USB Zigbee in VirtualBox

Installation Home Assistant OS
1

I’m running HA 2021.10.6 in Virtual Box (latest release) and I’m trying to move across to a Nortek Zigbee\Zwave USB dongle… I have it working but when I need to reboot the Windows 10 host that Virtual Box is running on the Zigbee integration gives me the following error:

Retrying setup: [Errno 2] could not open port /dev/serial/by-id/usb-Silicon_Labs_HubZ_Smart_Home_Controller_C13008A9-if01-port0: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/dev/serial/by-id/usb-

Once I physically unplug and reconnect the USB dongle it comes back to life and starts working again. Does anyone know how I can fix this so I don’t have to do this every time I reboot?

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2

Use an USB filter :

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image667×548 21.2 KB

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3

Already have a USB filter in place.

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VB1645×529 33.8 KB

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4

I have the same issue. Wish someone had a solution…

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5

Do you use the same Zigbee dongle? Was considering buying a ConBee 2 but not sure if it’s the USB dongle itself or or the way VIRTUALBOX talks to the USb ports etc

6

I am using the HubZ z-wave/zigbee dongle in a laptop runing virtualbox.
Windows sees the dongle when restarting, but then virtualbox cannot connect as it is altready connected to windows. unpluging and replugging fixes the problem. It would be great if no manual intervention was required when a machine reboots.

7

I have found a work around. that works for me. Setup a scheduled task in Windows that disables\enables the USB controller that the Zigbee dongle is connected to. I set it to run 1 minute after boot and it does the same thing as unplugging and reconnecting the USB dongle.

8

How did you do this exactly? With something like devcon? Mind sharing?

9

I never found a solution while using virtual box.
I also had performance issues and eventually my install went bad on me using virtualbox forcing a reinstall.

I reinstalled everything using VM Ware instead of virtual box. My system has been totally stable ever since. VM Ware automatically detects the usb device with no input required from me.

probably not the answer you were looking for, but after experiencing the difference i would recommend using VM Ware for your virtual machine rather than virtualbox.

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10

Did you connect it via host or connect to a virtual machine?

11

I ended up moving across to VMWare a while back as well and it’s been much more stable.

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12

I’ve also switched to VMWare Workstation Player 17. There is no need to disconnect and reconnect the Sonoff Zigbee dongle.

A step by step is avaialable to setup an automatic connexion of the dongle: Installing Home Assistant on VMWare Workstation 17 - #8 by FriedCheese

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13

Hi are you able to share the steps how you did this? Sounds like the perfect solution for me…

14

I’m also having issues with Virtual Box vm’s, they are becoming unresponsive after about a day and require a reset. Also, I could never get the zwave USB dongle to connect so I ended up setting up ZwaveJS docker on a raspberry pi 4 and it’s been working great ever since. No more taking forever for devices to become available when Home Assistant is restarted.