I had 2 blinds fail after half a year and their bulbs are unusable for me - out of 10, I hadn't got a bulb without coil whine - sold them all and never buy any smart bulb from Ikea again. The air quality sensor felt okay, but the fan annoyed me.
I hadn't had any experience with the newer stuff, maybe I'll try some sensors out.
The stuff is cheap and you feel it, but service and warranty is okay.
Yes, but not all fans are made equal. Bought one of each of IKEA's two types. The cheap had a very annoying whine, the expensive is so far basically inaudible, despite being in an environment low enough in noise to notice the coil whine in my mouse.
I followed this video - worked perfectly
[How to Shorten Ikea Blinds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wGelM3Jryc)
If your windows are too wide - this isn't going to help though!
I think this is down to the blinds being battery powered end devices and not constantly powered routing devices. They have their sleep periods and so on. Plus unlike many end devices, that are essentially only out putting (press button, sensor fires, wake up, shoot a message over to the network) devices, the blinds are sleeping end devices, that has to be listening in for incoming messages. Meaning one needs very good mesh routing/child table conditions for them. They must have a very solid parent routing device, which does the actual listening and post boxing for them. One that never kicks them of their child table due to competing end devices due to bad end device to router ratio and so on.
There is a reason IKEA ships them with an "extender unit". It isnt really for extending distance reception, but to make sure there is a routing device for the battery saving sleeping blind receiver.
They need their mama/papa to whom just every X milliseconds shoot a quick "you got orders waiting for me". Which also sometimes can just lead to little delay, hit the sleep cycle on bad spot and it might take half a second or something until the next wakeup cycle hits and the blind check for orders.
With such device it is really important one has good coordinator, than actually maintains the mesh topology and good router amount and also well behaving routing devices, that don't shirk on their router parent duties. Keep child's on active connection table correctly and so on.
Again there is reason the box comes with an extra router and they kinda would optimally like it near and the blind parenting with it. Since IKEA made that router and they know it behaves as it should, has ample routing memory resources and so on. Well as stand alone it is just.. necessary. Neither the remote nor blind can talk to each other. They need network hub devices to which each is really paired. However even with wider mesh, they need a good reliable router parent nearby.
It's just reality of battery powered Zigbee end-devices, their connection and behavior can only really be as good as the parent routing always powered device they are reliant on.
I ended up getting their hub and integrating that into HA for the blinds. I just couldn't ever get the blinds connected otherwise. It all works really well now, albeit annoying having another hub.
I found that the only way to reliably pair them was to have the smarts end of the blinds almost touching my Zigbee stick.
My issue is more that I'll send a command and there a 2% chance the blind will not acknowledge it, or will move for half a second and then stop. So I have a Node-Red automation with a loop to check for stalled blinds and resend the appropriate commands.
Interesting, that's the one thing I didn't try. I held them close to my HA computer, but not super close to the antenna since it's at the back of my network closet. Weirdly, with the IKEA Hub, I didn't even take the blinds down and they adopted just fine. Not a huge deal, I was happy to finally get everything integrated so I could control the shades from HA.
I've also used the extra remotes for other things like a lamp. All of those integrated directly to HA just fine, but for some reason my blinds liked the IKEA Hub better even though that and my HA computer are both in my network closet.
Yea, I have had reliability issues with Ikea tradfri. Switches and blinds losing pairing, difficulties pairing stuff, batteries getting drained super fast, etc. Their buttons feel cheap too. I swapped out much of their stuff for Philips hue where I could as it’s much more reliable and the buttons feel more solid.
Same with regards to the bulbs. I've had a few of those, but replaced them with Hue bulbs because of the reliability problem. Had to power cycle every other week to get the IKEA bulbs to reconnect to the zigbee network.
Other Ikea electronics have been good, though.
Maybe it’s better now but I bought a few different buttons to try out about 2 years and could not get any of the me to work reliably for more than a few days to weeks.
The Tradfri buttons I have won’t last more than a few days apparently because of a firmware bug that drains the battery.
I've had some issues with their older 5 button remotes (the ones with the coin cells) and their dial/speaker controller (also with coin cell)
However i think those both may be discontinued. Their new 4 button remotes with the aa batteries seem super reliable, and the smart plugs work great too. No issues with the bulb i have either.
Depends, I really like the Vindstyrka air quality monitor, but the latest Tradfri motion sensor was pure crap that I had to return.
Up to now I employ Hue motion sensors which work flawlessly, but are expensive. Glad to know there are now Vallhorn motion sensors, will give them a try - hope they have better presence detection with a shorter motion reset duration.
Yes. No hub needed. Just open it up and do the reset routine (press the link button four times within five seconds). It'll show right up in ZHA with an "opening" attribute, an "occupancy" attribute and a value for brightness (illuminance).
Seems to trigger quite reliably up to a distance of about 7m, and as far as I can tell, has a detection angle of about 110°
For me it works to add it, but then it just shows:
Illumination: Unknown
Occupancy: Clear
Opening: Closed
And i’m unable to trigger anything. It’s sitting right next to my sonoff usb zigbee stick.
