I see that the newest Z-Wave-JS UI now supports adding additional hardware to capture z-wave packets over the air. I have always wanted to install the official Zniffer software but never had the time. Seems like this makes it a bit easier. Anyone out there who has experience with this new feature? If it worth the time and effort for the “packet curious”?
For background I’m an old network guy and remember when it costs tons of money to run ethernet sniffers (pre-Wireshark, and pre-modern networking hardware that has made this process a mostly "curiosity of the past’.)
I’ve started doing a bit with it today (after flashing an Aeotec Gen5+ with the Zniffer FW 2.55, it didn’t like my black SiLabs UZB with FW 2.43). I never managed to decode messages with the official Zniffer application on Windows, but I managed to get it to work with Z-Wave JS UI (though I’d like a way to trigger a nonce exchange with a specific node - you need the Zniffer process to see it to decode S2-based messages).
Also, what sort of info should I expect from it…? I know what a sniffer is, but I do wnoder if its used for anything other than manual troubleshotting (in which case I’d plug it into my laptop…)
You will probably have to try. If the dongle supports the official Zniffer serial API, probably. There’s not much technical information on that page.
It’s possible that they implement their own custom serial interface for CLI use (I don’t know enough about what the official Zniffer FW does to judge), as they do not mention using the SiLabs Zniffer application at all.
With a supported Zniffer dongle, you see all the RF traffic on the selected frequency. For recognized Z-Wave transmissions, the start and end node as well as the protocol bandwidth and command class are displayed (and if you drill down, the message parameters). Note that S2 encrypted messages can only be decrypted if the Zniffer has seen the nonce exchange between the node and controller.
I tried, and have a strange problem.
I enabled Zniffer. I can see the USB port popping up, both as dev/ttyUSB01 and as /dev/serial/by-id/usb-Silicon_Labs_CP2104_USB_to_UART_Bridge. So there is a serial port, and its visible. Yet if I press the green play triangle in the Zniffer tab, it says ‘cannot open serial port’. I find that strange, there should be nothing else using that port and I can see its the correct one. How can I troubleshoot further? Thanks
there is a ‘better’ log in the Add-ons/log, but thats not much help either.
2024-08-15 13:34:10.216 INFO ZNIFFERMANAGER: Retrying in 5s…
2024-08-15 13:34:15.224 ERROR ZNIFFERMANAGER: Zniffer error: Error Resource temporarily unavailable Cannot lock port
Error: Error Resource temporarily unavailable Cannot lock port
2024-08-15 13:34:15.226 INFO ZNIFFERMANAGER: Retrying in 5s…
