ESPHome for Sonoff Zigbee Bridge

ESPHome custom component and configuration for the Sonoff Zigbee Bridge with serial-over-tcp. Allows you to use the ZBBridge with e.g. ZHA or Zigbee2MQTT, in the same way as tasmota-zbbridge.

Requires special firmware for the EFR32MG21 Zigbee chip to work: https://github.com/arendst/Tasmota/tree/development/tools/fw_SonoffZigbeeBridge_ezsp.

Loading the firmware onto the Zigbee chip is technically possible via ESPHome, by flipping GPIOs to put the chip into bootloader mode and uploading over tcp-serial. I will add more information about this later, but for now it's easiest to do this through Tasmota. Once the ZB firmware is flashed, it will stay like that regardless of the ESP firmware, so you can install ESPHome the normal way and it will use the up-to-date ZB firmware without issues.

Please note that, even though the concept of a Wifi-based serial-to-IP bridge sounds great, it is not without issues. A quote from Zigbee2MQTT:

WiFi-based Serial-to-IP bridges are not recommended for Silicon Labs EZSP adapters as the serial protocol does not have enough fault-tolerance to handle packet loss or latency delays that can normally occur over WiFi connections. If cannot use a locally connected USB or UART/GPIO adapter then the recommendation is to use remote adapter that connected via Ethernet (wired) to avoid issues with EZSP caused by WiFi connections.

And some more discussion here: Consider removing the ITEAD Sonoff ZBBridge from ZHA integration list of hardware as EZSP over WiFi-based bridges is often not stable #17170

If anything, you need a very stable Wifi connection, and even then, EZSP, the protocol used by the EFR32MG21 Zigbee chip, just isn't very suited to run over a Wifi connection. YMMV.

How to use

• Put sonoff_zbbridge.yaml in your ESPHome configuration directory, alongside your other .yaml configuration files.
• Put the custom_components/ directory with its contents in that same directory, so that you end up with:

  my_esphome_configs/
  ├── custom_components/
  │   ├── serial-server/
  ├── sonoff_zbbridge.yaml
  ├── my_other_esp.yaml
  ├── yet_another_esp.yaml
  ├── ...

• Edit sonoff_zbbridge.yaml as needed (Wifi credentials, etc.). By default, the configuration mirrors tasmota-zbbridge: same port, same baud rate, etc.
• Compile and upload as you normally would

ZHA Configuration

• In Home Assistant, go to Configuration > Integrations and choose ADD INTEGRATION
• Scroll all the way down to select Zigbee Home Automation
• Select Enter manually as serial port
• Select Radio Type EZSP = Silicon Labs EmberZNet protocol:...
• Set Serial device path to socket://[zbbridge_address]:[port], fill in appropriately (e.g. socket://sonoff_zbbridge.local:8888, socket://10.0.0.11:4321)
• Set port speed to 115200 (this should be set according to the firmware present on your ZB chip, e.g. ncp-uart-sw-6.7.8_115200.ota -> 115200)
• Click Submit and if all goes well, you should see Success!

Note that ZHA does not add your device to Home Assistant through the ESPHome integration. A discovery notification should appear separately in HA, allowing you to add your Bridge as a regular ESPHome node. That way you can monitor it, add sensors like status, wifi_status, etc., like normal. This, however, is not required for ZHA to function. If you decide not to add your device through the integration, be aware that ESPHome sets a reboot timer for 15 minutes by default, which will cause your device to reboot automatically if api: was set in sonoff_zbbridge.yaml and no Home Assistant API connection was established. You can add reboot_timeout: 0s to the api: entry to prevent this behavior.

Credits to: Oxan van Leeuwen for the original implementation and tube0013 for additional information.