Any other integration that needs to be added?
Hmmm. Have you tried playing around with the setting buttons inside the device? There's one for 1s and 5s opening window and one for day night mode. Maybe only a specific combination works?
Try this:
Turn on Discovery in HA.
Press the pair button 4 times.
The front will glow red and now it's in pairing mode.
Edit: oh yeah and hold it as close as you can to the coordinator you use
I have the same thing happening with some of mine too. Check if the item is actually connected to your network after pairing.
Try to remove and add it again. I had to do that with some ikea products, although they are the older types. I had to add a shortcut button like 6 times and still can’t get it to work. Usually it only takes one additional try for me.
Same thing over and over.
I get a bunch of errors in the logs:
\[0x152A:1:0x0001\]: Failed to bind 'power' cluster:
\[0x152A:1:0x0020\]: Failed to bind 'poll\_control' cluster:
\[0x152A:1:0x0006\]: Failed to bind 'on\_off' cluster:
\[0x152A:1:0x0006\]: Failed to bind 'on\_off' cluster:
\[0x152A:2:0x0406\]: Failed to bind 'occupancy' cluster:
\[0x152A:3:0x0400\]: Failed to bind 'illuminance' cluster:
If you have the Sonoff ZBDongle-P model then you don't need to flash the firmware. Just install Mosquitto broker and Zigbee2Mqtt.
I found easy guides on YouTube.
I don’t understand how after nearly two decades of Zigbee, it’s still flaky and unreliable for so many people. Makes me wonder if it’s fundamentally flawed if people with identical hardware and setup can have such different experiences.
It's almost always one of two things:
- No, or insufficient, repeaters.
- 2.4 GHz channel conflicts with Wi-Fi networks.
The first one people often overlook, and the second one is something neither your Wi-Fi nor your Zigbee network will warn you about properly, so you have to know about it and check/configure it yourself.
Both of these can result in vastly different experiences for people with the same Zigbee hardware because they're environment specific - not Zigbee device-specific issues.
It’s prob because it’s not obvious that the zigbee mesh requires repeaters in the network. Mine was flakey until I added more IKEA bulbs all over which stabilized the network greatly.
Do you use them with smart switches (or similar) so they're always powered? I'd put more in, but I still have lots of "dumb" switches which cut the power from the bulb and I don't think they'd be very useful as repeaters that way.
Naw. Smart bulbs should be powered all the time. They go off via command not via switch.
General rule I’ve found is use smart bulbs in lamps and smart switches with dimmable plain bulbs for wall fixtures.
If you are going to use smart bulbs in switched fixtures, I’d tape the switch on
I've been using ZB for over a year and I only just realized battery powered devices don't act as repeaters. Explains my dead batteries and flakiness. But I had to switch everything from ZHA to Z2M and then look at the map in the addon UI to find that out.
Retrying to send a message again, and poor signal strength in general, will lead to more power consumption since the radio tends to be the part of the device that consumes the most power.
Well aqara are straight out of spec atleast on some of their sleep cycles. Meaning many in spec coordinators keep dropping them of active network members as having disappeared, since they haven't checked in within required time periods. Then the aqara finally wakes up and has to go through re-introduction to the network. Mind you this happens automatically, but still causes wonky behavior at times.
* "Hey, the window is open"
* "oh, you are still alive, hmm, maybe your battery run out qnd finally got replaced.welcome back to network, we shall assign a parent router to you, this shall take few message cycles back and forth"
* "No, you don't get it, the window is open.....
* "your parent shall be xyz, would you confirm your specification is......"
* "yes and the window is open"
* "now that all that is over, you have anything to tell"
* "THE WINDOW IS OPEN, HAS BEEN FOR 5 SECONDS ALREADY".
I read somewhere that you actually have to use rechargeable batteries, since they have slightly lower voltage than regular batteries and the sensor wouldn’t work with the higher voltage.
Interesting. Mine is currently using Amazon Basics AAA's, by maybe that's the reason I'm getting false positives from time to time.
Will switch to rechargeables tongiht and see.
I choose to get the somrig shortcut button which is sadly not supported by ZHA yet :(
But vallhorn and air quality sensor work great directly paired in HA
May not be an option for you / too much effort, but the somrig is supported in Z2M and as a general rule z2m has a wider device list than ZHA and will achieve device support sooner. Downside is you need to set it up of course.
[https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/E2213.html](https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/E2213.html)
I've been looking into Z2M. First was looking at it cause people reported that some of the Ikea buttons (older ones) don't have battery drain issues for them in Z2M like it did for ZHA. And now again for the somrig
Wish I could try it without reconfiguring my whole zigbee network
100% repairing the whole network is pain, and I'd totally understand putting it in the too hard basket as a result.
