Hello! I got into home automation this year, and recently made a purchase of 5 inovelli blue 2-1 switches to integrate into my Zigbee network. I was able to install the switches successfully with neutral wiring, and they are receiving power just fine. However, I seem to stumble on a problem when I try to add them to my network. I am using HomeAssistant and Zigbee2MQTT with a Conbee III for my network. I have 14 devices already connected to it without any problems (most are routers, with only 4 battery PIR sensor and 2 Ikea remote controller as leaf nodes).
The problem I am encountering is when I try to add the switches, they do seem to think they are registering into my network (I checked that it was not someone else’s network by resetting multiple time and waiting a random time before allowing new devices, and everytime the switches indicator turns green a few seconds after I “permit join” in z2m), however, I never see them acknowledged by Z2M at all. no error, no notification, nothing in the logs. I tried it on 3 of the 5 switches I ordered, and they all behave the same. If it’s an outdated firmware, I am unsure how I could update it without being able to connect it to my network.
Have you had your Z2M frontend logs open when attempting to join the switches to the coordinator? If so, are you seeing the expected traffic in the logs? I’d be happy to take a look if you want to post a log sample.
Which option are you using when you’re permitting joins, e.g. All, Coordinator, etc.?
Using coordinator or a specific router near the switch doesn’t seem to work, so my tests were made with All. I will post an other reply with the logs once I get back home from work.
I started the permit join Coordinator a little after the start of the logging here, and I took the screenshot about 5-10 sec after the switch flashed green.
From some more troubleshooting, it might be related to “converter files”? I have checked on the official Zigbee2MQTT documentation, and the latest version (2.5.1) seems to already have support for the inovelli blue 2-1 switches…
Your logs don’t show any attempt of any device to join your ZIgbee2MQTT network. This is not a converter issue (support for the 2-1 switches has been in Zigbee2MQTT for 2+ years now).
If the switch is showing it’s joining a network, my best guess is that there’s some other ZIgbee network that is constantly accepting new devices and the switches are joining that network.
You may need to setup a Zigbee sniffer and see what’s responding to your switches when they try to join.
I can confirm the problem is not an other nearby ZigBee network adopting my switches. I sadly can’t use wireshark on my z2m instance since it’s on a docker container in my nas, but I did check if the switches would connect to a network if I didn’t permit join on my network, and with a total of 5 tries spread through an hour, it never joined an other network. and the next attempt, I did permit joining from the coordinator, and it did think it joined a network, with the same lack of any signs on z2m.
Out of curiosity, do you have any Alexa devices? Some models have built-in Zigbee coordinators that occasionally try to steal my Hue bulbs during setup.
I am not sure how your switches could be joining your network with no evidence in the logs. I’m wondering if there’s a non-compliant router in your network. You mentioned that setting the Join option to coordinator isn’t working. Is your coordinator in range of the installed switch?
I don’t have any other ZigBee coordinator. I was waiting for a good locally hosted alternative to all the proprietary smart home solutions that used to be the only options we had. So the first device that could be a ZigBee hub (coordinator) would be my conbee III that I’m trying to pair my switches to.
I did mention that “Permit join (Coordinator)” didn’t work, but I think it was due to the switch placement. I installed a third one in direct line of sight to my Conbee III and it did “join” (aka think it joined but nothing in Z2M).
Could it be that the Conbee III has a problem? I saw in the doc that the recommended coordinator was Conbee II since it was tested on it, but there was no mention of Conbee III.
If you can, I’d suggest picking up a second coordinator to use with the sniffing setup to see what’s happening. Sniff Zigbee traffic | Zigbee2MQTT
Other things to check, is your coordinator connected via USB? If so, do you have it on a USB extension cable? If you haven’t done that, I would try that next and then try pairing the switches again.
If possible, try pairing a switch in the same room as the coordinator and see if it makes a difference.
I have tried between reboots of my server to have it with and without extension cable. I also have the switch in the same room, one of them has direct line of sight to the coordinator (about 3 meters at most)
Hmmm. I’m running out of ideas for troubleshooting. This whole situation is bizarre.
If you haven’t read this thread on the Home Assistant forums, it covers a lot of zigbee troubleshooting and there may be something there (or someone there) who can think of something I’m missing.
I’d also recommend picking up a second coordinator for the same reasons that @rohan mentioned. Additionally, you could try pairing the switches to the second coordinator. Assuming that was successful, that would be an indication that the issue may be isolated to your current coordinator/configuration in some way.
Some other thoughts:
Have you made any adjustments to the default Z2M/adapter settings, especially ones related to the network (e.g. data sizes, delays, channel, etc.)?
As another troubleshooting isolation step, do you have any devices like a light bulb that you’d be willing to risk resetting and rejoining to the network? If that device also fails to rejoin, it would suggest an issue more on the network/coordinator side.
I ordered a Conbee II since it was the one recommended in the documentation. I’ll try to use it for sniffing through wireshark first, and also try to connect them to a new network. I’ll update this thread once I have news on my situation. I’ll keep troubleshooting on my side.
So, I received the Conbee II yesterday evening and I first tried to set it up as a sniffer, but I had some trouble getting it recognized as an available interface for wireshark. So I decided to use deCONZ to setup a new network in parallel of my other one and try to add one of my switches to it, and I was successful in doing that. I could run an “Identify” command on it, and as well as control the light.
I also tried to install Zigbee2MQTT on my computer through docker, but it failed to launch the zigbee-heardsman component. Until I get back to debugging this evening, all I know is that there is a problem either in Zigbee2MQTT (not sure how, because it doesn’t even show logs, so I would guess it’s before that), in the way I am passing the Conbee III to the container instance of z2m (Which I also doubt would be the problem since all my other ZigBee nodes are working properly), or in the Conbee III itself (and incompatibility between it and the switches maybe?).
I decided to setup an other Zigbee network through a new Zigbee2MQTT instance on my server using the Conbee II on an other channel to integrate the switches to HomeAssistant. I have the exact same configuration for Zigbee2MQTT that I have for the original network, but this time the pairing process is successful. I am able to access all the parameters and change the LED strip color.
It all points out to Conbee III not being compatible with Inovelli switches.
I do have one problem where in home assistant, I do not have the “action” available as it is on Z2M. I am able to see the “up_double” in z2m, but there is no entry even showing up as an input action of the switch.
