Installing the conbee zigbee usb dongle on home assistant core

Z-wave and zigbee are two competing low-power wireless standards, so far I have used z-wave through a zwave hat on my raspberry pi.

Since zigbee seems to be gaining some traction I decided to also add a zigbee network. To do so, I bought the conbee usb dongle.

the integration with home assistant allows for some choices: ZHA, deconz or zigbee2mqtt. In my case, for no good reason I went with deconz first but could not get all sensors visible (my smart wall plug could be turned on and off but no power readings). Installing the ZHA integration then proved to be easier, no additonal daemon needed and all sensors were visible.

Probably though zigbee2mqtt is the way to go. I’ll try it if ZHA gives me issues.

Installation (for deconz)

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As usual, on home assistant os all is done out of the box, for us home assistant core users we need to install the zigbee middleware (the gateway) ourselves. The required software is called ‘deconz’, no standard package is in the repositories for raspbian so we need to add the phoscon repository to apt. (alternatively a docker image is also available).

0. plug in the device. (it is recommended to use an usb extension cable to avoid interference, I did not yet do this).

1. follow the instruction at phoscon for installing the driver.

(unfortunately all the gui tools are also installed you can expect a lot of dependencies)
start up the daemon:

after installation:
root@raspberrypi:/etc/mosquitto# systemctl list-unit-files | grep conz
deconz-gui.service                     disabled
deconz-homebridge-install.service      disabled
deconz-homebridge.service              disabled
deconz-init.service                    disabled
deconz-update.service                  enabled
deconz-wifi.service                    disabled
deconz.service                         disabled

enable deconz and start it:
systemctl enable deconz
systemctl start deconz

new status:
root@raspberrypi:/etc/mosquitto# systemctl list-unit-files | grep conz
deconz-gui.service                     disabled
deconz-homebridge-install.service      disabled
deconz-homebridge.service              disabled
deconz-init.service                    disabled
deconz-update.service                  enabled
deconz-wifi.service                    enabled
deconz.service                         enabled

check the log for correct startup. the default port is 80.

You can now connect your browser to http://<ip_of_your_pi>:80 and you will get the web interface.

2. through the web gui, you can configure the device:

• you will be prompted for a password. set up the initial password.

• if necessary, update firmware. Go to ‘menu’ then ‘gateway’.

• in menu/gateway, click on ‘advanced’.

enable pairing mode by clicking on ‘authenticate app’.

3. link the zigbee gateway to your home assistant core: add the dconz integration.
(more info: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/deconz/)

• go to devices and configure dconz
• enter your ip, it can be 127.0.0.1 if running on the same system.
• complete the pairing process.