Reverse engineering a Zigbee device

[jared]

Hi,

You may know me from my work that I’ve done with my MiLight Controller.

I’m back at the Chinese HA products again, this time with a Zigbee device. The ultimate goal is to publish a device type that everyone can use.

So, first thing first – is there a way to view all the Zigbee data being “read” by the hub? I’m not even able to pair the device yet, and from reading through the docs, it seems I need to know the input/output clusters before I can proceed.

[Tyler]

When you pair the device you should see a zbjoin event that has all the relevant information:

If you can’t even get it to pair I’d start there. Is it ZigBee HA 1.2?

[jared]

I haven’t had success pairing it, yet. I’m not sure how to pair a device that ST doesn’t even have a device for. Ideally I would like to choose just a generic “zigbee device” and then grab its data that way.

[Tyler]

Pairing happens before we assign a Device Type Handler. If you pair a ZigBee device that doesn’t have a system fingerprint it’ll pair as a “Thing” of type “Unknown”. This way you can inspect the zbjoin event and modify your Device Type Handler appropriately.

So - step 1 is to get the device to pair. Do you have any specs that you can share? I’d recommend performing a factory reset on the device within a foot or two of your SmartThings Hub while it’s searching for a device. That usually kickstarts the pairing process.

[jared]

I’ll give that a shot.

Here’s a screenshot from the hub events list when I attempt to do the “pair”

http://imgur.com/A4yjpWL

[Tyler]

That’s unrelated.

You should see:

1. an “include search” event showing that your hub is looking for devices
2. a “zbjoin” event with all of the information about your ZigBee device
3. potentially a “Thing added” and “Thing updated” event

If you aren’t seeing #1, your hub isn’t going into pairing mode.

If you aren’t seeing #2, your device isn’t pairing to the hub at all.

Example of the whole flow:

[jared]

Alright @Tyler, thanks. I did manage to pair this sucker up. I’m not sure how I did it, but that’s for another thread.

I didn’t see the zbjoin event, but I did get this.

Should I try and re-pair?

[Tyler]

No - if you go to the Devices view you should see a Thing now. All the information should be on that page.

[jared]

Sorry to keep chain posting, I’ll eventually figure this out. Just need a nudge.

[JDRoberts]

Once you do get it paired, you can get started on the next steps. As it happens, this exact topic, onboarding a new zigbee device, was covered in a session at this year’s Samsung developers conference. That session is available on YouTube if it’s of any help.

My favorite example of someone in the community adding a previously unknown ZHA device to SmartThings is the following thread. It might also be of help.

New Zigbee Device (Securifi Key Fob)

I bought one of these with hopes of figuring out how to make it work with ST. I’ve written/modified a few device types and several smartapps, but never any zigbee ones. I’m not sure where to start. When I put the device into pairing mode, it is found almost immediately by ST. The probelm is I don’t see anything in the log. Based on reading other threads I thought that there would be something in the log to get me started on building a device type, but there’s nothing there. I’ve unpaired, re-paired a few times, but nothing changes. I’ve watched the live log as well as checking the device log Any help on where to start is much appreciated Not sure if this helps [image]

[jared]

Thanks @JDRoberts, this thread is a gold mine.

[jared]

I’ve smashed my face into the keyboard all night.

So far, from what I can tell, the device actually connects to the hub. SmartThings, however, doesn’t see it properly during the search.

Once I create a device and assign it the deviceId, I can see the device working in the live logs:

descmap: [raw:F8B003000C1805FF21F40155003914AEC1C1, dni:F8B0, endpoint:03, clusterInt:12, cluster:000C, size:18, attrInt:65285, attrId:ff05, encoding:21, value:c1c1ae1439005501f4]

So, the question is, why isn’t SmartThings pairing with my device properly?

We can even see here:

01 0104 5F01 01 04 0000 0003 0019 0012 06 0000 0004 0003 0005 0019 0012

that the device is Zigbee HA (0104)

[JDRoberts]

Tagging @johnr @erocm1231 @Sticks18

[JohnR]

We can even see here:

01 0104 5F01 01 04 0000 0003 0019 0012 06 0000 0004 0003 0005 0019 0012

Looks to me like your device is paired to the hub and its time to create a custom device type for it. There are tons and tons of examples of how to do that on this forum as well as great SmartThings documentation.

[KellyDarren]

@Jared this thread may be of some use. It relates to how to find the Zigbee ID of a device in this case an Xiaomi Zigbee Outlet Xiaomi Zigbee Outlet (Steps to Pair any Xiaomi Zigbee device!)

[jared]

Dude!! The master @DroidSector did a FANTASTIC job on the Mi Cube already! It is bad ass. [RELEASE] Xiaomi Mi Cube / Magic Controller