Zigbee devices not showing the channels that I'm looking for?

Setup, Configuration and Use Beginners
1

Hi everyone,

Again, I’m a new to openhab. Please be gentle. :smiley:

So I have a raspberry pi with openhabian installed.

I have a ZigBee USB Stick (Bitronvideo ZigBee, an EMBER coordinator).

Without any use of MQTT, I was able to add 2 devices to the ZigBee controler, using the ZigBee Binding (an IKEA bulb and a SMARTTHINGS motion sensor) and operate them (I was able to detect both with the ZigBee controller binding).

However, a third device (Xiaomi Aqara Human Motion Sensor), I can add it with the ZigBee binding, I see 4 channels, but the available channels aren’t anything that I need. There’s battery voltage, luminance, etc, but not the most important one: Motion detection (the reason I got this device).

According to this page, section DEVICES, it is supposed to work:

Questions:

  1. Is this where MQTT comes into play?

  2. Does the hardware need to be added directly to the ZigBee controller first? Or do I need to remove from ZigBee , prepare all mqtt and once properly configured, let mqtt detect the device? In other words, when adding the device to the system, is this a ZigBee thing or a MQTT thing?

  3. In openhabian-config I have the option to install Mosquitto broker, but I get a warning saying that (I don’t know the exact wording)

“since openhab 2.5M1, MQTT is already in the system, Mosquitto it will use the same ports and may lead to conflicts”

Should I install this anyway? I was trying with the built in Moquette

  1. MQTT also works for zwave devices? I ask this because I have one zwave device that has exactly the same problem: I successfuly add it but all I get are useless channels (a door sensor without the on/off channel or open/close switch channel).

Thanks in advance.

2

Most people here say use Mosquitto. Moquette has been abandoned.

1 Like
3

I installed Mosquitto now. That answers question 3).

Thanks @Bruce_Osborne

The rest of the questions I still need assistance.

4

Are you using the Zigbee binding or Zigbee2mqtt?

Our Zigbee binding developer is excellent.I do not use Zigbee but he develops the Z-Wave binding too.

5

My original post is not clear (i edited now).

When I say that I was able to add 2 devices to the zigbee controller I meant via zigbee binding. Those two devices work flawlessly without any MQTT envolved.

Just the 3rd device has issues, I see 4 channels, but none of them is the “motion sensor” or “presence detector” and I can’t use it in rules. There’s “luminance”, there’s “low voltage”, there’s “tampering” and one other that I don’t remember.

6

MQTT should not be needed likely. I will tag this thread for you with zigbee to attract more assistance.

1 Like
7

You can always try zigbee2mqtt and see what you think. https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/#getting-started. It may be useful as a temporary workaround if ever needed. :wink:

8

I thought you needed to flash firmware for that. That would not be very temporary.

9

Yes you will need to flash the firmware but you can also get a cheap coordinator as a backup from amazon.

10

You can close this thread.

After several try / error attempts I was able to get everything working.

No need for MQTT.

Regarding that specific device (xiaomi aqara human motion sensor) you have to use the ILLUMINANCE channel (there’s a variance in the number value whenever motion is detected).

Many thanks to everyone who shared their input.