:

PS: FYI, I have summarized these essential generic tips on improving Zigbee network range and stability:

https://github.com/zigpy/zigpy/wiki/Generic-best-practice-tips-on-improving-Zigbee-network-range-and-general-stability

I’m also still waiting for this related pull request for ZHA documentation improvement to be reviewed:

https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant.io/pull/18864

Lessons learned; be aware Zigbee has poor range and penetration plus is very sensitive to interference, also know many Zigbee devices do not follow standard specification and need custom quirks/converters.

1 Like