Before connecting my ZigBee dongle to Home Assistant OS (HAOS), I decided to upgrade its firmware first. While this step isn’t strictly necessary, I wanted to take my time, learn the process, and set things up right rather than rushing through. So, onto the firmware upgrade…
After some research, I found that there are generally two ways to handle this: using the Flash Programmer from Texas Instruments or going with a Python script.
I started with the Flash Programmer, which seemed like the easier, more direct route. Unfortunately, that didn’t pan out for me. I ran into errors while trying to flash it, and it took a while to get the right drivers on my Windows system to recognize the dongle. In the end, it just didn’t work.
So, I moved to plan B – the Python script. Following BeardTinker’s tutorial on “Flashing Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle plus” got me up and running in no time. He goes through the steps clearly, so if you’re attempting the same, I’d recommend his guide.
To reduce any interference with my Raspberry Pi’s onboard WiFi, I also grabbed an extension cable to place the dongle a bit further away. I plan to switch over to a local Ethernet setup eventually, but for now, this setup is pretty basic. There are still a few settings to tweak, so I’ll be diving back in soon to smooth things out.
What do you think?