USB Zigbee Stick (Z-Stack) Coordinator

Description

The CircuitSetup USB Zigbee Stick is designed to hook directly into your Home Assistant computer, and be used as a coordinator for your Zigbee devices. It uses the RF-Star RF-BM-2652P2 module, based on the TI CC2652P, which has an additional output power gain of 20dBm! With the Z-Stack 3.x.0 Firmware, it can support 50 direct children, 100 normal routes and 200 source routes. The RF-Star module is also FCC tested.

v2.0 – Slightly longer, fits in this case, and now has a larger RF filter on the usb input.

Features:

• 48-MHz Arm® Cortex®-M4F processor
• Z-Stack 3.x.0 Firmware (pre-programmed)
• Can use zigbee2mqtt or ZHA in Home Assistant
• CH340 USB serial interface
• Supports Thread, and BLE 5.2 (not enabled with Z-Stack firmware)
• Sensitivity of -100 dBm for 802.15.4 (2.4 GHz)
• +20dBm output gain
• PCB antenna
• Ultra compact

Overview of a Zigbee network featuring our USB Zigbee Stick:

Zigbee2mqtt Setup

1. Go to Supervisor in the left menu
2. Click on the 3 dots in the top right, and select Repositories
3. Add https://github.com/zigbee2mqtt/hassio-zigbee2mqtt
4. Under Add-on Store, click on Zigbee2mqtt and Install
5. Under Configuration you shouldn’t have to change anything unless you have a previous device with a specific network key
6. Under Info, Start the add-on

If you get an error when starting up, make sure that under Configuration, serial, port: that the usb port that the Zigbee Stick is plugged into is correct. It is usually /dev/ttyACM0 or /dev/ttyUSB0

More information on setup on zigbee2mqtt.io

If zigbee2mqtt will not initialize the Zigbee Stick, and you have something else plugged into a USB port. Try removing it, and starting Zigbee2mqtt again.

By default the antenna on the CC2652P transmits at 20dBm. This can be changed in the zigbee2mqtt config by adding:

experimental:
  transmit_power: 5

Other transmit power values: -20,-18,-15,-12,-10,-9,-6,-5,-3,0,1,5,14,20

Flashing/Updating Firmware

The Zigbee Stick comes pre-flashed with the Z-Stack coordinator firmware, but if you would like to update or change the firmware, here is the procedure:

Make sure that the driver for the USB-SERIAL CH340 is installed on your system.

1. Download the Z-Stack coordinator firmware named CC1352P2_CC2652P_launchpad_coordinator_202XXXXX.zip and extract
2. Download the SmartRF Flash Programmer2
3. While plugging the Zigbee Stick into a computer USB port, hold down the BSL button to put it into bootloader mode (on v1 the buttons are mislabeled – the RST button is actually the BSL, and vise versa. The BSL button is farthest from the RF-star module to the right of the usb connector)
4. Open Flash Programmer 2 & select the “Unknown“ device under “USB-SERIAL CH340“ in Connected Devices on the left
5. Under Select Target Device, choose CC2652P
6. For Flash Images, choose the CC1352P2_CC2652P_launchpad_coordinator_202XXXXX.hex  file downloaded in step 1
7. Make sure Disable Bootloader is unchecked
8. Click on the play triangle under Verify to flash the Zigbee Stick

If you get a Failed message after attempting to flash, the Zigbee Stick was probably not in bootloader mode. Try step 3 again.