ZHA and Conbee II

Configuration Zigbee
1

After my IKEA Tradfri GW integration stopped working after a GW update (completely losing contact 1-24h after HA restart), I got a Conbee II USB stick and added it with ZHA in HA.

I could add all my Tradfri bulbs and one plug, and when they work, the response time is great.

The problem is that the devices become “unavailable” randomly all the time. A power cycle of the bulb makes it appear again. Also, sometimes they are not listed as unavailable but still does not respond to being turned on/off. They also randomly report the wrong on/off-state.

The HA log is full of different zigbee related errors such as:

Failed to receive transmit confirm for request id: 42
16:05 components/zha/core/helpers.py (WARNING)

Unexpected transmit confirm for request id 137, Status: 0x00, 137
16:53 __main__.py (WARNING)

No response to aps_data_request command
16:53 components/zha/core/helpers.py (WARNING) - message first occured at 16:04 and shows up 57 times

Error while sending frame: 0xd0
16:53 components/zha/core/helpers.py (WARNING) - message first occured at 16:04 and shows up 13 times

Anyone else using the Conbee II with ZHA?
I’m on 0.93.1 for HA and 26490700 for the Conbee firmware.

2

A USB extension cable usually helps with this issue

3

I added an extension cable a few days ago, unfortunately it made no difference at all.

4

Then I suggest you post an issue on deconz GitHub

1 Like
5

What firmware is your conbee running?

6

26490700 for the Conbee firmware

7

Not sure if ZHA does use ieee address mode for sending commands, but if so it might be related to this Github issue https://github.com/dresden-elektronik/deconz-rest-plugin/issues/1520

There is now a new firmware 0x264a0700 available, which fixes these problems.

1 Like
8

Interesting, thanks.

But how do I update the firmware? When I just got the stick, I put it in a windows computer and started the deconz software, which started an automatic firmware update.

I tried that now, but it doesn’t update firmware. I tried the GCFFlasher software to flash manually, but it just says “no FTDI devices found”.

Any ideas?

9

Here is a guide how the manual firmware update works on Linux https://github.com/dresden-elektronik/deconz-rest-plugin/wiki/Update-deCONZ-manually

Unfortunately there is no howto for windows yet.

10

I’m not running raspbian linux, I’m running ubuntu and HA in docker. Do you think the guide would still work for me?

11

Yes, on Ubuntu it works in the same way, but you need to install deCONZ to access the GCFFlasher tool.

https://phoscon.de/en/conbee2/install#ubuntu

12

Thanks, flashing firmware worked fine!

Sad to say though that it didn’t help with the problems at all. Log immediately started filling up with:

> 2019-05-28 12:17:55 WARNING (MainThread) [zigpy_deconz.zigbee.application] Error while sending frame: 0xd0
> 
> 2019-05-28 12:17:55 WARNING (MainThread) [zigpy_deconz.zigbee.application] Error while sending frame: 0xd0
> 
> 2019-05-28 12:17:55 WARNING (MainThread) [zigpy_deconz.api] No response to aps_data_request command
> 
> 2019-05-28 12:17:55 WARNING (MainThread) [zigpy_deconz.api] No response to aps_data_request command
> 
> 2019-05-28 12:17:55 WARNING (MainThread) [zigpy_deconz.api] No response to aps_data_request command
> 
> 2019-05-28 12:17:55 WARNING (MainThread) [zigpy_deconz.api] No response to aps_data_request command
13

Hard to tell what is going on, the 0x0d basically means that a send request was queued for a device but no route could be discovered. The error mentioned above doesn’t occur anymore at least not in this log snipped.

14

Sad to say that Conbee II and ZHA does not work at all for me. Massive amounts of errors in the logs, lights going unavailable and reporting the wrong state constantly. No interfering networks.

Has me wondering if there is anyone having this combination working in HA?

15

I did, but after updating firmware on conbee switched to Marthoc’s deconz.

16

Why did you switch?

17

Because I like the interface and the speed of development.

18

I second this. Only yesterday I switched in total to zha and wonder what the fuss is all about. The Zigbee2MQTT setup was flawless… you only have the devicelimit their.

ZHA:

  • Massively unreliable (endpoints disappearing all the time, zigbee network in all being unresponsive)
  • Flakey pairing
  • Only just having battery as a sensor
  • Sensors coming up double under one endpoint
  • I don’t like it!!!

Trying deconz now, but the install of deconz on buster has an issue… struggling on.

I lack a zigbee topic where this is really thouroughly handle from a to z.

19

For me, ZHA works well now. The only issue I have is bulbs reporting the wrong state in the GUI and a lot of errors in the logs.

20

Have you got any clues or tips on what made it reliable?