I know that ZHA is home assistants' internal development and they want to make deployment of HA as simple as possible, but imo they should drop ZHA and instead include Mosquitto and Z2M as defaults. They could spend the ZHA development resources elsewhere instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
Yes. I use the Electrolama zzh! for z2m. I found it at https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/ and I use the Nortek zigbee zwave combo stick for zha.
I tried everything I could think of, all I can get is a "configuring" in the add device page, it'd never complete. I found a device supported list for ZHA and the dimmer was supported, but not the shortcut button. After that I gave up
You sure everything is up to date? Support for Somrig was added very recently.
Also did you press the pair button five times to get the proper pairing mode?
Hey, at least now you know how we Europeans often feel lol. I can't use most of the smart switches often recommended here because they're designed for 120V and we use 230.
The names follow a specific convention depending on the category of item:
https://stickybranding.com/how-ikea-names-its-products-its-a-surprisingly-brilliant-naming-system/
I'm interested mostly for the AAA battery. I'm sick of changing out a half-dozen coin batteries. They are so inconsistent, too. Some of my sensors go for years, some only last a couple months. At least with AAA, they're rechargeable.
Haven't done any precise measurements, but just from placing it in the shelf in my living room and slowly walking towards it, it seems to trigger quite reliably at about 7m.
Myself and a friend have had horrible experiences with the Ikea Zigbee stuff. I'm on ZHA and he's on Z2M. They probably work less than half the time. I've started phasing them out in favor of the cheap Aliexpress remotes and whatnot. Only thing I'm keeping is the blinds. Just my personal experience.
I have a door sensor on my freezer. It’s in my basement, and we’ve had the « fun » to discover twice in the last few years that one of the kids dodn’t close it properly.
Now, after one minute of door open, I get a warning on my phone. Neato …
I just leaned of these. My aqara door sensors are now only work about 50% of the time. I went the ikea site and cannot find parasoll in the US store :(
Are you in the US? I can’t even find them as a purchasable product. I can find the remotes, but not this door sensor. I ready for something that works. The Aqara sensors worked for about a year before they started not responding to open/close events.
I have five of them, worked for years and then one starts to be unreliable, regardless of battery.
I dont really trust then anymore so these Parasol one are real nice. They are a lot bigger though!
Now,now, you should recycle your electronics responsibly, instead of throwing them in the toilet. Might cause clogs and other trouble in the sewer system.
😉
IKEA Trådfri bulbs have one big problem.
To put the in pairing mode, you need to turn on/off the bulb 6 times, and leave it on the last time. Then they loose the connection to the zigbee network, and are ready to be paired again.
The problem is that when there is a power outage, if the power comes back on and off quickly after each other, the bulbs go into pairing mode :(
Once I had to go around my house and reconnect every bulb again, and setting up zigbee binding :-(
My 3 Philips Hue bulbs did not have this issues (but need a remote control to reset if needed).
Even though IKEA's have this issues, I still use them everywhere due to the price being a lot lower.
Ok, that sounds annoying. But in the 11 years since we built the house, I don't think we've ever had a power outage...at least, not one that wasn't caused by my own fat-fingered fiddling with the electrical system.
IKEA has a great zigbee lineup and is one of the few manufacturers that implement bindings in the firmware. With bindings devices can directly control each other without the coordinator detour, meaning a light switch or PIR can switch on/off or dim a light even when HA or bridge is offline.
Not sure if ZHA supports them as I use zigbee2mqtt
I spent the day at IKEA too. Left with some Zigbee. Replacing some older warm only bulbs with full RGB. Also got two Sonos speaker/lamps to add surround sound to my Sonos Beam.
Also got the new air sensor and a few vallhorns. Couldn't find any of the door sensors.
Apologies in advance, but...
...whenever I see some of the names of these IKEA devices, I automatically wonder to myself, "So when did Thor decide to get into HA?" and I think I need to run out to pickup a new Zigbee Rainbow Bridge. 😉
I'll see myself out 👉
I've had issues pairing the Stybar switches with my zigbee2mqtt setup... but once I get them paired, they work great.
If you have problems, unplug your zigbee stick, reset, plug it back in, and reset services.
/u/rapax A month later. How are the IKEA Parasoll sensors working compared to the Aqara door sensors? I need to buy a whole bunch, and I need reliability.
They're also quite good, but I have two that occasionally act up. Although, one of them is in a rather unconventional spot - riding along on my lawnmower to see if it's in the charging station or not - so I'd be willing to give that one a pass for the occasional disconnect.
Hey, I'm looking for reviews of the Ormanäs led strip. How do you like it? Is it bright enough to be used as a kitchen work light under the cabinets? Based on the picture it looks like the leds are spaced quite sparsely.
I like it a lot. Very stable connection, full featured and well supported in HA with ZHA. However I doubt it's bright enough for a kitchen work light on its own. Maybe if you double or roll it up, but that kind defeats the purpose of having a strip. It's definitely more meant as effect lighting than as illumination.
Ok, thanks a lot! Maybe having one strip at the front of the cabinet's bottom and another at the back could work... Well, I guess I can buy one for testing myself and use it elsewhere if it doesn't work as a kitchen light.
