Zigbee Capabilities update - 78 devices and starting to answer some useful questions
A little while ago I posted here about the Zigbee Capabilities database that grew out of ZHA Bindings Manager
Firstly, thank you to everyone who’s contributed scans. It’s now grown to 78 devices, and the website has changed quite a bit too:
Rather than just being somewhere to browse raw device data, the aim now is to make that community data useful for answering questions.
The main one I originally wanted to answer was:
Can this particular Zigbee device actually do the direct binding I want?
There are already excellent resources for Zigbee devices - Blakadder, Zigbee2MQTT, ZHA’s own device knowledge, manufacturer documentation etc. This isn’t intended to reproduce any of those.
The capabilities database is deliberately looking at something slightly different: what real devices, on real firmware, have actually exposed when scanned - down to endpoint, input/output cluster, commands and attributes.
A simple example: two multi-button remotes
Suppose I want a battery remote that can directly control a Zigbee light - including On/Off and dimming - without Home Assistant having to process the button press.
The database now contains community scans of both the SONOFF SNZB-01M and a LoraTap/Tuya TS0043.
They look like broadly similar products. The scans tell a very different story.
The SNZB-01M exposes On/Off and Level Control as output clusters on its button endpoints.
The scanned TS0043 doesn’t: endpoint 1 outputs only Time/OTA, while its other button endpoints have no output clusters at all.
That doesn’t make the TS0043 a bad remote. It can still be perfectly useful when button events are handled by Home Assistant.
But if the requirement is:
“I want the remote to control another Zigbee device directly”
then that’s a pretty important difference to know before buying one.
And that’s the sort of question I’m hoping this database increasingly helps answer.
As a useful sanity check, the database also contains the IKEA RODRET. Its community scan shows exactly what we’d expect from a well-known directly-bindable remote: Groups, On/Off and Level Control exposed on the output side.
It’s becoming useful for more than binding too
The website can now be searched by manufacturer/model, firmware, clusters, commands and attributes, so you can start asking questions such as:
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Which devices expose the output clusters I need for direct binding?
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Which endpoint should I actually bind?
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Which devices expose electrical measurement?
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Does another firmware version of this device expose different capabilities?
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Do two devices with the same model identifier actually expose the same Zigbee interface?
There’s now a firmware comparison tool too, and a section showing unidentified manufacturer-specific capabilitiesfound by community scans, cross-referenced against ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT where possible.
I’ve also added links to Blakadder and manufacturer pages where a device can be confidently matched. Those are there as complementary references; their data isn’t used to decide what capabilities a device has.
The capability evidence still comes from the community scans.
And repeat scans are useful
One thing I’ve realised as the database has grown is that we don’t only need different devices.
If your device is already listed, another scan is still useful.
It can confirm an existing observation, add another firmware version, reveal a different hardware/manufacturer variant, or show that two supposedly identical devices don’t actually expose the same thing.
So if you’ve already submitted one of the scans: thank you.
And if you’ve got a Zigbee device you’d like to add, the easiest route is through ZHA Bindings Manager → Check supported commands → Share this scan. It prepares the submission for you to review before anything is sent.
Have a play with the database here:
And the raw dataset/project is here: