Zigbee 3.0 on CC2531 with Z-stack 3.0.1 firmware

Loading the recommended firmware on a CC2531 (found in Z-Stack 1.2.2a) allowed me to operate a Philips HUE compatible RGB LED-lamp from Jiawen.
However, this is the “old” release 1.2 of the Zigbee protocol, as far as I know.

Loading the latest firmware (found in the Zigbee 3.0 compatible Z-Stack 3.0.1 release) on the same CC2531 allowed me to find the same LED-lamp.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to operate the lamp. A Heiman power socket switch was now detected too, but also found not responding.

As major players like Ikea and Philips are moving to the Zigbee 3.0 standard, is the Zigbee binding for OpenHAB too?
Or is it working already and am I making a mistake in my configuration?

Weird, I was about to attempt the same thing, so I’ve purchased a “cc debugger” and a “usb cc2531” to give it a go with the new z stack firmware 3.0.1 from Texas Instruments.

My hope is to simplify my HUE setup down to remove my gen1 hue hub, and put in an “open” zigbee controller like this one that’s on the new unified 3.0 zigbee protocol. Hue hub is currently limited to zigbee light link devices. Most other zigbee products are zigbee HA protocol. Hue Hub added a new firmware that “enables zigbee 3.0” but unfortunately it does not see non-lighting related 3.0 items even after the update.

Let me know your process of flashing firmware, i think i have all the old and new bits downloaded from ti.com to get started once the parts arrive.

Then it’ll be up to us to assist the maintainers with getting the updated 3.0 sticks to work correctly.

Chris Jackson is the main contributor to the bindings for zigbee and zwave in openhab1&2, so hopefully it’s on his radar and may be able to point some of us in a direction to move this 3.0 support forward.

As was discussed elsewhere, this is unlikely to work and you are recommended to use the current firmware for the TI stick - not ZB3. Currently there are very few (if any!) ZigBee 3 devices available, so really it’s not necessary at this point.

Thanks for the update Chris, and thanks for all you do for the Zwave and ZigBee bindings! I see your name all over the place related to these open source projects, thanks again for the contributions over the years!

Quick question, how is it that Hue bulbs (“ZigBee Light Link”), are working with the current ZigBee binding, when the current firmware/version of the binding is related to “ZigBee Home Automation”.

In my mind ZigBee 3.0 is required to unify light link and home automation devices under one Controller, but I do notice the current binding supports Hue Light bulbs, how is this possible today with the Home Automation based firmware?

There is next to no difference in the basic communication - they both use exactly the same cluster library definitions and most ZLL bulbs available on the market at the moment will support both HA and ZLL profiles. I’ve not yet come across any that this is not true for and as you can see from the binding documentation, there’s a reasonable list of devices that are working with the binding.

There may be some limitations with remote controls, but I would not assume that a ZB-Pro device that doesn’t work now will instantly work with a ZB3 coordinator as it will still be a ZB-Pro device.

Hi, how do you update the firmware of Jiawen bulbs?

I got some one of them works bad with Philips Hue Hub.

Solutions?

I just succeeded to get Zigbee 3.0 running on a CC2531 and controlling a true zigbee 3.0 device.
More info is in another thread

Did you use the original Z-Stack firmware or the one from Zigbee2Mqtt project?

I used the Zigbee2Mqtt stack. In the linked thread above you find more details :wink:

I am running the same firmware and it is working well, but I want to warn you that it has a problem, you cannot change the channel or panId since the firmware will revert them back to default values and you might lose your network if you set it up using different values. More details here

You might be interested in this discussion about native Z-Stack 3 support in openHAB Zigbee Binding:

https://github.com/zsmartsystems/com.zsmartsystems.zigbee/issues/1226

Z-Stack 3 API support is needed in com.zsmartsystems.zigbee for new TI dongles with Zigbee 3.0 FW