Zigbee devices going offline, what am I doing wrong?

[plain atlas]

I'm trying to set up some Zigbee sensors at my parent's house and I bought one of the Smlight SLZB-06M things and a Third Reality temp sensor to start with. I got the SMLight integration installed and the Zigbee Home Automation integration installed and then powered on the sensor. Everything just worked without me doing anything. For about 6 hours and then the sensor just went offline and nothing I could do would bring it back.

I thought maybe it was a dud and so I bought another sensor from Sonoff and when I pulled out the insulator from the battery, everything linked up like butter.. Until about 6 hours later when it just left the chat.

Now I'm thinking that I'm doing something wrong, but I can't find anything about this specific issue.

I've been using Home Assistant for a couple years now for myself to I'm new to Zigbee.

[hard spear]

Hello @plain atlas,
Do some reading here on working with Zigbee.
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/the-home-assistant-cookbook-index/707144#p-2856943-zigbee-20

[buoyant yoke]

I had this same issue with the same adaptor. I didn't really need it to use ethernet so I tried switching to USB mode. The one disadvantage is that it makes software updates for the module a bit more tricky. I think I can just switch back to ethernet mode for the updates temporarily. No disconnect issues with USB connection.

[rapid burrow]

Hi, I use Zigbee2MQTT with exactly the same Smlight hub instead of ZHA and works like a charm, at least 50 devices connected for months.

[buoyant yoke]

On the version of the software I have, the button on the module toggles between ethernet and usb mode.

[rapid burrow]

And I use it via ethernet connection. No problems until now

[buoyant yoke]

Are you using the ember driver?

[buoyant yoke]

I think mine was working OK with ethernet until I did the update that required switching to the ember driver.

[rapid burrow]

Sorry, first time I hear about that driver, and I have the system and the devices updated, afaik

[rapid burrow]

This is the info that appears in the HA device

SLZB-06
por SMLIGHT
Firmware: core: v2.9.4 / zigbee: 20240710

[buoyant yoke]

This had to be set in my zigbee2mqtt configuration.yaml (not the main one, the one nested in this folder)
adapter: ember
baudrate: 115200
rtscts: false

This was under serial:

[rapid burrow]

No idea about that, I'm a programmer, and you know, if it works, don't touch it 😅

[buoyant yoke]

I'm a bit curious. Can you look at your configuration.yaml file in the zigbee2mqtt folder and just tell me what adapter is set to?

[rapid burrow]

Adapter: zstack

[buoyant yoke]

OK. That confirms it. You are on an old version. Nothing wrong with this. If you want to continue to use ethernet, I would not update. When you update, things stop working until you switch to ember and then it only works for about 6 hours before you need to restart it. If you do want to update eventually, you can switch to using it in USB mode and that fixes the issue with the new firmware.

[rapid burrow]

😱

[buoyant yoke]

I suspect that eventually a new version will eventually come out that fixes ethernet with ember.

[rapid burrow]

Thanks for the advice

[plain atlas]

So it's the SMLight hub that's currently in a state of broken because of a software problem? Lovely.

[buoyant yoke]

Well, it's at least usable if you can switch to USB. This works for me and it removes one device from my network since it no longer registers as a network device.

I also set up an automation that attempts to restart it if it loses connection.