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Sonoff Zigbee dongle

Posted: Thursday 16 October 2025 10:51
by mvveelen
Hi,

I'm getting nowhere with getting my Sonoff Zigbee dongle getting to work on my Raspberry Pi 3B+ and even ChatGPT is running in circles.
Tried several plugins and the one that almost worked, was getting my RPi overloaded and I had to power down the RPi several times because the load was too high.

I need a simple plugin and a step by step manual for installing the plugin. I have a RPi with Bookworm. Who can help me with a tutorial I didn't try yet? And using Docker is something that goes beyond my knowledge unfortunately. So, n00b instructions are required.

I was using a Miami gateway for years, but made the mistake to reset it. The Sonoff Zigbee stick I had already lying around for 2 years.....

Hopefully someone can help me out, so I can use the switches again this evening.

Re: Sonoff Zigbee dongle

Posted: Thursday 16 October 2025 17:35
by waltervl
It is important to know what Sonoff dongle you have P or E as that defines the settings you have to do later in the configuration: P use Texas Instruments ZNP) or E use Silicon Labs EZSP.
Then I would follow the manual install for Zigbee4Domotiz here: https://zigbeefordomoticz.github.io/wik ... g-on-linux
Take note on the note as you run on bookworm...
sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt
Note : With Debian 12 Bookworm, you have to add –break-system-packages at the end of the previous command line. Be careful to take the two dash at the beginning.

Re: Sonoff Zigbee dongle

Posted: Thursday 16 October 2025 18:20
by mvveelen
Thanks, it's the E-version and I upgraded the firmware this afternoon. I was able to connect 1 switch and wanted to ad that to Domoticz. Halfway, something went wrong and I'm getting errors all the time and also the Raspberry becomes unreachable. So I'm installing everything new on another USB drive and upload the backup from last night to be able to continue from scratch. I might decide to get rid of all Zigbee switches and start using another protocol. Why does it have to be so difficult....

Re: Sonoff Zigbee dongle

Posted: Thursday 16 October 2025 19:48
by waltervl
Adding one switch should not give those issues.
But you have to look at your log what is giving that much issues. What errors do you get as those could give indication s what is wrong....

The zigbee4domoticz user interface shows a graph on how many zigbee messages it sees over the zigbee network. For me with 39 devices it is about 1 message per second and sometimes a peak

If you are using MQTT you have to check your settings. Perhaps you are creating a MQTT loop somewhere?

Re: Sonoff Zigbee dongle

Posted: Thursday 16 October 2025 20:14
by mvveelen
Thanks for your swift reply, but I got numerous errors and at first glance it looked like the DB was corrupt or so. I now have another thumb drive installed and almost everything up and running again. I will first fix this and when that's done, I will try to find out what is happening with the previous thumb drive/installation. But I need help with getting this Zigbee2MQTT working for my 10 devices.

Re: Sonoff Zigbee dongle

Posted: Thursday 16 October 2025 20:33
by waltervl
Ah, Ok so you went the zigbee2mqtt way....
Did you use the plugin (not advised) or the MQTT Auto discover gateway?
And there is an instruction how to install it on the Domoticz wiki. Be sure you just follow it correctly and not forget a step or think you are smart and do something different. :-) And use the docker way for this, the other installation methods are or more complex or not stable (snap)
https://wiki.domoticz.com/Zigbee2MQTT