HOW TO - Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 Dongle Plus in Home Assistant (Flash, Update, Zigbeemqtt & MQTT Broker)

in today's video we're going to be having a look  at how to set up sonoff's latest zigbee dongle   in home assistant i'm going to be showing  you how to flash a new software onto the   dongle as well as a full setup and install of  an mqtt broker with zigbee to mqtt check it out what's going on guys i hope you're all doing  well so this is sewn off zigbee 3.0 usb dongle   plus they come pre-flash with the z-stack 3.0  coordinator firmware and you can currently pick   them up for just under 11 in the us and about 24  pounds in the uk there is a planned price increase   for this product but i'm not sure if it will have  taken effect by the time this video is live or not   so it might be a little bit more expensive  when you're watching this straight out of   the box you can just plug this dongle straight  into whatever you're running home assistant on   and it will be detected and it will work however  i would highly recommend you update the firmware   on it just to be able to do things like pair more  devices to it and have some of the newer software   fixes we're going to start off by flashing  some new firmware onto the dongle and to do   this there's a couple of different methods that  we can use the first method involves taking the   device apart in order to access the boot button  on the main board this will allow you to enter   the bootloader mode and the second method involves  using a python script the python script will allow   you to automatically enter the bootloader mode  without having to take the device apart for this   tutorial i'm going to be using a windows machine  and i'm going to be following that first method   of taking the device apart now that might sound  like it's a lot of work but it's really not it   is just a case of taking out two screws which is  very simple to do and the reason i chose to do   this method is just because this was the original  method of flashing software onto the dongle and   the newer method of using the python script came  out afterwards if you are interested in doing the   second method of using the python script i will  be covering that in a future video where i show   you how to flash one of these as a repeater so  you can use it to extend your zigbee network   and i'll also have a link to the official sewn off  instructions that show you how to use that python   script as always this video will be chaptered so  if there's a particular part that you want to see   then you'll find those timestamps in  the description below so with that said   let's flash this thing the first thing we're going  to need to do is to download the new firmware for   our dongle and we're going to be getting this from  co-encounters github repo for this video i'm going   to be making use of the latest stable release of  the firmware which at the time of recording this   was the 17th of december 2021 if you are after a  more up-to-date version then you can switch the   branch over to the developer branch and you  can use the more up-to-date developer branch   but it is a developer branch so do expect some  bugs from here we're going to choose the top one   which contains that launch pad coordinator and  we're just going to download that next up we're   going to need to download a bit of software  that we're going to use to flash the firmware   that we just got onto our dongle and to do this  we're going to be using a tool called the flash   programmer and again you'll find a link to this in  the description below on the flash programmer page   you're going to just need to scroll down until you  see the downloads and then you're going to want   to choose this flash programmer 2 and then the  download options now there is a bit of annoying   caveat to this download where you're going to  have to sign up in order to access the download   but once you have done that you can download  and install it so you should now have the flash   programmer set up and installed what we now need  to do is to just tell the flash programmer where   the firmware is where our dongle is and then we  can begin the flashing process but in order for   the flash programmer to see the firmware we are  going to need to extract it when you downloaded   the dongle firmware it should have downloaded as  a zip file so all we need to do is just locate   that file and just extract it out so i've got  mine here on the desktop and all we're going to   do is just right click it and choose extract all  we'll then get an extracted folder and inside of   that we'll have a dot hex file which will be the  file that we use to pass to our flash programmer   and if we jump back to the flash programmer  we can now point it at that extracted file   to do this we're going to choose browse at the  top we then just need to locate our file and we're   going to select it and choose open next up we're  going to disassemble the dongle and it is just a   simple case of removing the two screws and then  carefully sliding it out of the metal enclosure   i really like the design of this dongle and  although the enclosure looks like a heatsink   it is in fact not one on the main board you'll  see two buttons a reset button and a boot button   and it's gonna be the boot button that we need  to press and hold in order to get us into that   bootloader mode again we're following the method  where we need to physically take this apart and   press and hold that button in order to get it into  boot mode but if you didn't want to do that there   is the option to use the python script method but  for now what we need to do is press and hold that   button and as you're holding it down you're  going to want to plug it into your machine an   easy alternative if you can't physically get this  into your machine whilst holding the button is you   could use something like a usb extension cable but  you need to ensure that you're holding that button   down before you connect it to your machine once  it's connected you want to just press and hold   that for roughly 10 seconds just to ensure that it  does go into the bootloader mode when you connect   the dongle to the machine you should see it appear  in the left hand side as a connected device and   it'll probably come under silicon labs usb just  under that we need to make sure we select it and   then we need to select a target device for it so  we need to choose cc2652p if yours doesn't show   up as silicon labs in the connected devices and  you can just see unknown devices for all of them   then more than likely it's a driver issue if you  open up your device manager and have a look under   