Flashing Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus using a mac

I use, and can highly recommend, the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus with my Home Assistant server (running ZHA). However, recently I had an issue where I added a new Aqara Smart Plug to my setup, and while adding it went just fine, it didn’t reflect the power measurements in Home Assistant. This surprised me since I had added a few Aqara plugs just a few months ago. I decided to update the firmware on my sonoff zigbee dongle, which I hadn’t done before – after all, everything had been working flawlessly so far. Even though flashing the dongle turned out to be pretty easy, finding information about it wasn’t. So here are a few notes I’ve made in the process to help out anyone else facing the same task.

Checking your current firmware version

In order to find out which firmware version I was running, I opened Home Assistant > Settings > Devices and services > Zigbee Home Automation (clicked on x devices) > Zigbee Coordinator

Now, when viewing the Zigbee Coordinator, I clicked the “three dots” button under Device Info and choose “Download Diagnostics”. In this file search for "device_type": "Coordinator" and a few lines above that you will find a few lines looking like this.

"manufacturer": "Texas Instruments",
"model": "CC1352/CC2652, Z-Stack 3.30+ (build 20210708)",
"name": "Texas Instruments CC1352/CC2652, Z-Stack 3.30+ (build 20210708)",Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

The build number is what you are looking for (20210708) in this example.

Updating the firmware (using a mac)

Before you follow the link to the guide, let me quickly share what I did. First off, make a backup of your Zigbee ZHA Coordinator, just in case. I opened Home Assistant > Settings > Devices and services > In the Zigbee Home Automation, click configure. Under Network Settings you’ll see a button saying Download Backup.

Now, at this point, I powered down my linux server. I then unplugged the Zigbee dongle, and took it over to my macbook, followed this guide by Dennis van Dalen, and was done in about 2 minutes. I plugged the dongle back into my server, powered it up, and everything was up and running again.

Did it solve the issue?

It did, but, not instantly. So Home Assistant was up and running again, everything worked as before. But in order to get the power readings from the plug, I did have to remove the plug from ZHA, and re-add it. Because I gave it the same name, the automations I had created for it just kept on working. Perfect!

Here are some other posts you may like

Tesla Autopilot 2.0 vs. 1.0 – status

There is a question that a lot of Tesla owners are asking these days, is Autopilot 2.0 as good as 1.0 yet? At this point the two generations are pretty much equal as far as Autosteer goes – even though some other features are still lacking. Look below for what…

Tibber – the Electric power company for the future

Electric power companies, in general, are pretty much the same. Tibber however, is unlike any electricity company I had seen before. They try to utilise the data we get from smart devices, which they also sell, to save electricity, money and the environment, as well as improving comfort. It’s a…

How to see if a Tesla has AP

I see people ask about this a lot. How can you know if a car has Autopilot hardware, and if it does, what version? Even then the question remains, has it been enabled? I'll answer all those questions below. For more information about the difference between AP1 and AP2 check…