Zigbee things only work on a second click

[evert]

At home I have a Webthings gateway (on raspberry pi). This pi has a zigbee adapter, and I have a couple of lights and switches.

When I click any 'thing' it typically does not respond. It almost feels like it takes a few minutes after interacting with it to 'wake up', after which they do work when turning on/off. This is very reliable, so when I use the gateway, I:

1. Click the thing (nothing happens)
2. Wait 30s - 1minute
3. Click it again (it now turns on)

This is a bit frustrating, but it also means that my scheduled things (like turning on a light at a certain time of the day) typically doesn't work. My theory is that the events trigger the switches one, and then doesn't' try again after the 'wake up'.

I dusted off my Pi recently after not having used it for 10ish months, but I don't think this was ever an issue before.

This appears in my logs:

2021-11-08 16:21:11.223 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter: /home/pi/.webthings/addons/zigbee-adapter/lib/driver/conbee.js:338
2021-11-08 16:21:11.223 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter:                 value = value.toString(16).padStart(8, '0');
2021-11-08 16:21:11.224 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter:                               ^
2021-11-08 16:21:11.225 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter: 
2021-11-08 16:21:11.226 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter: TypeError: Cannot read property 'toString' of undefined
2021-11-08 16:21:11.227 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter:     at ConBeeDriver.dumpParameters (/home/pi/.webthings/addons/zigbee-adapter/lib/driver/conbee.js:338:31)
2021-11-08 16:21:11.227 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter:     at ConBeeDriver.run (/home/pi/.webthings/addons/zigbee-adapter/lib/driver/index.js:662:26)
2021-11-08 16:21:11.228 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter:     at ConBeeDriver.waitTimedOut (/home/pi/.webthings/addons/zigbee-adapter/lib/driver/index.js:719:22)
2021-11-08 16:21:11.229 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter:     at ontimeout (timers.js:436:11)
2021-11-08 16:21:11.230 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter:     at tryOnTimeout (timers.js:300:5)
2021-11-08 16:21:11.231 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter:     at listOnTimeout (timers.js:263:5)
2021-11-08 16:21:11.231 ERROR  : zigbee-adapter:     at Timer.processTimers (timers.js:223:10)
2021-11-08 16:21:11.246 INFO   : Plugin: zigbee-adapter died, code = 1 restarting after 30000

[benfrancis]

Thanks for the bug report @evert.

Some Zigbee devices do go to into sleep mode, but it's usually battery powered devices rather than mains powered devices which do that.

The error looks like there might be a bug in the Zigbee adapter which is worth investigating so I've moved the issue to the zigbee-adapter repository.

It might help if you provide the model numbers of the devices you're using as this may be difficult to reproduce.

[evert]

Some Zigbee devices do go to into sleep mode, but it's usually battery powered devices rather than mains powered devices which do that. The error looks like there might be a bug in the Zigbee adapter which is worth investigating so I've moved the issue to the zigbee-adapter repository.

Yeah my intuition is that this is not a sleep issue, especially since it switches to a 'broken' state relatively quickly after the plugin is restarted. Also worth noting that this used to never be a problem, and I've been a Webthings Gateway user for 2ish years.

The dongle is a Conbee II, this is my output from usb-devices:

T:  Bus=01 Lev=03 Prnt=03 Port=02 Cnt=02 Dev#=  8 Spd=12  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 2.01 Cls=02(commc) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=1cf1 ProdID=0030 Rev=01.00
S:  Manufacturer=dresden elektronik ingenieurtechnik GmbH
S:  Product=ConBee II
S:  SerialNumber=DE1963954
C:  #Ifs= 2 Cfg#= 1 Atr=80 MxPwr=100mA
I:  If#=0x0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=02(commc) Sub=02 Prot=01 Driver=cdc_acm
I:  If#=0x1 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=0a(data ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=cdc_acm

If there is a way I can assist with this, let me know! It makes webthings very hard to use right now, because a lot of what I do is based on events & timers.

[evert]

So I've started hacking in the conbee.js file and I managed to stop it from crashing. Probably entirely in a bad way, maybe by ignoring an underlying problem.

There are 2 places in conbee.js where there's a block like

if (paramId == C.PARAM_ID.SCAN_CHANNELS) {
  value = value.toString(16).padStart(8, '0');
}

This fails because in my case value is sometimes undefined. I changed this to:

if (paramId == C.PARAM_ID.SCAN_CHANNELS && value) {
  value = value.toString(16).padStart(8, '0');
}

This stops the zigbee adapter from crashing every minute. I have no idea if this is an appropriate fix though. The 2 places where I had to do this was in asDeviceInfo and dumpParameters.

Happy to submit this as a PR too, but I don't know if there's additional adverse effects.