other devices then you should see a little yellow  triangle next to the usb and this just means that   the drive is not installed a simple way to fix it  is to use the windows update so you can just right   click on it and choose to update the driver  and then we can search with windows updates   if you select this it should just open up your  windows updates and prompt you to access that page   i'm using windows 11 here and all i need to do is  just head into the optional update and from within   here i can just choose the driver updates and then  choose silicon labs and click download and install   if you're using windows 10 then it's a very  similar process and once that's installed you   should see that that little yellow triangle is  gone and i can now see the silicon labs usb so   if we click the refresh on the left hand side  or if you just wait a second it should just   automatically refresh and we can see the silicon's  lab usb just there if you did add it again through   a driver you're going to want to make sure that  the selected target device is set so again just   check that that's set to cc2652p then we just  need to check that a couple of other options are   ticked and unticked so you want to make sure in  actions that a race is ticked program is ticked   verify is ticked and then in the top right you'll  see some image override options and you want to   ensure that the disabled bootloader is unticked if  you do tick it you can cause yourself a couple of   issues so just ensure that is unticked then you  can go ahead and click the play button if you do   click that play button and it instantly goes red  then more than likely you're not in the bootloader   mode so you're going to want to just remove your  usb and you're going to want to try that process   of getting into boot loader again so just make  sure you're holding down that boot button before   you plug it into your machine and when you do plug  into the machine you're going to want to hold it   down for about 10 seconds or so you can then  repeat that process of clicking the play button   and hopefully that goes through if it does keep  going red and failing and you are struggling with   this then i would suggest checking out the python  method so hopefully you're not struggling and you   did manage to get into the bootloader mode and  when you do hit the play button you'll hopefully   see that a success message and that lets you know  then that you've successfully flashed the dongle   at this point now that's the new firmware flash  to the dongle so you can just go ahead and plug   this straight into home assistant and you're good  to go if you do already know how to set up an mqtt   broker or you already know how to set up zigbee to  mqtt then you can just skip the rest of this video   or maybe you're not going to use those and you're  going to use zha then again you can also skip the   rest of this video but if you do want to know how  to set those things up then stick around because   we're about to run through them we're going to  start off by installing our mqtt broker and for   this we're going to be making use of mosquito  so from our home assistant dashboard we're going   to head into configuration and from here we're  just gonna choose add-ons and backups and in the   bottom right corner we should see the add-on  store so we're gonna go ahead and press that   and from here we can just search through for  the mosquito broker or at the top here there's   a handy little search bar so you can just  start typing mosquito broker in there and it   will start to appear however i can just see  it here so i'm just going to choose it here   i'm just going to click install that should just  take a couple of minutes to install and once that   is done there are a couple of extra bits that we  need to do in order to finalize the mqtt broker   setup the first one is a bit of a personal  preference really but i would recommend it   especially as this is going to be your mqtt broker  but it's this option here for the watchdog so if   the mqtt broker crashes then the watchdog will  automatically restart the add-on which is really   what you want with the broker but this is just  personal preference really you can do whatever   options suit you so i'm going to turn the watch  dog on but i'm going to leave auto update off   the next bit of our broker setup is we need to  create a user for the broker to use now there's   a couple of different ways of doing this you  can just go directly into the configuration   and just hard code a user in there or you can  go into the home assistant users and create a   user that it can use like that i'm going to use  the home assistant way just because i don't want   to give the account full permissions and with  home assistant we can easily control that so   let's head into the configuration here  and we're going to choose people and zones   and up at the top there we want to select users  and from here we're just going to go down to the   bottom right corner and we're just going to click  add user that will then just give us this handy   form to fill in to create a new user now this user  is going to be specifically for mqtt so i'd give   it a display name and a username that's going  to make sense for that user just because you'll   probably see this name appearing in the logs and  you'll want to know what it is so go ahead and   fill that in with some credentials i've then also  gone ahead and take this optional can only login   from the local network this is gonna stop this  user from being able to log in externally from   the network but as this is mqtt and it's local  this is gonna be fine for me so i'm gonna go ahead   and click create and with that done we've got our  new mqtt user which is local only and you'll also   notice that we didn't add it as an administrator  so it's got basic user permissions and it's local   only we can now move on to the setup of zigbee  to mqtt so to do this we're going to head back   into configuration i'm going to choose add-ons and  backups again and from here we're again going to   choose the add-on store zigbee to mqtt isn't part  of the official add-ons or the community add-ons   so we're going to need to manually add this  ourselves to do this we're going to click   the three dots up at the top and we're going to  choose repositories and from here we're going to   just need to add the url for the repository you  can find this in the description below so go and   grab that and just paste it in here and with that  pasted in you can just click add and then close   you should now be able to see these two  zigbee to mqtt add-ons we've got the   standard one and we've got the development one  