SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus Gateway, Universal Zigbee USB Gateway with Antenna for Home Assistant, Open HAB etc, Wireless Zigbee 3.0 USB Adapter(1 Pack)

I want to try some ZigBee products so a ZigBee radio is necessary. Easy install to Home Assistant 8.1.Added a temp sensor, all works fine.

I bought this to integrate ZigBee devices into my Home Assistant instance. Works perfectly on Debian 10 with HA running in docker. Recommend grabbing a USB extension cable to be able to set the dongle in an optimal spot and as far from your router/any Bluetooth devices as possible.

Would I upgrade to this if I had to do it again -Yes. My previous install a ConBee II running on HA Blue (and before that an old NUC). Now why did I choose to upgrade? Well, I didn’t originally plan to - the ConBee II was working well (had nothing to compare too). Then not long ago during a routine update to HA something just broke. My regular backups didn’t help and the ConBee II decided to just refuse to communicate. So I ordered the Sonoff as a replacement. But by the time it arrived I had managed to get the ConBee II working. I was going to send this back. But, I had to open the box didn’t I?! The Sonoff is in a aluminum case and feels so nice, and the external antenna had me wondering :) so of course I had to try it out. I went in to HA and removed the 20+ devices I had connected through the ConBee II. Yeah - I was committed:) I used ZHA instead of zigbee2mqtt - why - because it was just quicker to test. So one connected (obviously ZHA just picked it up instantly). I thought let’s see how well this picks up my six halo zigbee recessed lighting. Damn. It detected them a lot faster than the ConBee II. I was a little shocked. I then went on to create a group to see how well it’d control the lights - and damn again. The thing was way more smooth and responsive than the previous setup. Note: I installed this is the same spot I had the ConBee II. I’m not saying the ConBee II sucked. Not at all, it did it’s job and I would have been as happy as I was. But after using the Sonoff - definitely glad to have upgraded. Plus it was an excuse to muck around with nerdy stuff for an afternoon. Some other things - yes I had to add all my zigbee devices again - but that really isn’t as big of a pain if you do it in stages. Secondly a lot of my automations are in Node Red and use IEEE which doesn’t change so a majority of those still worked. Overall - I wasn’t planning to upgrade, but happy I did. Now I just have to explain to the wife why it was a good idea - and that might not be as easy :)

Todo bien todo bien estoy satisfecho con el producto y el vendedor. David Arango

This was my first Zigbee device and, with that, there was a bit of learning and troubleshooting to be done. It took a bit to get everything working as expected, but I’m certain that was all from my lack of experience. Below I’ve hit on the process I went through and some of my hiccups. A couple of notes about my setup, I’m using Home Assistant with the Mosquitto Broker and Zigbee2mqtt add-ons. You should also be able to use ZHA, but that’s not the route I went. I started off by flashing updated firmware (this is entirely optional). Following a video by Mark Watt Tech, I was able to update the firmware no problem. After flashing, I plugged the Sonoff dongle into my raspberry pi that’s running HA, started Mosquitto, and then started Zigbee2mqtt. Mosquitto started just fine, but Zigbee2mqtt was complaining about not being able to start Herdsman. After a bit of digging and some testing, I figured out that it was a matter of interference. My initial solution was removing the antenna for the dongle. This worked, but isn’t ideal as it reduces the potential signal strength and range. I was able to reinstall the antenna by picking up a USB extension cable, and moving the dongle further away from from the pi and the network hardware in the area. Since the addition of the USB extension cable, this has worked great and has enabled several new automations into my smart home.

Installed on a PC that runs home assistant on a VM. Works directly out of the box. no mess, no scripting. Plug and play.

I flashed the device with Zigbee2MQTT coordinator firmware and wrote some MQTT JavaScript code to control and monitor a few devices with no issues. HomeAssistant apparently also works, but I havent tried that yet.

I run Home Assistant in my house, and had been using the Conbee2 for a few years. I always had some issues of one thing or another using that dongle and the software/firmware stack that runs that solution. The last issue had to do with the motion sensors always get activated after a reboot. I ditched that Conbee2 and gave this a try, and am very happy with it. The reception is good, and with a firmware update, this device can handle up to 50 direct children. I also bought another one to be used as a repeater (using a repeater firmware), and that repeater also performs really well in terms of signal strength and link quality. This step up in performance also has a cost-saving from that other dongle, so Im happy to have made this purchase. Note: Stick with the Plus version and not the Plus-E version. I also purchased the Plus-E version because I thought that it would have better link quality, but that was not the case (unless I had a lemon). Totally recommend this Plus version.

The good: Jan 27, 2022....It is capable of doing EXACTLY what it is intended to do. The bad: 1. It is so new that there are issues with Windows not having the USB driver support (But driver is available from Silicon Labs site with some searching) 2. Home Assistant (Running a RaspberryPI- Linux OS, can see the device no problem, but Home Assistant thinks it is a Z Wave device and tries to configure it as such. After much searching, I found that there is a supposed software fix comming to HA in Feb 2022. I was able to configure it manually in HA as a generic zigbee device with a TI (Texas instruments) zigbee radio controller. After all that, I was able to pair an odd ball Tuya motion sensor I had laying aroumd, So I have no doubts it will work just fine once all the HA software bugs get worked out. Update:P Feb 11 2022 I can confirm that the Feb software update to Home Assistant fixed the detection type issue I reported earlier. I have been running some zigbee devices in some test automatons for a few days, and everything is rock solid. No signal drop outs at all Changing my initial rating to 5 stars.

Migrated my Smart Home from the Samsung ST Hub over to Home Assistant for better privacy and control. This USB dongle for Zigbee worked flawlessly with Home Assistant (HA OS, VM Image) and supported all of the Samsung devices (outlets / multi-sensors) and Jasco light switches for a native connection to Home Assistant without requiring a separate hub/cloud integration.