ITead Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle/stick/adapter based on Silicon Labs EFR32MG21

Thanks for all of that info.

Especially useful if I was running Home Assistant :wink:

The WiFi is on 12 so I put zigbee on 11 so it should not be impacted by the AP closest. The one that serves the middle of the house is on 6 so not so good.

It is interesting what the note says about increased gain but I presume the greater directionality of the higher gain will have other issues. I keep meaning to get one of those cheap spectrum analysers. Possibly it is time to check how well these sticks are working.

Do you know how well tuned the RF on the ITead stick is?

All that specific information is independent of Zigbee implementation so it applies to OpenHAB too :stuck_out_tongue:

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It is not yet well-tuned from the discussion in https://github.com/xsp1989/zigbeeFirmware/issues/15

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This information is not necessarily updated often - it depends on the setting for the mesh update time which I think now defaults to 1 day.

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Yes, these are caused by sleeping devices - you can ignore them. The binding does this each start as it can’t be 100% sure if it was done previously, but if this configuration was done during the initialisation, then it doesn’t matter.

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FYI, other than using a very long USB extension cable with your dongle and adding electromagnetic shielding to your other devices/appliances (like your Raspberry Pi enclosure), another tip is to add electromagnetic shielding to all the parts of the dongle circuit board that is not the PBC trace antenna.

This type of electromagnetic shielding can done by first wrapping it in one layer of some kind of isolating film or tape around it and then wrapping a layer of conductive metallic tape on top of that.

Just make sure to not cover the antenna and as well as electrically grounding the conductive metallic tape to the USB jacketing (which act as a point of the electrical ground) checking it makes contact.

Rather than using just any tape lying around a better solution would probably be a good idea try using either heat-shrink tubing or kapton-tape as the isolation layer (both types are widely available online).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-shrink_tubing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapton

Also, rather than using any metallic tape, suggested consider buying conductive copper tape (checking that the adhesive/glue on the metallic tape really is a “conductive” variant as “non-conductive” variant also exist, as then it should be easy to ground that conductive tape by just wrapping part of the USB mantel/jacketing as the point of the electrical ground). Tip is to just search for “conductive metal tape”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrically_conductive_adhesive

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_tape

…once I get around to this myself I probably do it overkill style; i.e.:

  1. First wrap a layer of Kapton-tape (no need to touch USB mantel, and making sure not to cover the PCB trace antenna on the board),
  2. Then wrap a layer of conductive metallic tape, (that needs to touch USB mantel/jacketing, and making sure not to cover the PCB trace antenna on the board).
  3. Lastly heat-shrink tubing over everything (here you could probably choose if you also want to cover PCB trace antenna or not).

Again, be sure to touch USB to ground copper-tape but not to cover the tip of the dongle/stick circuit board which has PCB trace antenna!

Reference:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_shielding

PS: If you are using a Raspberry Pi or other single-board-computer with wired Ethernet and you do not need to use its WiFi or Bluetooth then you can also add a layer of electromagnetic shielding to its enclosure as well (or just buy a metal case for it).

FYI, ITead just announced an upcoming “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus” based on TI CC2652P:

https://community.openhab.org/t/itead-sonoff-zigbee-3-0-usb-dongle-plus-based-on-texas-instruments-cc2652p-coming-soon/126738

I understand ITead only went with CC2652P instead of Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 for this “Plus” dongle version because of the current silicon chip shortage (which Silabs parts suffered for more than most).

Hopefully, we will also see ITead release a new fixes revision of their cheaper Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle with proper RF shielding and either corrected PCB antenna design or better yet a ceramic chip antenna.

As we know, ITead’s existing ‘non-Plus Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle’ is based on Silabs EFR32MG21 SoC which is just as powerful but sadly was proven that ITead’s first Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle PCB board revision had a badly designed integrated PCB antenna and no electromagnetic shielding which caused huge issues, and to this date, it has been listed as “out-of-stock” since after the initial batch was sold.

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Thanks for sharing

FYI, ITead has now released Silabs EmberZNet 6.10 (v6.10.3) firmware for their EFR32MG21 dongle:

https://github.com/xsp1989/zigbeeFirmware/tree/master/firmware/Zigbee3.0_Dongle

https://github.com/xsp1989/zigbeeFirmware/issues/18

xsp1989 also announced the good news is that a router firmware “will be released soon” (so probably).

Hi Hedda,

short feedback also from my side.
Flashed it → Everything is still working :slight_smile:

BR
/Franz

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Do you have the zigbee routing and neighbour info in the UI for the devices?
These seems to have gone missing for me on the previous latest firmware…
Will try the latest firmware asap.

Hi Nils,
Where can I find that information?
I just updated because I‘ve started from scratch.
BR

@NilsOF

Have you updated the mesh? By default this is only done by the binding once oer day.

Yes, I have. I even tryed every hour.
I see @FranzS have [] for these values…

Yesterday I noticed two of my wallplugs was offline, so I deleted them and included them again.,( these are at the limit of my existing mesh)
Suddenly these got neighbour
Information… so, I do not know yet where it goes wrong.

If you really want to try and work things like this out, then I’d really suggest using debug logging. Without this it’s really impossible to know.

Also, just because the binding doesn’t show this information does not necessarily mean there is any issue with the mesh network routing. To reduce network activity, the binding doesn’t request this too often as it can impose a huge load on the system.

Everything is working fine, so I guess all is OK under the hood.
I will of course enable debug logging, I just want to limit the possibilities first.
I do not see this on any of my Bitronvideo sticks, and @FranzS do not have routing and neighbour info on his Itead stick either.
I will see if I can replicate this on a smaller mesh.

@NilsOF , now it’s shown

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FYI; Zigbee Router firmware for EFR32MG21 adapters has now been released by xsp1989 on GitHub.

From readme it sounds tested with ITead Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle and an SM-011 based USB adapter.

The same “SM-011 V1.0” Zigbee radio module design by CoolKit Technologies is also used inside some Zigbee gateways/hubs like the popular ITead Sonoff ZBBridge and ZB-GW03 eWeLink Ethernet Zigbee Gateway sold by EACHEN and SmartWise, so could perhaps be that the same Zigbee Router firmware could maybe also be used on the SM-011 Zigbee module in all or some of those products as well?

https://github.com/xsp1989/zigbeeFirmware/tree/master/firmware/Zigbee3.0_Dongle/RouterForDongle

https://github.com/xsp1989/zigbeeFirmware/blob/710a60451f6631cad46f5d5107b65198558709c3/firmware/Zigbee3.0_Dongle/RouterForDongle/README.md

https://github.com/xsp1989/zigbeeFirmware/issues/16

https://github.com/xsp1989/zigbeeFirmware/issues/2

ops, wrong thread, meant to post here → ITead’s “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus” (model “ZBDongle-E”) based on Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 +20dBm radio MCU now sold for $19.99