#Help transitioning from Xiaomi Gateway 3 to Sonoff Zigbee dongle

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

scarlet pelican
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Hey!
I'm using the ZHA integration with Xiaomi Gateway 3 - it's not pretty, but it works. Annoyingly, the gateway is WiFi-bound to 2.4Ghz, which, in our apartment building, has the occasional interference, so I'm looking to move away to the Sonoff Zigbee dongle.

I already have it handy, and I'm looking to now make the transition:

  • Since ZHA allows only one host, I imagine I will lose all the ZHA entities in replacing my integration? Or can they be simply migrated to a new host?
  • If I do lose them and reconnect to the new dongle, will the entity ID be identical, or do I need to go about and redo my setup for these?
  • Are there any specific recommendations for the dongle with a raspberry pi 4? I read some places suggest USB 2.0 (though the official name for the dongle says "3.0 USB Dongle Plus", so it's a bit confusing?), and others saying to use a long USB extension to ensure the dongle isn't near the rpi, but none of these seemed official.
  • Do I need to setup anything specific on my rpi before/after connecting the dongle and before migrating to ZHA? Is it a simple plug-and-play?
amber karma
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There is a "Migrate Radio" feature in ZHA, but I have no first hand experience with that.
Using a USB 2.0 connection is recommended afaik, as the signals of USB 3.0 could interfere with Zigbee. That said the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle only has pins for USB 2.0. The "3.0" portion refers to Zigbee 3.0, I assume, definitely not USB 3.0.
And yeah, it makes sense to use a USB extension cord to have a bit of distance between the raspi and the Zigbee dongle, just to be sure.
Normal linux already comes with the necessary drivers for the dongle. Depending on your exact setup, there may be some config work (I use the HA docker container, so I need to explicitly forward the dongle to the container, but if you use HAOS directly on the Pi, that shouldn't be needed)

scarlet pelican
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Thanks @amber karma, I'll give this a go!

hardy glacier
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If you live in a home with many neighbouring 2.4 GHz technologies, you need to find the ZigBee channel with the least interference. 2.4GHz WiFi, Zigbee, Thread and Bluetooth all use the same 2.4GHz frequency band.