I’ve flashed the Zigbee Dongle Plus (p) with the latest firmware and successfully installed Zigbee2MQTT. When in the web UI, I select permit join > All and place my aqara device in pairing mode and nothing is recognized. This is a new setup, devices are fresh out of the box. Running on a Raspberry Pi 4 and the dongle is on an extension cable about 2 feet from the Pi. Any thoughts or troubleshooting tips?
They fall asleep before being paired. You put them in pairing mode, and then you have to press the button in regular intervals (about 30 secs) to keep them awake until successfully paired.
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Hard to tell if they’re awake or not. The blue light on the wireless mini switch is only lit (blinking) when I’m holding down the pairing button. When I release it, it stops blinking. Pressing it doesn’t do anything unless I hold it down again.
Hold the button until the light flashes, then keep pressing it once every second or so. It will eventually pair.
I did it once a second for two minutes and nothing changed. Even set a stopwatch to make sure. Light occasionally blinked.
By “latest firmware” did you flash it with the multi-protocol firmware by any chance?
There’s been lots of reports of it causing issues in the Z2MQTT github. Flash it with Zigbee only firmware and you should be fine.
He has a Dongle-P, no multiprotocol firmware available.
I did it with this firmware: Z-Stack-firmware/coordinator/Z-Stack_3.x.0/bin at master · Koenkk/Z-Stack-firmware · GitHub
I’m running the 202307 firmware too, I don’t think that is the problem. I paired my aqara’s 5 years ago, when I still used a CC2531 as coordinator, and I still remember how difficult they were. Keep them close to the dongle while pairing.
Good catch, I missed that.
@mizzoudavis which specific Aqara devices are these? I’ve got quite a few and never had any issues with pairing, even from half a house away.
I’m maybe 8-12 inches away. I feel this is the cruelest april fool’s joke 
I’m using the wireless mini switch and the Cube T1Pro.
Not about home assistant, but great reading:
I don’t have either of those devices unfortunately, so can’t comment on the specifics. Sending the following links in case you haven’t seem them already - hopefully it’ll help.
Check if the model is WXKG12LM or whether it’s a different model on the box. There’s a note saying to try pressing the pairing button just once in case you have trouble pairing.
Same goes for the Cube T1Pro. There’s a note that the interview process might not finish. Solution to this is do what francisp recommended, but space out your presses since 5x quick presses changes the operation mode on the device.
Do you get any popup at all in Z2MQTT regarding the interview starting?
Also, judging by your “Light occasionally blinked” comment, can you get your hands on a pair of confirmed fresh batteries?
I killed Z2MQTT and reloaded ZHA and both devices paired instantly. Very strange.
Wait, you had ZHA installed while you were trying to pair the devices?
No. I deleted ZHA and moved to Z2M.
Then unless you misconfigured Z2Mqtt (I doubt that since you could load its frontend) you have an WiFi interference problem.
Read up on WiFi & ZigBee channel overlaps & put your stick on a usb extension cable. The reason those devices can pair with ZHA is that (from memory, so look it up) by default it uses a different ZigBee channel than Z2MQTT.
I did and used net scan to confirm that my home wifi network is on a different channel than my Zigbee device. I’m able to trigger automations via the ZHA automation so I’m at a point where I need to decide what the benefit is of continuing to struggle with Z2M.
- I really wanted the Aqara Cube* to work, but it seems like the time investment is prohibitive.
- I can get the Aqara Wireless Mini Switch to trigger events via ZHA just fine, even though it’s limiting.
I’ll check back in a few months and see if a solution has been discovered, but as of now, the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Thanks to you and @francisp for helping me troubleshoot it.
Which numbers zigbee and WiFi do not use the same channel numbering 11 wifi <> 11 zigbee and in fact 11/11 does not interfere.
So what numbers?