ZigStar - ZigBee Coordinators and Routers

Very interesting,is the same chip,is the same config.
So you say that some devices was dropping constantly from UZG-01 and on SLZB06P7 they are stable?

Correct, at least for the 4-5 days since I’ve done the change. The problems started after I upgraded to the 20230507 firmware. I’ve tried all the versions after that as well. I’ve tried to get a hold of the older firmware without luck.

Devices would stay online for about 24 hours after I re-paired them, then start dropping off again. Random devices, one day a in-wall dimmer from Namron would drop off, the next day a Hue bulb. The most notorious ones were a Aqara vibration sensor, a Namron K4 switch (battery powered) and a IKEA repeater (I have two, both took turns dropping off). There is no pattern as to what devices would drop off, and some of them came back online after I switched the breakers off and on again.

I also had some crashes from time to time.

No such issues yet with the SLZB. So at the moment the UZG-01 is a paper weight here in my house.

Edit 24.06: This also appears with the SLZB-06p7 so the UZG-01 is not at fault.

After each firmware change is recommended to Erase NVRAM, so Z2M will restore proper backup to new firmware/device.

I answered to your ticket,will have a small remote session to identify the problem.
Like i said many times, i have a feeling that my decision to move to P7 chip was a mistake. Everything was more stable with P2.
I still have hope that this will be solved ASAP by Koenkk.

If no any movement to this direction till end of the month i will go back to P2 chip and forget all this nightmare with Tuya devices and route table.

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Thank you so much @mercenaruss, this is above and beyond what I expect from support. You rock! Will speak soon :slight_smile:

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Thought I would add my experiences:
I have a UZG-01 (p7 chip) and Z2M on my HA installation.
The UZG-01 was pretty unstable (ESP 0.26 and Zigbee 20230507). I run quite a lot of TUYA devices (24 of them and mainly smartplugs). Typical uptime was around 4 days before all devices started going offline and I had to restart the UZG-01 to bring them back.
Since then I have moved the UZG-01 to ethernet (was WiFi) and the ESP firmware to 20240602. Zigbee is still 20230507.
I have also changed the reporting/polling intervals on the TUYA smartplugs to be much less frequently as I was aware this could produce a lot of Zigbee traffic.
For devices that have a Polling option (BSD29_1, TS011F_plug_3) I set the ‘Measurement poll interval’ interval to 360 seconds.
For the devices that have Reporting options (TS011F_plug_1, TS011F_plug_3) I set the ‘Min rep interval’ to 360 seconds for all 3 Reporting options.
The UZG-01 has currently been up 10 days without errors. I do not pretend to know if the reliability problem is really fixed, or which of the above changes had a beneficial impact.

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So “just for you” i have decided to upgrade to XZG and… now I am experiencing similar issues as described by others. I.e. the device hangs every 1-2 days, fortunately my devices do not drop from the network (I do have 10 TuYa devices) - but maybe it is because i did not upgrade ZB. I will try to setup the cyclic restart once a day - and will see if this helps But as you might expect - i do regret the upgrade :frowning:
I have just decided to downgrade back to 0.2.6. will see if that brings back system back to stable.

3 days after downgrading the firmware uzg-1 is still working without any issues. zo looks like XZG is not ready for wider deployment.

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i have upgrade to XZG few hours ago, and seems to slowdown some devices…i have no tuya device, only AQARA, MIO, and a lot of generic chineese random zigbee devices.

I read these post and downgrade immediatly lol

Its rock solid on UZG firmware

yup, my is running more than 6 days on 0.2.6 - without any issues. Sorry @mercenaruss but this is our house we are talking about, that we live in with our partners and children - the smarthome has to be rock-solid - and not require restarts every day. Looks like XZG is not “production ready” and, imho, should be used only if someone has separate test networks. Which i don’t.

Things are not that simple. I am using the latest XZG firmware on a UZG-01 and things appear to be quite stable - up 8 days without issues. Zigbee firmware is 20230507. I also have Aqara and 30 TUYA devices.
This latest XZG firmware has been downloaded almost 1000 times so I think there would be far more posts here if the majority of these people were experiencing major stability issues.
So although I am sure you are finding it unreliable, it is more complex than just saying the XZG firmware is not ready.

well… for me it is not ready. I understand that there might be cases where it is stable. From my perspective - to say that any firmware is 'ready" it should be stable across the board - not just in some instances. you know what they say about that broken clock - which is showing correct time twice a day.
I don’t have any issues with old uzg firmware - so just saying that if someone IS having issues - then they should try downgrading and staying there.
and BTW - it was not just one failure on my side - it was 3 during one week.

@margielm @justinhow You are both right per say.

Dont forget that ZigStar LAN Capable devices are just a bridge for you actually work with ZigBee chip P7/P2.
You have actually 3 options what are working:

  1. ESPHome - Very light version of bridge
  2. UZG Firmware - Light version
  3. XZG Firmware - Full version what have much more that previous ones

But remember this firmwares are just a bridge to talk to actual Zigbee Chip. Here is coming other question what is much much more complicated- Zigbee Firmware, this is Koenkk, myself here i dont have any powers.

I will provide proper documentation on ESPHome when i get back from vacation.

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So you say that UZG FW is light version, and XZG FW has “much more”. but if I just want to use it as a zigbee coordinator - what does XZG offer me beyond what I have in UZG?
I am mostly interesting in:

  • speed
  • stability

What am I missing, that maybe I am not even aware of, by staying on the “light version of the FW”?

