Domoticz

Hi all,
I'm new with Domoticz and on this forum. I'm trying to get a monitor system working on a yacht and encounter some difficulties.

History:
I had an initial setup but that setup eventually completely froze-up after installing the ZigbeeDomoticz plugin so I concluded it was time for a restart and reconfigured Raspberry and domoticz again from scratch. As this system is 'clean' I decided to start with the Zigbee installation to prevent any other disturbing/conflicting code (you never know).

Situation:
first
I installed the newest image on a 4b Raspberry, performed an update and next installed a fresh an up-to-date Domoticz install including all the phyton updates and so on.
I followed the instructions according this webpage on the official Domoticz website. https://wiki.domoticz.com/Raspberry_Pi
As part of the additional actions I also completed the 'Persistent USB Devices' guide to install the Sonoff Zibee 3.0 USB dongle Plus dongle.
[reading the topic 'sonoff dongle -P vs -E?' elswhere on this forum I concluded that despite the info provided in the ZigbeeDomoticz wiki the chipset should be SiliconLabs based an not TexasInstrments, This is info for later]
So far no issues.

second
I Installed the Domoticz Plugins Manager (https://github.com/stas-demydiuk/domoti ... ns-manager) as that would help me on my third task installing the ZigbeeDomoticz plugin. This was a bit challancing thanks to the changed github authorisation process that forced me to install GH on the Raspberry first and aquired generating a authorisation key.
But it all succeeded and so far no issues

third
I followed the wiki zigbeefordomoticz. step 1 'Plug Installation' instruction and with the PluginsManager that is a piece of cake as the plugin is listed so just a view clicks and it's installed.
I hope ?!

fourth
Step 2 'Plugin Settings' I was able to install/activate the ZigbeePlugin in Domoticz via Domoticz>Setup>Hardware and once I added the hardware it showed in the list and I received the popup message that the hardware was installed and decices should be visible in Domoticz>Setup>Devices........and....... that is not the case: they don't show in the devices list.

PROBLEM
Despite trying various options in the hardware configuration (ie different Coordinator model, see remark under first) the devices will not be created.
note: as for authenticaion (APIbase URL) there is none as being off-line on a yacht there is not much risk for external access. it;s a local LAN without contious internet access.

What went wrong? Who can guide me in the right direction?
Any suggestion and guidance is welcome.

Thanks Jan-Willem


printscreen
hardware page Domoticz
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BfjD-r ... drive_link

UPDATE:
I checked the log and that gave some good information:

2025-01-03 14:58:45.122 Error: Zigbee for Domoticz (via Sonoff): Looks like aiohttp python module is not installed (error: The 'aiohttp' distribution was not found and is required by the application). Make sure to install the required python3 module
2025-01-03 14:58:45.122 Error: Zigbee for Domoticz (via Sonoff): Use the command:
2025-01-03 14:58:45.122 Error: Zigbee for Domoticz (via Sonoff): sudo python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

however the suggested command doesn't work anymore (see below the respons)

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ sudo python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
error: externally-managed-environment
× This environment is externally managed
╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try apt install
python3-xyz, where xyz is the package you are trying to
install.
If you wish to install a non-Debian-packaged Python package,
create a virtual environment using python3 -m venv path/to/venv.
Then use path/to/venv/bin/python and path/to/venv/bin/pip. Make
sure you have python3-full installed.
For more information visit http://rptl.io/venv

Checking the website suggested I learned that this is due to the new Raspberry bookwork distribution

Bookworm changes to pip installation
In older versions of Raspberry Pi OS, you could install libraries directly into the system version of Python using pip. Since Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, users cannot install libraries directly into the system version of Python

On this page https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentati ... spberry-pithere is some explanation how this should be done and although I do understand the major picture my knowledge of software, phyton, linux and raspberry is not enough to know how yo alter this for domoticz to solve the problem.

Who does?

Thanks Jan-Willem

Would advice to install zigbee2mqtt in docker container.
Have a look at the domoticz wiki for instructions how to install docker and mqtt. This is explained in the zwave2mqtt page. Just ignore the zwave part and continue with zigbee2mqtt.

The Python z4d plug-in of pipiche works like a charm. Don’t use the far-too-old and hardly maintained plugin manager. Follow the instructions of pipiche on https://zigbeefordomoticz.github.io/wik ... ation.html to the letter (don’t forget any listed point . ). I have the same Zigbee dongle and my setup is rock stable using the z4d plugin. No docker overhead.