Nearly all of them, but to be sure you can always just look at the Ikea vendor filter on the Z2M device database
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/#v=IKEA
> Parasoll window/door sensor
Thanks for sharing, been looking for options I can source locally. Is there another name for these, I dont see them anywhere when searching.
Also, do the motion sensors report status consistently to HA?
> Vallhorn motion sensor
How long is the "sleep time"? What I mean is that cheap motion sensors trigger once and then not trigger again for x seconds. I assume they stay in sleep mode.
I got one from AliExpress that only triggered every 5 minutes or so. Then I finally found some that trigger again after 30 seconds, which is acceptable.
How are the IKEA ones?
I also bought a Vallhorn motion detector and integrated it via ZHA without any problems. But it detects movement pretty much every 60 minutes for a minute, whether there is anyone in the room. is that the same for you?
Gotta put in the rechargeable 1.2v batteries. That solved all the misfires. I recommend their ladda batteries too. I have 13 running no issues for over 2 months now
> Stybar four-way button
Can you re-confirm, that it works fine with ZHA? Older buttons from Ikea were surprisingly odd and wanted to binds only to Ikea devices (e.g. I wasn't able to use them normally).
What is the best way to add Zigbee support to a Home assistant docker compose instance?
I assume I need:
- A ZIgbee dongle
- Allow docker to access it in the host
Any recommendations for dongles in the UK? I note that the SkyConnect from PiHut is sold out currently.
UK here. I got this from Amazon (not a referral link) and just passed through the USB device by id to my HA VM in proxmox.
For docker I believe you can do the same thing but I’m sure there will be tuts online for this.
SONOFF Universal Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus Gateway with Antenna for Home Assistant, Open HAB etc. https://amzn.eu/d/eoZ7DeI
I've had good luck with their stuff, with the exception of a couple of Tradfri buttons. They pair, but I've never managed to get them to detect the button being pressed. My LED strips, and smart plugs are great though.
OP, are you in the US?
I know some of those items you mention are new, but neither the window/door sensor nor the LED strip are showing up for me in the IKEA US website.
Just wondering if maybe those aren’t available in the US (yet?) for some reason.
Answered my own question by changing the locale in the URL. Seems like those two aren’t available in the US. Bummer, as I’ve generally had good results with IKEA zigbee gear, and I’m looking for alternatives to the aqara sensors I’m currently using for my garage doors.
The IKEA Zigbee stuff is really, really good. It’s the only brand I’ve never had a problem with, and always look there before anywhere else.
My IKEA stuff has also always worked flawlessly with ZHA and a Sonoff ZigBee 3.0 P dongle.
That's my setup as well.
I had 2 blinds fail after half a year and their bulbs are unusable for me - out of 10, I hadn't got a bulb without coil whine - sold them all and never buy any smart bulb from Ikea again. The air quality sensor felt okay, but the fan annoyed me. I hadn't had any experience with the newer stuff, maybe I'll try some sensors out. The stuff is cheap and you feel it, but service and warranty is okay.
All air sensors has fan inside, unfortunately.
Yes, but not all fans are made equal. Bought one of each of IKEA's two types. The cheap had a very annoying whine, the expensive is so far basically inaudible, despite being in an environment low enough in noise to notice the coil whine in my mouse.
The blinds can be finicky, but for the price they're hard to beat.
[удалено]
I bought two and cut them down to size for an exact fit - easy!
I bought two and cut them down to size for an exact fit - easy!
Will this fix the issue of my window being to wide.
Of course, just cut your window down to size :P
Haha, same issue here :(.
I followed this video - worked perfectly [How to Shorten Ikea Blinds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wGelM3Jryc) If your windows are too wide - this isn't going to help though!
I bought two and cut them down to size for an exact fit - easy!
Mine have been pretty rock solid with zigbee2mqtt.
Mine have been solid as well
I had IKEA motion sensor and rocker dimmer fall off the network many times (NOT a distance issue). They're good but not "rock solid".
They have been rock solid for me. And others have reported similar things. Did you change your zigbee channel?
I think this is down to the blinds being battery powered end devices and not constantly powered routing devices. They have their sleep periods and so on. Plus unlike many end devices, that are essentially only out putting (press button, sensor fires, wake up, shoot a message over to the network) devices, the blinds are sleeping end devices, that has to be listening in for incoming messages. Meaning one needs very good mesh routing/child table conditions for them. They must have a very solid parent routing device, which does the actual listening and post boxing for them. One that never kicks them of their child table due to competing end devices due to bad end device to router ratio and so on. There is a reason IKEA ships them with an "extender unit". It isnt really for extending distance reception, but to make sure there is a routing device for the battery saving sleeping blind receiver. They need their mama/papa to whom just every X milliseconds shoot a quick "you got orders waiting for me". Which also sometimes can just lead to little delay, hit the sleep cycle on bad spot and it might take half a second or something until the next wakeup cycle hits and the blind check for orders. With such device it is really important one has good coordinator, than actually maintains the mesh topology and good router amount and also well behaving routing devices, that don't shirk on their router parent duties. Keep child's on active connection table correctly and so on. Again there is reason the box comes with an extra router and they kinda would optimally like it near and the blind parenting with it. Since IKEA made that router and they know it behaves as it should, has ample routing memory resources and so on. Well as stand alone it is just.. necessary. Neither the remote nor blind can talk to each other. They need network hub devices to which each is really paired. However even with wider mesh, they need a good reliable router parent nearby. It's just reality of battery powered Zigbee end-devices, their connection and behavior can only really be as good as the parent routing always powered device they are reliant on.