we're gonna go ahead and click the standard one   and we're gonna click install this should also  just take a couple of minutes to install and when   it is done we've got those personal preferences  to make again i'm gonna again turn on the watchdog   but i'm also gonna choose to turn on the sidebar  just so i can have that easily accessible all the   time in the sidebar there with that done we can  head into the configuration for the add-on so   up at the top we're going to choose configuration  and in here there's going to be a couple of lines   that we need to add so we're just going to add in  the user credentials for the user that we created   for the mqtt broker on line 7 there we can see  we've got the mqtt options and on the line below   we've got the base topic so just underneath this  one we're going to want to add in our username and   password so let's go ahead and do that now and  that should look a little something like this   so you've got user followed by the username of  the account that you just created in my case   it was mqtt user and just below that we've got the  password and again that's followed by the password   that you also created for that account and once  you've done that that's the user credential side   of things all done the final part of the config  for this is to just tell zigbee to mqtt which port   you've got your zigbee dongle plugged into so if  you haven't already you're going to want to unplug   your dongle from the machine that you were using  to flash it and just reassemble it with that now   reassembled you can go ahead and plug that into  your pi or whatever machine you're currently using   to run your home assistant on with plugging in  your zigbee dongle if you do happen to have a usb   extension cable i would highly recommend using one  as it can help avoid any interference caused by   your machine and it can also help to increase your  zigbee range now that we've got that plugged into   our home assistant we can figure out what port  our dongle's using and we can use that information   to finish the configuration for zigbee to mqtt so  to do this we're going to head into configuration   again and from here we're going to want to choose  add-ons backups and supervisor and up at the top   we're going to select system and from here just  underneath the host card we're going to click the   three dots and we're going to choose hardware  from here we can see a list of different bits   of hardware that make up our home assistant and  we can just scroll through this list until we   find our usb dongle but a nice and simple way of  actually finding the dongle is to just do a search   so by making use of the flash programmer i know  that the usb dongle was identifying itself as   a silicon lab product so if i just do a search  for silicon you'll see as i start typing that it   comes up with the usb dongle here so this is the  bit of information that i actually want so we've   got our usb dongle there and if i just select  that it will tell me all the bits of information   i need about it and the bit of information  that we care about is this device path here   and i can see it comes under dev forward slash tty  usb 0 so i'm just going to copy this section here   and now that we've got that bit of information  in our clipboard we're going to head back into   configuration and again we're going to choose  add-ons i'm going to select our zigbee to mqtt   add-on and head into the configuration and in here  we're going to want to just update this port with   the information that we've got on our clipboard  we're then just going to scroll all the way down   and we're going to hit save and with that now  done that should be all the configuration for   our broker and also for zigbee to mqtt so what we  now need to do is just to kickstart both of them   so we're going to go back into configuration we're  then going to choose add-ons and we're going to   select the mqtt broker first and we're just going  to hit start once that started we're just going to   go back and we're going to do the same thing but  with zigbee to mqtt so we're going to select that   and again we're just going to press start your  broker and zigbee to mqtt should now both be   running and there shouldn't be any issues with  them if you check out the log for zigbee to mqtt   it should just be all green and you shouldn't see  any red error messages before we start adding any   zigbee devices there's just one final step we need  to do which is to just enable the mqtt integration   so for the last time if we head to configuration  and this time we're going to choose devices and   services and you should see that it's discovered  mqtt so we're just going to click configure there   i'm just going to click submit and then finish  and that's literally it everything should now   be running and you're now free to start playing  around with zigbee to mqtt and start adding your   own devices in so let's just add a couple together  and then we'll wrap this up so i'm just gonna   select zigbee to mqtt in my sidebar there then  up at the top here we're gonna just select this   permit join all and that's gonna allow zigbee to  mqtt to start discovering zigbee devices so i've   got one of these acara buttons to hand so i'm just  gonna pop this into pairing mode so that button's   now in pairing mode and i can see it popping up  here my car buttons now paired and if i wanted   to i could rename it here to give it a nicer  friendly name so let's just go ahead and quickly   do that i'm also going to select this update  home assistant entity switch here and click save   changes so i added that akara button and i also  went ahead and added one of the acara wireless   switches now back here in our integrations i can  see that i've got two devices under the mosquito   broker and if i click on those i can see that it's  automatically pulled through that acara butter   and also the akara wireless switch and there we  go guys that's been a quick look at how to flash   firmware to the sonoff zigbee dongle as well  as a quick guide on setting up an mqtt broker   and zigbee to mqtt all within home assistant if  you have enjoyed this video then don't forget to   drop me a like and if you're not already hit that  subscribe button and ding dong that notification   bell you'll then be alerted to any future video  that i do and as always a massive thank you to   these awesome dudes these awesome dudes are my  patreons if you're interested in helping support   my channel which in turn allows me to create  content like this then you'll find a link to my   patreon in the description below but thank you for  watching and i'll catch you in the next one cheers   you

