Sonoff Zigbee Bridge with Tasmota And Home Assistant using ZHA

in this video i'm going to be showing you how to flash the zigbee bridge with tasmota without soldering and how to integrate and add your first device in home assistant using zha hey guys and welcome back to another video the zigbee bridge has been out for just over half a year at this point and whilst i am late to the party i finally decided to pick one up and check it out so that i could share with you how to flash it with tasmota and how you can integrate it straight into home assistant using zha and as mentioned previously there is no soldering in this guide is that aj zha this video isn't about zigbee or taz motor or anything like that i do want to cover them in a future dedicated video however let's have a quick run through of the zigbee bridge the sonoff zigbee bridge is an interesting little device mainly because of its small form factor relatively low price point when compared to some other zigbee hubs and also being a sewn off device it's a prime candidate for loading open source firmware like tasmota if you've never heard of tasmoto before the tldr is that tasmota is a open source firmware for esp8266 that allows you to quickly and easily control all of your devices locally much the same underlying idea as esp home but having said that let's jump into the guide there are a few things you're going to need in order to flash your zigbee bridge and as always i'll have everything linked down below the first being a usb to serial adapter there are a few versions of this kicking around and all should work just make sure you can toggle between 5.5 volts and 3.3 volts using a little jumper you'll also need some dupont connectors and because the dupont connectors are just a hair too big i use some of these smaller jumper wires also finally you'll need a laptop or a desktop the first thing you'll need to do is to remove the four little rubber feet on the bottom of the bridge and then remove the four screws underneath opening up the inside of the device you'll want to remove the single pcb then we need to identify five connections on the bridge 3.3 volts ground e r x e t x and i o zero all of which are clearly labeled on the pcb next you'll want to identify four connections on the serial adapter 3.3 volts or vcc ground rx and tx you might be wondering why there are four connections on one side and five on the other and that'll become apparent in the next step at this point you should make sure that your serial adapter is set to 3.3 volts using the little jumper do not supply 5 volts at any point we also want to make sure that the serial adapter is unplugged from the laptop for now next using your jumper wire and connectors wire 3.3 volts to vcc ground to ground er x on the bridge to tx on the adapter and e tx on the bridge to rx on the adapter once you've done that we'll want to connect io zero to the ground pin also you can see i was able to push both my jumper pins into the dupont connector using this method the purpose of connecting gpio zero to ground if you've never flashed one of these devices before is to allow the esp8266 to enter flashing mode once wired and double checked you can plug the usb adapter into the usb port of your laptop if you get a green led on the bridge this is generally indicative that you have done things correctly if you get a blue light then make sure to go back and double check your connections as this usually indicates that the device has not entered flashing mode next head over to the github link and download tasmatizer tasmatizer is a handy little tool that allows us to quickly and easily flash any tasmota image onto our esp8266 devices run the tool and when it opens you should see that we have a device listed in the com port if you have multiple devices listed in the serial ports and you aren't sure which one is which unplug the serial adapter and press the refresh button then take note of all the devices that are there re-plug in the serial adapter and then you can select the one that has now appeared in the list after selecting the com port you can back up the original firmware if you wish and then select the release option in the drop down we then want to find the zigbee bridge tasmota firmware then hit the tasmatize button and the flash process will begin sit tight for around 60 seconds or so for the process to complete and make sure not to disturb the bridge in any way as you could knock the connections loose and brick your device once completed the hardest bit is now over before unplugging everything i would suggest unplugging the usb adapter removing the single wire from ground to io zero and then plugging the adapter back in then use your phone or laptop to scan for wi-fi networks you should see a wi-fi network with tasmota at the start if you see this then great you can remove these usb to serial adapter remove all the connections and reassemble the zigbee bridge into its case and then power it via the micro usb port if for some reason you do not see the tasmota wi-fi network after rebooting go back and try the process again and make sure to have the erase flash option ticked once the bridge is reassembled and powered back on search for the tasmota wi-fi network again and this time join it head over to our browser and enter the ip address of 192.168.4.1 this will bring you to a web interface enter your wi-fi details or use the scan button to discover your wi-fi network use the view password option here as you do not want to get these wi-fi details wrong otherwise