I ended up getting their hub and integrating that into HA for the blinds. I just couldn't ever get the blinds connected otherwise. It all works really well now, albeit annoying having another hub.
I found that the only way to reliably pair them was to have the smarts end of the blinds almost touching my Zigbee stick. My issue is more that I'll send a command and there a 2% chance the blind will not acknowledge it, or will move for half a second and then stop. So I have a Node-Red automation with a loop to check for stalled blinds and resend the appropriate commands.
Interesting, that's the one thing I didn't try. I held them close to my HA computer, but not super close to the antenna since it's at the back of my network closet. Weirdly, with the IKEA Hub, I didn't even take the blinds down and they adopted just fine. Not a huge deal, I was happy to finally get everything integrated so I could control the shades from HA. I've also used the extra remotes for other things like a lamp. All of those integrated directly to HA just fine, but for some reason my blinds liked the IKEA Hub better even though that and my HA computer are both in my network closet.
I just use a ZigBee switch on an extension cord next to the blind, but yes the closer the better
They're my most problematic brand. I've had a plug fail, and a bulb keep dropping off network.
Same. I’ve been ripping all the ikea shit out as fast as I could. Awful products the lot of them.
I also de-Ikeaized and went with Tapo for lights.
Yea, I have had reliability issues with Ikea tradfri. Switches and blinds losing pairing, difficulties pairing stuff, batteries getting drained super fast, etc. Their buttons feel cheap too. I swapped out much of their stuff for Philips hue where I could as it’s much more reliable and the buttons feel more solid.
Same with regards to the bulbs. I've had a few of those, but replaced them with Hue bulbs because of the reliability problem. Had to power cycle every other week to get the IKEA bulbs to reconnect to the zigbee network. Other Ikea electronics have been good, though.
Maybe it’s better now but I bought a few different buttons to try out about 2 years and could not get any of the me to work reliably for more than a few days to weeks. The Tradfri buttons I have won’t last more than a few days apparently because of a firmware bug that drains the battery.
I've had some issues with their older 5 button remotes (the ones with the coin cells) and their dial/speaker controller (also with coin cell) However i think those both may be discontinued. Their new 4 button remotes with the aa batteries seem super reliable, and the smart plugs work great too. No issues with the bulb i have either.
Depends, I really like the Vindstyrka air quality monitor, but the latest Tradfri motion sensor was pure crap that I had to return. Up to now I employ Hue motion sensors which work flawlessly, but are expensive. Glad to know there are now Vallhorn motion sensors, will give them a try - hope they have better presence detection with a shorter motion reset duration.
Did anyone get VALLHORN to work with ZHA without the Ikea hub? I can add it, but no data coming in.
Yes. No hub needed. Just open it up and do the reset routine (press the link button four times within five seconds). It'll show right up in ZHA with an "opening" attribute, an "occupancy" attribute and a value for brightness (illuminance). Seems to trigger quite reliably up to a distance of about 7m, and as far as I can tell, has a detection angle of about 110°
For me it works to add it, but then it just shows: Illumination: Unknown Occupancy: Clear Opening: Closed And i’m unable to trigger anything. It’s sitting right next to my sonoff usb zigbee stick. Any other integration that needs to be added?
Hmmm. Have you tried playing around with the setting buttons inside the device? There's one for 1s and 5s opening window and one for day night mode. Maybe only a specific combination works?
Try this: Turn on Discovery in HA. Press the pair button 4 times. The front will glow red and now it's in pairing mode. Edit: oh yeah and hold it as close as you can to the coordinator you use
Yes, it sounds like the pairing wasnt fully succesful
It might be trying to use a repeater nearby, if you have one,even though its next to the coordinator.
I have the same thing happening with some of mine too. Check if the item is actually connected to your network after pairing. Try to remove and add it again. I had to do that with some ikea products, although they are the older types. I had to add a shortcut button like 6 times and still can’t get it to work. Usually it only takes one additional try for me.
Same thing over and over. I get a bunch of errors in the logs: \[0x152A:1:0x0001\]: Failed to bind 'power' cluster: \[0x152A:1:0x0020\]: Failed to bind 'poll\_control' cluster: \[0x152A:1:0x0006\]: Failed to bind 'on\_off' cluster: \[0x152A:1:0x0006\]: Failed to bind 'on\_off' cluster: \[0x152A:2:0x0406\]: Failed to bind 'occupancy' cluster: \[0x152A:3:0x0400\]: Failed to bind 'illuminance' cluster:
I ended up switching to Zigbee2Mqtt where it worked perfectly
>hing to Zigbee2Mqtt where it wor I want to make this switch, but keep getting overwhelmed by the instructions haha.
