Zigbee - Extending the capabilities of a Zigbee device

larray · April 9, 2021, 6:43pm

Hello All -
Brand new Home Assistant user here - built and deployed a mere 5 days ago - SmartThings (Kickstarter supporter!) refugee. I’ve been joining up the devices and I’m VERY close to replacing the SmartThings hub before its death date at the end of the month.

One thing I’ve run into is the inability to get a Multisensor to integrate with all its capabilities, in fact it is the exact issue here:

(I didn’t want to threadjack).

It comes in as a contact sensor only. I know it is functional for temperature, tilt and vibration - I had to recover it in Smartthings to get it to where I could evict it and was still registering data there.

I found where someone had the same experience on Hubitat it appears (when researching this issue): Issues with Multipurpose Sensor - #29 by jeubanks - 🎬 Get Started - Hubitat where someone was able to tweak the driver.

Is it possible to do so on Home Assistant?
Where would even begin looking into doing something like this?

I don’t know if it is a matter of getting the device reclassified or if it is a matter of defining the features the device has (extending the “class”?)

Is there a way to see what is interrogated from the device?

Thanks for any guidance!

septillion · April 9, 2021, 6:57pm

Do you run Zigbee with the ZHA integration or doe you use Zigbee2MQTT or Deconz?

larray · April 9, 2021, 9:02pm

I picked the first Zigbee in the Integrations - I believe it is Zigbee Home Automation (ZHA I assume). I didn’t have MQTT set up - and wasn’t certain it was necessary and I was looking at fast path to testing if the hardware was setup correctly.

Hardware setup is a Core i5 with Proxmox - Nortek Zigbee/ZWave passed through on USB.

In retrospect as I move along I am beginning to wonder if I should have set up Zigbee2MQTT (and Zwave to MQTT) because at least for Zwave it appears to have a few more tools.

I’m also willing to flatten it all and start over as this has been a ‘learning’ experience as well.

However - at the heart of it is when looking at the forum I see others report the same experience with the device and that in the “other” forum someone developed “code” to fix the issue. I am hoping that something similar can be done here. I’ve been looking at replacing it if necessary but 1) I know it works (see earlier re-pair with ST0 and 2) I don’t see many devices which combine the same sensors - temperature, vibration, tilt, and low power zigbee.

Is that the info you needed?

larray · April 9, 2021, 9:35pm

Also - completely grasping at straws and looking for references to SmartThings and PGC313 and ran across this:

github.com

Koenkk/zigbee-herdsman-converters/blob/97c64c06057e06a78567c37fc755db435c9d5bc1/devices.js

'use strict';

/**
 * Documentation of 'meta'
 *
 * configureKey: required when a 'configure' is defined, this key is used by the application to determine if the
 *               content of the configure has been changed and thus needs to re-execute it. For a currently
 *               unsupported device you can set this to 1.
 * multiEndpoint: enables the multi endpoint functionallity in e.g. fromZigbee.on_off, example: normally this
 *                converter would return {"state": "OFF"}, when multiEndpoint is enabled the 'endpoint' method
 *                of the device definition will be called to determine the endpoint name which is then used as
 *                key e.g. {"state_left": "OFF"}. Only needed when device sends the same attribute from
 *                multiple endpoints.
 * disableDefaultResponse: used by toZigbee converters to disable the default response of some devices as they
 *                         don't provide one.
 * applyRedFix: see toZigbee.light_color
 * enhancedHue: see toZigbee.light_color
 * supportsHueAndSaturation: see toZigbee.light_color
 * timeout: timeout for commands to this device used in toZigbee.
 * coverInverted: Set to true for cover controls that report position=100 as open

This file has been truncated. show original

Line 8269 has:

    // SmartThings
    {
        zigbeeModel: ['PGC313'],
        model: 'STSS-MULT-001',
        vendor: 'SmartThings',
        description: 'Multipurpose sensor',
        fromZigbee: [fz.ias_contact_alarm_1],
        toZigbee: [],
        exposes: [e.contact(), e.battery_low(), e.tamper()],
    },

I don’t know if Home Assistant and the ZHA Integration use similar definitions - but the items exposed seem to be limited to contact, battery and tamper. I’m just guessing

code-in-progress · April 9, 2021, 9:40pm

[EDIT] Derp. I just noticed you were talking about the 2013 version. I believe that is compatible with the 3300-S, but I’m not 100% certain.

This is the route I would go as the multipurpose sensors report all attributes with Zigbee2MQTT:

nickrout · April 9, 2021, 11:28pm

I believe the best chance of fixing this is zigbee2mqtt as it is quite simple to add new devices, and change existing ones.

larray · April 12, 2021, 2:24pm

Thanks - really appreciate the responses. Didn’t want to abandon the thread, but I’ve been on an odyssey for the past 3 days trying to get zigbee2mqtt working. When I started this journey I thought I did the right research and got a Nortek HUSBZB to get Zwave and Zigbee in a single package where I could keep all my devices associated with a plug in radio package. It appears that the Nortek device is in early alpha support for zigbee2mqtt. So it has been 2 days of heavy struggle trying to get it to work and finally reaching out for support over there.

It will be exciting once I can get there… worst case I may have to get a new USB zigbee stick.

code-in-progress · April 12, 2021, 2:50pm

Depending on how many devices you have and/or want to support, I’d recommend going with an external coordinator. I’m using a CC2652P2 from Tube (Tube's ZB Coordinators and Routers (was Zigbee router on steroids?)). It runs on my network and allows me to place it anywhere I need it (I have mine basically in the middle of the house). Plus, it can support up to 100 child devices on its own.

larray · April 13, 2021, 1:44pm

I’ve gotten one step further - I can attach to the device over USB!
One step back (or last hurdle) - can’t bring up the website - 502 Bad Gateway (sigh)

Looks like a really nice device @code-in-progress - a few questions if you don’t mind?
Does HA connect to it via IP?
Is that where “socat” comes into play?
Does it come pre-flashed?
Does it cause any power issues with the battery backed zigbee devices? (I’ve seen some recent posts through the rest of my research about particular radio sets causing excessive communication and battery drain).

code-in-progress · April 13, 2021, 1:49pm

Yes. I believe socat is used in the underpinnings, but it’s just using a serial socket from the coordinator (ZHA, Z2M, etc).

Yup!

I’ve not seen any issues like that with my battery devices, but I have seen it reported as well. I think it really depends on the coordinator and the device definition.

Maverick0984 · September 8, 2022, 5:10am

Did you ever get this working? I used this sensor for vibration on a sump pump pipe in ST. I too am only getting contact/tamper/battery/lqi making it mostly useless for my use case.

Malathan · January 21, 2023, 9:19pm

I too am hitting same limitation, only seeing contact, tamper (? if even works), battery, and lqi. I originally tried ZHA, but had only contact (with lqi and rssi inactive). Trying mqtt and so far not seeing anything benefit.

Anyone else get the pgc313 multisensors to work beyond basic contact?

nickrout · January 21, 2023, 9:55pm

If you search this file for ‘multipurpose’ you will find 3 - the pgc313, the multi and the multiv4. Only the latter 2 have accel sensors defined.

You could try adding the accel sensors. If it works, try a PR.

Edit to add link zigbee-herdsman-converters/smartthings.js at a2b3136caee431b5d1937d4f891fb092ab3fec58 · Koenkk/zigbee-herdsman-converters · GitHub