in today's video we're going to be having a quick look at how to flash
and make use of the router firmware on the sonoff zigbee dongle check it out
what's going on guys i hope you're all doing well recently i created a video on how to flash one of
these dongles with some newer firmware and also how to do a full setup and install of zigbee to
mqtt in that video i do mention that i'll be doing a future video showing how to set up the router
software but also a video showing the method two which is where you don't need to take the device
apart and you can set it all up using python scripts and just so we're on the same page here
in this video i'm not going to be showing that python method this is going to be just a direct
continuation to that first video and it's also going to be very fast paced so if there's anything
you're not sure about or don't understand then be sure to check out that first video it'll be
linked in the description below and equally if you are interested in the python video then do let me
know in the comments below as if enough people are interested in it i will start working on
it and before we dive back into it i'm just going to very quickly and briefly explain what the root
of firmware is and why you might want to flash one of these with it just in case you don't know
the router firmware allows us to flash our zigbee dongles and in this case it's the sonoff dongle
but we can flash it with router firmware which effectively turns this dongle into a router
so to put this very simply a router is what sits between your zigbee coordinator and
your end devices in my use case here my zigbee coordinator is plugged into my home assistant box
and my end devices would be something like these acara sensors or other zigbee sensors
that you might have and as i said the router sits between the coordinator and the end
devices and the router is responsible for routing the messages between the different nodes
quite often these end devices or child devices are battery powered and they don't offer any form of
routine and you might actually already have some routers already set up on your network and you
just don't know about them these can be things like powered smart plugs and also light bulbs
they just act as routers and they can pass these messages along again to those end devices so with
more routers there's more routes available to pass messages between nodes and if you place
your routers tactically then you'll actually be able to extend the range of your zigbee network
and in short that is a very simplified version of what it is and what we're trying to achieve
and if you are interested in knowing a bit more of the actual technical side of it i'll try and
leave some good resources in the description below which probably explain it a lot better than i did
to get started with this you'll need to download the router firmware for the dongle and again this
will be linked in the description below with that downloaded we can now open up the flash programmer
2 and we can start flashing our dongle following the steps from the previous video we're going to
put our dongle into boot mode and connect it to the pc we then just need to check in the bottom
left there that we've got the cc2652p selected and then we also need to check that the actions erase
program and verify are all ticked in the top right you're going to want to make sure that disabled
bootloader is not ticked because if it is ticked you can cause yourself some issues when you flash
the device once you're happy with those selections you can specify the location of the router
firmware and then you can press the play button to flash the device once you press that play button
it should just take a couple of seconds and then you'll hopefully see that green success message
if you didn't get the green success message then it'll mean that something went wrong
a very common issue is the device might actually not be in boot mode when you think it is so if you
just try and put it in boot mode again and then repeat the process it should hopefully work if you
are still stuck then do check out that first video because i do touch on a couple of different tips
and things you can do if the flashing isn't working and that's the router firmware now
flashed onto the dongle and all we need to do now is just add this into zigbee to mqtt
and good practice here before actually adding it is to go and place it and power it on
somewhere where it's actually going to be used with your router dongle now plugged in and powered
on we can open up zigbee to mqtt and at the top we're going to select permit join all once you
select that zigbee mqtt should automatically discover the device and start adding it in
once it's added you can then rename the device and give it a friendly name and then you can
do things like view the device and you can also view the map when you're viewing the device on the
map you'll see that the device is highlighted by blue indicating that it's a rooted device
and you can see here on my zigbee map that my router is connected to the kitchen devices
and if any child device so those green devices you can see on the map if any of those child devices
connected to my router you'd see a little line between them and there we go guys that's been
a quick look and hopefully an informative one on how to flash the router firmware onto the zigbee
dongle if you have enjoyed this video and found it useful then don't forget to drop me a like
and if you're not already hit that subscribe button and ding dong the notification bell
you'll then be alerted to any future video that i do as always a massive thank you to these awesome
dudes these awesome dudes my patreons if you're interested in helping support my channel which
in turn allows me to create content like this then you'll find a link to my patreon
in the description below thank you for watching and i'll catch you in the next one cheers you