you'll have to go through the recovery process change the hostname if you wish and hit the save button and the zigbee bridge will now restart and join to your existing wi-fi network find the ip address of your bridge on your network and then enter that ip into the browser once again to access the tasmota web ui this is the main configuration page for tasmota whilst we have now finished flashing tasmota to the esp8266 we now need to go and flash the zigbee chipset firmware in order to complete the process head to the github once again and download the ncp uart firmware here i am using the 6.7.6 version at the time of filming but this may change in the future so read the release notes in order to select the appropriate version head to the console and enter backlog weblog3 set option 65 1 module 75. these three commands set the logging level to debug disables fast power cycle detection and sets the module to 75 which is for the zigbee bridge these aren't required for the flashing process but they are useful to have next head to the firmware upgrade menu and click on the choose file button then select the ncp uart file we just downloaded before clicking start open a new window and open a new console then click the start button whilst monitoring the console the flash process will now begin and it takes around 90 seconds from my experience keep monitoring the console and eventually you should see an xmd successful message which indicates that the flash has completed if you do not get this message or the firmware upgrade message has an error then try the process again if it's still not working make sure you are now powering the bridge via micro usb and you don't still have the usb to serial adapter connected as i did find this can cause issues once the flash is completed the bridge will restart again and this time if you monitor the console you will see a message about zigbee starting which is good we're getting real close now head over to the black adder website and grab the following template code head back to taz motor click on configuration and click on other then paste the template code into the box and hit save then head to configure module and from the drop down ensure that the newly created template is selected and hit save finally we need to create a rule to start tcp bridge on boot head back to the black adder page and grab the rule and paste it into the console and hit enter then type rule 1 space 1 and hit enter then reboot the bridge check the console and you should see that the tcp server has started on port 8888 we are now finished with tasmota and we can head over to the home assistant and into configuration and integrations add a new integration and search for zha and anti zha integration then select the add manually option and from the drop down select easy sp option finally we can enter the socket addressed into the box using the ip address of our zigbee bridge followed by port 8888 and then make sure to enter one one five two zero zero as the speed in the box hit finish and home assistant should automatically connect to the bridge and add it from there it's just a normal process to add your zigbee devices by entering pairing mode this is usually done by holding the pair button for a couple of seconds until the device starts flashing once the devices are successfully paired you'll see them automatically appear on the integrations page and then it's a straightforward process of adding them to your lovelies dashboard adding them to automations or doing whatever you want with them so there we go hopefully that process wasn't too painful and you now have your zigbee bridge integrated with home assistant using zha is that aj do you think people are going to be triggered by the way i say zha zadha z-h-a-z-h-a which one is that if you're still having issues or you can't get it to work or you're not sure what's going on leave a comment down below or even better join our growing discord server and one of us will do our best to help you out but that about does it for this video hopefully you enjoyed it and if you did make sure to give it a thumbs up and hit that subscribe button also leave your comments down below of what other videos you want to see next and i will do my best to make them thank you so much for watching and i will catch you in the next video

Channel: Everything Smart Home

Views: 27,125

Rating: 4.9687009 out of 5

Keywords: home assistant, home automation, smart home, home assistant zha, sonoff zigbee bridge, sonoff zigbee bridge tasmota, sonoff zigbee bridge home assistant, sonoff tasmota, sonoff tasmota home assistant, sonoff zigbee, zigbee, zigbee hub, zigbee home automation, zigbee home assistant, home assistant setup, home assistant automation

Id: xS9KIWJJa_U

Length: 9min 47sec (587 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/maarken]

Did this last night with the pre-tasmotaed version from Cloudfree. Super easy. Protip: if you typo something in the initial wifi config, 6 rapid clicks with a pin in the reset hole makes Tasmota start the wifi config access point again.

[u/pseudoheld]

Been running this setup for a few months now. Works really well.
Not as many devices are compatible with zha as with z2m but the devs are implementing loads of new devices.
In case you are already running z2m and are thinking of switching make sure to check all your devices are working on zha as well.

[u/beanmosheen]

I can't get my Tradfri remote to work. Flashed newest OTA to it an everything. It's the only device that doesn't work after migrating.