Hi there,
four years ago I set up a zigbee-network successfully - but removed it shortly after, because there was no need for it. Meanwhile I want to give it a new try but I´m facing a lot of problems like “stuck in onboarding process”.
What I did do up to now:
- installed the latest firmware on my sonoff dongle (Zigbee 3.0 ZBDongle - P)
- de-installed the zigbee2mqtt-app and re-installed it again
Now onboarding works, I can select the sonoff dongle in the onboarding dialogue, push the “Submit”-button and - unfortunately only a blank white screen appears. It seems to be the screen where the zigbee-devices will be managed, but the screen is completely empty!
I have found some old files (dated from year 2022) in the zigbee2mqtt-directory of my Pi4. One of the files is named “coordinator_backup.json”. It contains for example a network-key. Maybe these files should be deleted ? And then zigbee2mqtt re-installed again?
I do not dare to delete it without some confirmation of an expert. What do you think?
Reply to my own post:
Solved the problem by re-installing the zigbee2mqtt-app. But be careful! This is only an option, if you have a very small zigbee network, because after re-installing the app you have to pair all of your devices again. I have only one device which I want to play around with.
What did I do:
- Stopped the zigbee2mqtt-app
- re-named the zigbee2mqtt-directory in Home Assistant
- de-installed the app
- re-installed it
Network-key, pan-id and extended pan-id will be generated again during the installation process. You have a fresh start then. After selecting my dongle in the onboarding dialogue everything looked nice.
But after all I ran into a final problem: The user interface did not start anyway. Somewhere in the internet I read the advice to start the app while the dongle is unplugged from the usb-cable. So the following steps worked for me:
- start the app with the dongle unplugged
- plug the dongle in
- open the user-interface
Since then zigbee2mqtt is finally running.
By the way: Pairing of my Aqara door/window sensor did not work. Reason was: The device drains its battery within a few days… But this seems to be a hardware issue of the Aqara device, as some people report this problem.
Edit:
Steps 5-7 seem not to work reliable. Maybe I was lucky that it worked for me in this moment or it was a lucky coincident. The app stops shortly after startup, when there is no dongle plugged in. Moreover it seems to be a matter of how long the usb-cable is. I tried two different cables (to have a distance between my Pi4 and the antenna of the dongle), one is 1,5 m the other one is 10 m. Using the 10 m cable means to give it several more tries to start the app than using the short cable.