I orderd some powertag from Schneider, I tried to add this device to my HA configuration without success. My coordinator can’t find any device, The tag is in paring mode, orange LED is blinking.
Do I need some addiction configuration, before I can add this to HA?
Don’t you need the power tag link gateway to add those? (which was discontinued recently) the gateway had a modbus integration - I’m pretty sure the Schneider PAS600 is the gateway’s successor device.
Core? not natively… For that you’d need support in ZHA. But you can setup Zigbee2MQTT on it’s own (container, other server) and configure it to talk to tmyour HA core installation.
I setup everything the Zigbee2MQTT is running, but the powertag is not discovered by the tool.
Do i need additional setup before i can add the tag?
The tag is still in paring mode.
This is a Zigbee Green Power device which allows it to be very energy efficient. Messages from Green Power devices cannot be “understood” by normal Zigbee devices, therefore they need to be “translated” first. Not all Zigbee devices can do this translation, currently the only devices known to do this are Philips Hue devices. This means that the Green Power device has to be in range of a Philips Hue device in order to use it.
Green Power devices don’t support binding and are not included in network scans.
Note that there are several different variants of Schneider PowerTags (with newer and older generations too) so it could be that they do not all use the exact same Zigbee protocol specifications, and not really sure why a such PowerTag would use ZGP (Zigbee Green Power) when they are all mains-power so are always powered.
FYI, as mentioned ZHA (and zigpy) do not yet support any ZGP (Zigbee Green Power) based devices but it probably will sooner or latet in the future:
I recently switched to HA for my RESI9 PowerTags once I realised the Wiser system require cloud connection to see any data. The tags themselves communicate with the wiser hub over zigbee, but the app needs a cloud connection, fail!
Anyways, here is how I got the tags added and reporting energy:
My tags are all RESI9 tags with 1 or 3 phases that fit on SE RESI9 breakers. The single phase tags have a blue neutral lead, otherwise there are no external leads on them. I assume the generic ones for any type of breaker also work fine but have not tested.
Preparation:
I got a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus. This MUST be the slightly larger P version, NOT the E version. The E version wont even pair the tags.
I installed zigbee2mqtt and the mosquitto broker with the default settings.
I added a IKEA range extender and placed it close to where I have the tags, this is the version wiht a usb port you can detach from its power plug. You can probably use any device that support zigbee green power and has Endpoint 242 > Output clusters > greenPower under the Clusters tab of the device. The IKEA one worked for me and is fairly cheap and available.
Pairing:
Its very important to not allow anything to pair by default in zigbee2mqtt, once you connect the tags to power they enter pairing mode immediately and if they pair through the wrong device, they wont pair correctly.
In the devices view of zigbee2mqtt, use the permit join dropdown and select the IKEA range extender and then click it to allow devices to join through that one only.
After a few moments your tag should join. If it doesnt, make sure its blinking orange and also try disabling join and permit again on the IKEA range extender if it doesnt join immediately.
Wait a couple of minutes and make sure the tag reports more then just signal strength under the “exposes” tab.
If the tag only report signal strength, chances are it joined through the coordinator or another router.
Issues:
The 3 phase tags dont report any energy or power on the separate a, b, and c phases, only the total. The individual phases are all null. This was a bit of a bummer for me as I had hoped to split up the stove(2 phases) and oven (1 phase) in separate meters. I suppose I could use 3 single meters instead, but only the total is fine for now.
Interestingly enough, the single phase meters do report power and energy on the a port in addition to the total.
Its also a bit of a pain to remove them form the network if you make a mistake in the pairing, they dont completely unpair, but if you turn them off for a while, and also retart HA (and pray to moloch), they eventually reset and enter pairing mode again.
Hope someone is helped by this, I was very glad when I finally got them working as it allow me to get rid of the Wiser cloud bollocks.
For clarfication:
The Resi9 single-phase tags (ex. R9M20) also report voltage, amps, power factor. But the 3-phase tags do not report individual values for each phase.
Suspecting the single-phase Resi9 is just one Acti9 phase meter repackaged as a single unit, but the 3-phase one is a cheapo variant of the Acti9.
I’m using an IKEA TRADFRI signal repeater, together with a SMLIGHT SLZB-06 router using zigbee2mqtt. Initial pairing through the IKEA repeater only.
Works fine.
I run the TRADFRI range extender as a range extender, with the SMLIGHT as the concentrator.
I’m not sure if that means that the range extender is a router. I’m not exactly firm on the Zigbee terminology.
I just connected the TRADFRI as it came out of the box.
I do not know anything about that. I did read that a specific Sonoff USB does have the capability, but these things are usually kept transparent to the normal customer (ie model changes are not always communicated through the whole chain of Designer → manufactorer → Distributor → Wholeseller → Seller), so trying to get a very specific model is always a gamble.
Just getting the IKEA range extender seems to be the safer bet.
I even got two, as a very shortly after getting the range extender, I bought a FYRTUR blind, and lo and behold, it comes with a TRADFRI range extender.