Zigbee Coordinator SMLIGHT SLZB-06P7 with Openhab Zigbee Binding

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1

I have an SMLIGHT SLZB-06P7 Zigbee coordinator. I just can’t get this device to connect via the OpenHAB Zigbee binding. Should this coordinator work with the Zigbee binding? Has anyone had any experience with this?

2

I don’t have experience with this specific coordinator but if it works anything like the HomeSeer Z-Net Pro which I just set up, it currently won’t work with the Zigbee binding. I ran into two problems. You may only run into one of these or the problem may be something else:

  1. There is a long running bug in the Zigbee binding that makes it not work with tcp:// nor rfc2217:// connections to the serial port of the device for Ember based coordinators (which seems to be the most common chipset). I was able to get past that error by setting up socat to make the device appear as a local serial connection instead of remote. There are lots of tutorials and examples on the forum.

  2. The firmware on the chipset was version 14 and the binding only supports up to version 13. This could be dealt with by downgrading the firmware but I wasn’t able to find firmware for my device to do that with. You may not have this problem and if you do you may be able to downgrade the firmware. I’m told there is nothing functionally different, it’s just a refactoring of the API.

In the end, I set up Zigbee2MQTT. I’d like to get back to using the Zigbee binding eventually so I’ve put a watch on the related issues. But for now Zigbee2MQTT with Home Assistant turned on and the Home Assistant binding on the openHAB side works pretty well.

Note, the Z-Net Pro also has a Z-Wave controller on it. The rfc2217 connection to the Z-Wave controller port works just fine.

3

That uses the CC2652P7 Zigbee 3.0 chip which is not listed in the Zigbee bindings readme. To put it bluntly and simply, only buy a EMBER chipset that has high ram and hardware flow control support. The dev that writes the binding uses ember, so it will be best tested and supported… See SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus | ZBDongle-E

The linked one above has external antenna, shielded case, hardware flow control support and High ram.

Make sure it is the ZBDongle-E model and not the P version.

Lastly, make sure you get a USB male to female lead to move the dongle further away from your device if you are using any USB3 devices. There is a known issue with USB3 that creates RF noise, so moving the dongle away from your server will help greatly. This issue is not openHAB’s, it is a hardware issue of USB3.

4

Thanks for the informationes. I’d like to connect the Zigbee coordinator via Ethernet. Do you perhaps have a recommendation for a coordinator connected to ethernet?

5

Use what you already own and try using zigbee2mqtt

The zigbee binding of openHAB does not have anywhere near the amount of work arounds and hacks that have been coded into that project to support a wider range of products.

If you want to use the zigbee binding then you should use an EMBER chipset. If you do want to place a EMBER based chipset over ethernet then I believe there is a way to use ser2net to turn a com/serial port into a port you can send over your ethernet. Not sure how well it would work if timings are critical. There are also hardware devices to do it as well but no idea if they would work.

You already have a SMLIGHT SLZB-06P7 so is there a reason why you dont just use zigbee2mqtt?

6

I have a SLZB-06 and I use zigbee2mqtt and it works well.
I have been using it for years and no problems at all.