ConBee II firmware update via Home Assistant / ZHA

By | 23 Mar 2024

I’m using a ConBee II Zigbee stick by Dresden Elektronik but switched from their own Phoscon/deCONZ software to the Home Assistant ZHA integration.

While I didn’t have any issues with my few Zigbee devices, today, I’ve noticed that there’s a newer firmware available for my ConBee stick. Usually, the firmware update is handled by the deCONZ software – which I’m not using anymore. Also, there’s a dedicated firmware update tool for Windows – which I’m also not using anymore.

However, their update instructions mention the use of Docker on Home Assistant. Which sounds exactly like the thing I need.

The instructions are compiled in the Home Assistant Forums and boil down to:

  1. Disable anything that uses the ConBee II. The forum post says deCONZ, in my case this means the ZHA integration. Settings –> Devices & Services –> Zigbee Home Automation –> ︙–> Disable
  2. Make sure you’ve enabled SSH access to the host via port 22222 or use the Advanced SSH & Web Terminal with safe mode disabled to connect to the base operating system
  3. Run this command:
    docker run -it --rm --entrypoint "/firmware-update.sh" --privileged --cap-add=ALL -v /dev:/dev -v /lib/modules:/lib/modules -v /sys:/sys deconzcommunity/deconz
  4. Follow the instructions. When it asks for the filename to use or download, you can find all available firmwares here. Only type the filename, not the whole URL – in my case this was: deCONZ_ConBeeII_0x26780700.bin.GCF . Don’t panic during the firmware update. One step only ran up to 43% and then aborted, but it was automatically retried and finished successfully on the second try. If you don’t get a green “success” message, check all steps and try again. Also check the troubleshooting instructions.
  5. Once you’re done, delete the Docker image to free up the space:
    docker image rm deconzcommunity/deconz
  6. Now you can enable the ZHA integration again.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Your post must include a link to this post.

How does this work?
Write a response on your own website and include a link to this post. Then submit your response’s URL here. Your response may appear here after moderation. To update or remove it, edit or delete your original post and submit the same URL again. Learn more about Webmentions.