Tradfri Wallplug Integration via ZigBee Binding?

Add-ons Bindings
1

Hi,
I need help as i recently started to play with Zigbee, after quiting with WaveShare Xbee i now bought a CC2531 Stick that already has the firmware correctly setup and Openhab Zigbee binding goes online so i guess the coordinator part is fine.

As i only have the Tradfri Outlet as a first end device i wanted to connect it. but i failed as the outlet has no button like zwave devices have, so i tried various setups but can someone tell me how to bring this device into my zigbee network?

Does this work at all…zigbee binding + tradfri directly without any intermediate software parts whatever…

Many Thanks Norbert

2

I’d suggest to read the device manual, or do a search online on how to reset the device. Typically, you should put the binding into pairing mode, then reset the device within 10 to 20 seconds.

I can’t comment on this device, but in general, yes, Tradfri devices should work with the ZigBee binding.

3

Thanks Chris,

When you say “pairing” do you mean that i use the “Discovery started for binding Zigbee…” function in Habmin ? I tried this already (like with zwave) but nothing shows up in the inbox.

Its Ikea - so manual is rather limited and does not really provide generic information that would help me a lot. but will try other zigbee devices soon. Do you know is Xiaomi WaterAlarm supposed to work?

Regards

4

@chris
Its strange - now found in a forum the hint that a small hole is in the case of the wall plug that enables pairing by pressing 10secs…fine now i see a new " Unknown ZigBee Device 000D6FFFFED186B8" device. BUT it shows only “LEVEL Control” as a potential channel, which seems to be a dimmer??? How can that be? Is this wall plug not yet supported. i was pretty sure it would be as Ikea HW is cheap and lots of people already have these items… Thanks for helping me! Norbert

EDIT: haha, its funny - i now set up the wallplug (which should go ON OFF) as this Level Control item and it has the as expected Slider and moving this toZERO turns the wallplug OFF and any other level 1 to 100% turns it on, so somehow it works, but i cannot believe that it should be like that???

It has the following properties, if relevant (btw. i’m on M1)

|hardwareVersion |1|
|---|---|
|modelId |TRADFRI control outlet|
|vendor |IKEA of Sweden|
|zigbee_datecode |20180828|
|zigbee_devices |[]|
|zigbee_lastupdate ||
|zigbee_logicaltype |ROUTER|
|zigbee_neighbors |[{"joining":"UNKNOWN","address":"0","depth":"0","lqi":"132","macaddress":"00124B000FE730F2"}]|
|zigbee_networkaddress |3798|
|zigbee_powerlevel |FULL|
|zigbee_powermode |RECEIVER_ON_IDLE|
|zigbee_powersource |MAINS|
|zigbee_powersources |[MAINS]|
|zigbee_routes |[{"next_hop":"0","destination":"0","state":"INACTIVE"},{"next_hop":"0","destination":"0","state":"ACTIVE"}]|
|zigbee_stkcompliance |22|
|zigbee_stkversion |98|
|zigbee_zclversion |3|
5

Presumably the device is reporting that it is a dimmer, and that it’s supporting a level control service.

The binding doesn’t generally provide support for individual devices. It interrogates the device to identify what services it supports, and then dynamically provides channels based on these services. The binding has the facility to manually define how a device looks, but I prefer to avoid doing this as it becomes a big task to maintain - this is what ZWave does, and we have a large database of devices that needs to be kept up to date.

The dynamic system is much better, but if the device is not reporting its services correctly, then it does mean that things will be defined incorrectly and you will need to work around this.

In this case, I suggest you just use the Switch with this channel and it should work fine.

6

Thanks for the clarifications. Generally i fully agree that taking what the devices suggests to be - makes it much easier to maintain - zwave is a huge effort for you i’m sure - not even thinking about different firmware versions,…

I just found a similar HA discussion with the same issue, looks like they keep devices in a DB - so they changed it, for myself its fully OK to simply take 0 and 100% to make it work, i guess (did not check yet to use it as a switch).

Still i’m curious to check what also the HA guys discussed and i thought by myself - what if the OUTLET is internally a swichtable dimmer, so whatever light you bring to it - would be dimmed based on the slider…

Regards Norbert

7

We can also do this - the binding supports such a system, but I’m against doing this unless it’s really needed as it then must be maintained. I don’t think this situation really warrants having a static thing type defined since as far as I can tell it is perfectly usable as it is - just use a switch item only - the binding will work fine like this.

The automatic detection of devices is much nicer with many advantages for both maintainers, and users. Users can simply use ANY new device that turns up (so long as the device is of a type that the binding supports, and it correctly reports its services, which most do) - there are no binding changes required, unlike the ZWave binding which MUST be updated to support a new device at all.

I would have also written the ZWave binding like this if it was possible at the time I wrote that binding. Unfortunately dynamic generation of things was only added a year or two after the ZWave binding was written, and it’s quite a large rewrite to now do this (although it’s on my list of things to do one day!).

8

Thanks - myself suffering several times from unresolved zwave devices fully agree that the zigbee way is preferable!

Last question. right now for testing i seperated zwave from zigbee. Do you have experience / i guess - putting both on the same machine (gateway). Is there a channel that can be taken that interferes less than others…as both are in the same frequency spectrum i assume it will conflict somehow…

9

ZWave and ZigBee are on different radio frequencies, so there should not be any problem having them in the same machine. ZWave is on 868MHz/915MHz (depending on region) and ZigBee is on 2.4GHz world-wide.

ZigBee is on the same frequency as WiFi so there can be issues there in some cases.

10

oh yes. big sorry - of course they are completely different in the frequency spectrum. thanks for reminding me :slight_smile: i hope that my 868MHz radio weather station elements (jeelink) will not conflict too much (as it works great with no outage at all for a year now).