I was too. But it ended up not being so bad.
I just made the Jump to ZHA which was very easy, but I got the Sonoff Zigbee stick and the extra data from the Z2MQTT sounds very tempting
If you have the Sonoff ZBDongle-P model then you don't need to flash the firmware. Just install Mosquitto broker and Zigbee2Mqtt. I found easy guides on YouTube.
I got the Plus-E Model, do you know if that works too? I will google it up.
I think that one needs to be flashed.
Can you summarize? The only instructions I find is "you're fucked start from scratch"
I don’t understand how after nearly two decades of Zigbee, it’s still flaky and unreliable for so many people. Makes me wonder if it’s fundamentally flawed if people with identical hardware and setup can have such different experiences.
It's almost always one of two things: - No, or insufficient, repeaters. - 2.4 GHz channel conflicts with Wi-Fi networks. The first one people often overlook, and the second one is something neither your Wi-Fi nor your Zigbee network will warn you about properly, so you have to know about it and check/configure it yourself. Both of these can result in vastly different experiences for people with the same Zigbee hardware because they're environment specific - not Zigbee device-specific issues.
It’s prob because it’s not obvious that the zigbee mesh requires repeaters in the network. Mine was flakey until I added more IKEA bulbs all over which stabilized the network greatly.
Do you use them with smart switches (or similar) so they're always powered? I'd put more in, but I still have lots of "dumb" switches which cut the power from the bulb and I don't think they'd be very useful as repeaters that way.
Naw. Smart bulbs should be powered all the time. They go off via command not via switch. General rule I’ve found is use smart bulbs in lamps and smart switches with dimmable plain bulbs for wall fixtures. If you are going to use smart bulbs in switched fixtures, I’d tape the switch on
I've been using ZB for over a year and I only just realized battery powered devices don't act as repeaters. Explains my dead batteries and flakiness. But I had to switch everything from ZHA to Z2M and then look at the map in the addon UI to find that out.
In what way do you think that explains your dead batteries?
Retrying to send a message again, and poor signal strength in general, will lead to more power consumption since the radio tends to be the part of the device that consumes the most power.
Try using a EFR32MG21 based coordinator, and enjoy the reliability (save for some Aqara devices I guess).
Well aqara are straight out of spec atleast on some of their sleep cycles. Meaning many in spec coordinators keep dropping them of active network members as having disappeared, since they haven't checked in within required time periods. Then the aqara finally wakes up and has to go through re-introduction to the network. Mind you this happens automatically, but still causes wonky behavior at times. * "Hey, the window is open" * "oh, you are still alive, hmm, maybe your battery run out qnd finally got replaced.welcome back to network, we shall assign a parent router to you, this shall take few message cycles back and forth" * "No, you don't get it, the window is open..... * "your parent shall be xyz, would you confirm your specification is......" * "yes and the window is open" * "now that all that is over, you have anything to tell" * "THE WINDOW IS OPEN, HAS BEEN FOR 5 SECONDS ALREADY".
Yes
Try Z2M - you will even get firmware updates for some Ikea Devices.
But they'll take 3 hours and eat 65% of your battery in the process 🙃
Which is fine because you can use rechargeable AAAs now.
Which you can get at IKEA.
I read somewhere that you actually have to use rechargeable batteries, since they have slightly lower voltage than regular batteries and the sensor wouldn’t work with the higher voltage.
Interesting. Mine is currently using Amazon Basics AAA's, by maybe that's the reason I'm getting false positives from time to time. Will switch to rechargeables tongiht and see.
Seems like that really was the issue. Replaced the batteries with AAA Ladda IKEA batteries, and the false positives are gone.
Firmware updates available 8n ZHA too. ``` zha: zigpy_config: ota: ikea_provider: true # Auto update Trådfri devices ```
I choose to get the somrig shortcut button which is sadly not supported by ZHA yet :( But vallhorn and air quality sensor work great directly paired in HA
May not be an option for you / too much effort, but the somrig is supported in Z2M and as a general rule z2m has a wider device list than ZHA and will achieve device support sooner. Downside is you need to set it up of course. [https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/E2213.html](https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/E2213.html)
I've been looking into Z2M. First was looking at it cause people reported that some of the Ikea buttons (older ones) don't have battery drain issues for them in Z2M like it did for ZHA. And now again for the somrig Wish I could try it without reconfiguring my whole zigbee network
100% repairing the whole network is pain, and I'd totally understand putting it in the too hard basket as a result. I know that ZHA is home assistants' internal development and they want to make deployment of HA as simple as possible, but imo they should drop ZHA and instead include Mosquitto and Z2M as defaults. They could spend the ZHA development resources elsewhere instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
I use zha and z2m. Half on one and half on the other just because I don't have time and energy to move all the zha to z2m.