Interesting. I upgarde UZG to XZG firmware, same version for zigbee as you : 20230507 and all my device become unstable and take few second to change state like toggle a light-bulb take 5 seconds…and if i toogle to quick or twice, it turn-on then immadiately turn-off. My 5 covers became unavailable, and much more mess.

The problem is to downgrade…i spend hours…i have the “timeout message 6000ms” in Z2M and Z2M evn dont suceed to connect to my bridge, even if i can ping it.

The AddOn to flash the zigbee firmware on HA doesnt work for me. I had to manualy inject the firwmare in Windows with USB com port.

restore a backup for yesterday doesnt work in HA…complete mess, 30 device of 50 are unavailable.

Then the only solution that i found is to put back an old config of Z2M in share/zigbee2mqtt folder, restart HA with my SONOFF usb coordinator 3.0, then i have all my devices, almost work normaly, then migrate to UZG-01.

After a long day of spend 6 or 7 hours, i have my setup working great, like 7 hours before. Nice to have lost my Sunday LOL, for nothing more than before, just because the upgrade message was so promising lol, and the Web UI of XZG have so much info and capabilities, having testing for 1 hour.

So, nice for you @justinhow if its stable.

I wish i can use this firmware in future months…

AND NEXT TIME : i will use the 2nd UZG-01 that i just received, black one POE, and never change anything on the first one POE white…lol

Fortunately, for me the downgrade was super easy. I just followed the instructions given here: ZigStar - ZigBee Coordinators and Routers - #427 by mercenaruss .
And even though ModeMCU Flasher states that it doesn’t work on M1 chips - it did work for me (though with M3). it took me like 15 minutes.

As far as I can see the issue with these controllers, and Zigbee in general, is that there are so many variables. # of devices, makes of devices, Zigbee network congestion, interference and signal strength, and many others.
With all that we have precious few diagnostic tools available as end users - just a central log and signal strength info generally.
So when it’s good it’s good, and when it’s bad it’s a nightmare.
I am certainly not gloating (it was very unreliable for me about a month ago), and I wish you all well.

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I have installed UZG-01 in my new house because I wanted a really good and stable controller.
I have just added one zigbee device and it worked for a few days, but this morning it did not, and it looked like the UZG-01 was not working properly, it did respond to ping, but Zigbee2MQTT was not able to connect.

[07:57:51] INFO: Preparing to start...
[07:57:51] INFO: Socat not enabled
[07:57:52] INFO: Starting Zigbee2MQTT...
[2024-06-26 07:57:55] info: 	z2m: Logging to console, file (filename: log.log)
[2024-06-26 07:57:56] info: 	z2m: Starting Zigbee2MQTT version 1.38.0 (commit #unknown)
[2024-06-26 07:57:56] info: 	z2m: Starting zigbee-herdsman (0.49.2)
[2024-06-26 07:57:56] info: 	zh:zstack:znp: Opening TCP socket with 10.0.24.4:6638
[2024-06-26 07:57:56] info: 	zh:zstack:znp: Socket connected
[2024-06-26 07:57:56] info: 	zh:zstack:znp: Socket ready
[2024-06-26 07:57:56] info: 	zh:zstack:znp: Writing CC2530/CC2531 skip bootloader payload
[2024-06-26 07:57:57] info: 	zh:zstack:znp: Skip bootloader for CC2652/CC1352
[2024-06-26 07:58:15] error: 	z2m: Error while starting zigbee-herdsman
[2024-06-26 07:58:15] error: 	z2m: Failed to start zigbee
[2024-06-26 07:58:15] error: 	z2m: Check https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/installation/20_zigbee2mqtt-fails-to-start.html for possible solutions
[2024-06-26 07:58:15] error: 	z2m: Exiting...
[2024-06-26 07:58:15] error: 	z2m: Error: Failed to connect to the adapter (Error: SRSP - SYS - ping after 6000ms)
    at ZStackAdapter.start (/app/node_modules/zigbee-herdsman/src/adapter/z-stack/adapter/zStackAdapter.ts:101:27)
    at Controller.start (/app/node_modules/zigbee-herdsman/src/controller/controller.ts:127:29)
    at Zigbee.start (/app/lib/zigbee.ts:62:27)
    at Controller.start (/app/lib/controller.ts:109:27)
    at start (/app/index.js:107:5)

When I tried to go to the UI, it was first nothing but after a few minutes I got some web-elements, two tries showed here:

Checked my UniFi Poe switch, looked good there also.
unifi

After a PoE powercycle it worked again, but I don’t want this to happen again, I need it to be stable af.

Any suggestions?

Zigbee
Mode Zigbee-Network
Socket 1 clients
Role Coordinator
Firmware 20240316
Hardware CC2652P7
IEEE 00:12:4B:00:2E:0E:1B:6A
Flash size 704 KiB

Device
Model UZG-01
Firmware 20240612
Hardware ESP32-D0WDQ6

yes, this - ZigStar - ZigBee Coordinators and Routers - #443 by margielm . I.e. - downgrade to UZG 0.2.6 .
It is running stable for me for the last 8 days.

On my UZG-01 (p7 chip) which is now running reliably I have:

  • ESP Hardware: ESP32-D0WD-V3
  • ESP firmware: 20240612
  • Zigbee Hardware: CC2652P7
  • Zigbee firmware: 20230507 (I found 20240316 to be unstable)
  • Changed from WiFi to Ethernet

I got double the uptime with zigbee 20230507, but still after around 1,5 days my devices stopped responding