Silicon Labs firmware builder repository

This repository contains Dockerfiles and GitHub actions which build Silicon Labs firmware for Home Assistant Yellow, SkyConnect, ZB-GW04 v1.1, ZB-GW04 v1.2, and Sonoff ZBDongle-E.

It is a fork of the NabuCasa silabs firmware builder, all credits go to NabuCasa and agners. I just extended their work for other hardware.

It uses the Silicon Labs Gecko SDK and proprietary Silicon Labs tools such as the Silicon Labs Configurator (slc) and the Simplicity Commander standalone utility.

RCP Multi-PAN firmware for use concurrent communication over Zigbee and Thread, EmberZNet NCP for Zigbee-only environments, and experimental OpenThread RCP firmware for Thread-only use are built. The RCP Multi-PAN firmware can be used with the Home Assistant SiliconLabs Zigbee/OpenThread Multiprotocol add-on, whereas the EmberZNet NCP version is used in pure Zigbee environments. Please be sure to read the warning below if you plan to use the OpenThread RCP builds.

Building locally

To build a firmware locally, the build container can be reused. The page for the package silabs-firmware-builder on the right-hand side of the github page shows how to reuse the pre-built docker container. You can then start the container locally with a build directory bind-mounted, e.g.,

docker run --rm -it \
  --user builder \
  -v $(pwd)/build:/build \
  ghcr.io/ksjh/silabs-firmware-builder:4.2.2

To generate a project, use slc generate. To replicate/debug build issues in an existing GitHub action, it is often helpful to just copy the command from the "Generate Firmware Project" step.

To generate a project for the RCP Multi-PAN firmware for a ZBDongle-E, you can use:

slc generate \
  --with="EFR32MG21A020F768IM32,cpc_security_secondary_none" \
  --project-file="/gecko_sdk/protocol/openthread/sample-apps/ot-ncp/rcp-uart-802154.slcp" \
  --export-destination=rcp-uart-802154-zbdonglee \
  --copy-proj-sources --new-project --force \
  --configuration=""

Building the project requires some more steps:

cd rcp-uart-802154-zbdonglee

for patch in "../RCPMultiPAN/ZBDongleE"/*.patch
do
  echo "Applying ${patch}"
  patch -p1 < $patch
done

make -f rcp-uart-802154.Makefile release

jq --null-input \
 --arg sdk_version "4.2.2" \
 --argjson metadata_extra 'null' \
 '{
    "metadata_version": 1,
    "sdk_version": $sdk_version,
    "fw_type": "rcp-uart-802154"
  } + $metadata_extra' >  version.json

commander gbl create build/release/rcp-uart-802154.gbl \
  --app build/release/rcp-uart-802154.out \
  --device EFR32MG21A020F768IM32 --metadata version.json

Pre-compiled firmware files

Pre-compiled firmware files are available on github. The github actions build them automatically after commits to the repo. On the top of the github page, under "Actions", you can find previous runs and "Artifacts" (lower part of the page of one run).

Naming convention of pre-build firmware

The names of the resulting files are not completely self-explanatory. The file rcp-uart-802154-zbdonglee.zip is the RCP Multi-PAN version for a Sonoff ZBDongle-E with RTS-CTS handshaking with 115200 baud, whereas the file ncp-uart-hw-zb-gw04-1v2-230.zip contains EmberZNet firmware for the ZB-GW04 hardware version 1.2 with RTS-CTS handshaking with 230400 baud. The naming convention is similar for other hardware.

The firmware for the ZB-GW04 v1.1 and variants ending in -none for other hardware are firmware files that do not use hardware (RTS-CTS) handshaking, all other do.

All these zip files contain the required gbl firmware files in build/release/.

Attention:

The ot-rcp- files are experimental pure OpenThread RCP builds without Zigbee support. Please use them with extreme care, as with some hardware, there might be currently no easy way to flash other firmware after having flashed the ot-rcp firmware. Please use these files only when you know what you are doing.