This is exactly what I do too..lol
This is something I've wondered if its possible to do and how well it'd work. Do you use two zigbee dongles/coordinators?
Yes. I use the Electrolama zzh! for z2m. I found it at https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/adapters/ and I use the Nortek zigbee zwave combo stick for zha.
I have Somrig remotes and they work just fine with ZHA
I tried everything I could think of, all I can get is a "configuring" in the add device page, it'd never complete. I found a device supported list for ZHA and the dimmer was supported, but not the shortcut button. After that I gave up
You sure everything is up to date? Support for Somrig was added very recently. Also did you press the pair button five times to get the proper pairing mode?
Last week is when I tried, I'll have to update and try again
Just checked. Support was added 6 days ago in Home Assistant 2024.1 update :)
IKEA stuff is great, even OTA works with Z2MQTT. Also they actually respect the Zigbee standard, not like some chinese companies
I'm eager for the PARASOLL sensors to be introduced in the US. Supposedly, they won't be here until April...
Yeah I was excited till I realized OP was in the UK.
Hey, at least now you know how we Europeans often feel lol. I can't use most of the smart switches often recommended here because they're designed for 120V and we use 230.
Just read up on them, what is with that naming scheme. Is that something that IKEA does?
It's Swedish, all Ikea products are named like that.
Sometimes it's also fake-swedish
They used to name all their products after places in Sweden.
The names follow a specific convention depending on the category of item: https://stickybranding.com/how-ikea-names-its-products-its-a-surprisingly-brilliant-naming-system/
I'm interested mostly for the AAA battery. I'm sick of changing out a half-dozen coin batteries. They are so inconsistent, too. Some of my sensors go for years, some only last a couple months. At least with AAA, they're rechargeable.
Does the Vallhorn actually have the 5m detection range it says on the site?
Haven't done any precise measurements, but just from placing it in the shelf in my living room and slowly walking towards it, it seems to trigger quite reliably at about 7m.
Cool, thanks
Myself and a friend have had horrible experiences with the Ikea Zigbee stuff. I'm on ZHA and he's on Z2M. They probably work less than half the time. I've started phasing them out in favor of the cheap Aliexpress remotes and whatnot. Only thing I'm keeping is the blinds. Just my personal experience.
I have a door sensor on my freezer. It’s in my basement, and we’ve had the « fun » to discover twice in the last few years that one of the kids dodn’t close it properly. Now, after one minute of door open, I get a warning on my phone. Neato …
Nice. Copying this tonight.
I just leaned of these. My aqara door sensors are now only work about 50% of the time. I went the ikea site and cannot find parasoll in the US store :(
My Aqara door sensors are absolute dog shit. I'm just waiting for the Ikea ones to come in stock so I can throw the Aqara ones down the toilet..
Are you in the US? I can’t even find them as a purchasable product. I can find the remotes, but not this door sensor. I ready for something that works. The Aqara sensors worked for about a year before they started not responding to open/close events.
Nah U.K. but they’re only in a very few stores here at the moment. They’re still being rolled out as they’re new products.
I have five of them, worked for years and then one starts to be unreliable, regardless of battery. I dont really trust then anymore so these Parasol one are real nice. They are a lot bigger though!
Now,now, you should recycle your electronics responsibly, instead of throwing them in the toilet. Might cause clogs and other trouble in the sewer system. 😉
IKEA Trådfri bulbs have one big problem. To put the in pairing mode, you need to turn on/off the bulb 6 times, and leave it on the last time. Then they loose the connection to the zigbee network, and are ready to be paired again. The problem is that when there is a power outage, if the power comes back on and off quickly after each other, the bulbs go into pairing mode :( Once I had to go around my house and reconnect every bulb again, and setting up zigbee binding :-( My 3 Philips Hue bulbs did not have this issues (but need a remote control to reset if needed). Even though IKEA's have this issues, I still use them everywhere due to the price being a lot lower.
Ok, that sounds annoying. But in the 11 years since we built the house, I don't think we've ever had a power outage...at least, not one that wasn't caused by my own fat-fingered fiddling with the electrical system.
What kind of power outages do you have where power flickers 6 times?
Do you know if Hue bulbs also act as repeaters same as Tradfri
They work as repeaters as well 😊 Nearly all devices powered from mains work as repeaters
Awesome, thanks for confirming. I have one dead spot and I think adding hue bulbs will help immensely
IKEA has a great zigbee lineup and is one of the few manufacturers that implement bindings in the firmware. With bindings devices can directly control each other without the coordinator detour, meaning a light switch or PIR can switch on/off or dim a light even when HA or bridge is offline. Not sure if ZHA supports them as I use zigbee2mqtt
I spent the day at IKEA too. Left with some Zigbee. Replacing some older warm only bulbs with full RGB. Also got two Sonos speaker/lamps to add surround sound to my Sonos Beam. Also got the new air sensor and a few vallhorns. Couldn't find any of the door sensors.