Channel: Mark Watt Tech

Views: 136,975

Keywords: MarkWattTech, HomeAssistant, Hassio, Home Assistant, Smart Tech, Smart Home, Mark Watt, Automations, Home Asistant, zigbee2mqtt setup, zigbee2mqtt guide home assistant, mqtt broker setup, installation, full guide, sonoff zigbee

Id: 4jqQCxjlRDU

Length: 16min 6sec (966 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/samwise2210]

Hi Mark, I typed a long reply to your YouTube comment but it seems to have disappeared. Hoping you can help, if you can I'll gladly head over to Patreon to say thanks.

I've got the same dongle as in the vid and flashed the same firmware as shown. My HA runs in VirtualBox on mac so I had to first expose the USB device in the VB settings. In HA I can indeed see the device under Hardware and the device ID matches yours in the video so all looks ok to me. When I try to start zigbee2mqtt the log shows this:

Zigbee2MQTT:error 2022-01-28 16:01:52: Error while starting zigbee-herdsman

Zigbee2MQTT:error 2022-01-28 16:01:52: Failed to start zigbee

Zigbee2MQTT:error 2022-01-28 16:01:52: Check https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/installation/20_zigbee2mqtt-fails-to-start.html for possible solutions

Zigbee2MQTT:error 2022-01-28 16:01:52: Exiting...

Zigbee2MQTT:error 2022-01-28 16:01:52: Error: network commissioning timed out - most likely network with the same panId or extendedPanId already exists nearby

To me it looks like the Addon cant reach the device, what do you think?

PS - this is my first zigbee device so clashes on panid is probably not the issue is it?

[u/Tragus521]

Mark, Having the same issues with Zigbee2mqtt. Followed your youtube video for flashing firmware, and installing mqtt broker and zigbee2mqtt. Had app working at one time, but HA crashed and had to start from backup. Re-flashed the zigbee dongle and ran through all the steps. Getting same errors as samwise below. running HA on raspberry pi 4.