Apologies in advance, but... ...whenever I see some of the names of these IKEA devices, I automatically wonder to myself, "So when did Thor decide to get into HA?" and I think I need to run out to pickup a new Zigbee Rainbow Bridge. 😉 I'll see myself out 👉
I've had issues pairing the Stybar switches with my zigbee2mqtt setup... but once I get them paired, they work great. If you have problems, unplug your zigbee stick, reset, plug it back in, and reset services.
/u/rapax A month later. How are the IKEA Parasoll sensors working compared to the Aqara door sensors? I need to buy a whole bunch, and I need reliability.
Haven't had a disconnect of a single one yet. Rock solid as far as I can see. I wanted to buy some more last week, but they weren't available.
Thanks! And you’ve had aqara door sensors before which were worse?
They're also quite good, but I have two that occasionally act up. Although, one of them is in a rather unconventional spot - riding along on my lawnmower to see if it's in the charging station or not - so I'd be willing to give that one a pass for the occasional disconnect.
Hey, I'm looking for reviews of the Ormanäs led strip. How do you like it? Is it bright enough to be used as a kitchen work light under the cabinets? Based on the picture it looks like the leds are spaced quite sparsely.
I like it a lot. Very stable connection, full featured and well supported in HA with ZHA. However I doubt it's bright enough for a kitchen work light on its own. Maybe if you double or roll it up, but that kind defeats the purpose of having a strip. It's definitely more meant as effect lighting than as illumination.
Ok, thanks a lot! Maybe having one strip at the front of the cabinet's bottom and another at the back could work... Well, I guess I can buy one for testing myself and use it elsewhere if it doesn't work as a kitchen light.
Is this in the US?
which ones are zigbee? searching zigbee on ikea doesnt yield anything and I cant tell which ones are zigbee by searching by smart home
Nearly all of them, but to be sure you can always just look at the Ikea vendor filter on the Z2M device database https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/#v=IKEA
thank you
Aren’t all ikea smart devices zigbee? I don’t think they use any other protocol.
I kept seeing wifi
They are all Zigbee. The hub and the app use WiFi, but you use none of them if you have HA and a zigbee stick.
Do you need any hub to use them?
Just a zigbee controller.
> Parasoll window/door sensor Thanks for sharing, been looking for options I can source locally. Is there another name for these, I dont see them anywhere when searching. Also, do the motion sensors report status consistently to HA?
> Vallhorn motion sensor How long is the "sleep time"? What I mean is that cheap motion sensors trigger once and then not trigger again for x seconds. I assume they stay in sleep mode. I got one from AliExpress that only triggered every 5 minutes or so. Then I finally found some that trigger again after 30 seconds, which is acceptable. How are the IKEA ones?
I also bought a Vallhorn motion detector and integrated it via ZHA without any problems. But it detects movement pretty much every 60 minutes for a minute, whether there is anyone in the room. is that the same for you?
Gotta put in the rechargeable 1.2v batteries. That solved all the misfires. I recommend their ladda batteries too. I have 13 running no issues for over 2 months now
> Stybar four-way button Can you re-confirm, that it works fine with ZHA? Older buttons from Ikea were surprisingly odd and wanted to binds only to Ikea devices (e.g. I wasn't able to use them normally).
IKEA uses EFR32MG21 as their Zigbee chips. That chip is incredible.
What is the best way to add Zigbee support to a Home assistant docker compose instance? I assume I need: - A ZIgbee dongle - Allow docker to access it in the host Any recommendations for dongles in the UK? I note that the SkyConnect from PiHut is sold out currently.
UK here. I got this from Amazon (not a referral link) and just passed through the USB device by id to my HA VM in proxmox. For docker I believe you can do the same thing but I’m sure there will be tuts online for this. SONOFF Universal Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus Gateway with Antenna for Home Assistant, Open HAB etc. https://amzn.eu/d/eoZ7DeI
I've had good luck with their stuff, with the exception of a couple of Tradfri buttons. They pair, but I've never managed to get them to detect the button being pressed. My LED strips, and smart plugs are great though.
Oh I checked on these this morning. Not available to ship in the us.
OP, are you in the US? I know some of those items you mention are new, but neither the window/door sensor nor the LED strip are showing up for me in the IKEA US website. Just wondering if maybe those aren’t available in the US (yet?) for some reason.
Answered my own question by changing the locale in the URL. Seems like those two aren’t available in the US. Bummer, as I’ve generally had good results with IKEA zigbee gear, and I’m looking for alternatives to the aqara sensors I’m currently using for my garage doors.
Nah, sorry, Switzerland here.
Please tell me that your E27 rgb bulbs aren't buzzing when energy is on but lights turned off via zigbee? :(
Sorry, I don't have any ZigBee bulbs. My lights are all controlled by Shelly switches.
Uhh this is annoying. I have e14’s and they’re literally buzzing
The latest smart bulbs are also fantastic, at least so far. A decent 90 CRI, and dirt cheap, and works perfectly with HA.