core: ZHA onboarding fails — stuck at “Starting Interview”
The problem
For a while now, it has not been possible to onboard any new Zigbee device on my system. They are recognised, but the onboarding process halts at “Starting Interview”.
One community forum commentator says the fault has been there since 2023.5 but I tested by reverting to 2023.4.4 and that did not work either.
See also the community threads:
- [Levition Zigbee Switch stuck in “Starting Interview” when pairing after working before](https://community.home-assistant.io/t/levition-zigbee-switch-stuck-in-starting-interview-when-pairing-after-working-before/430405)
- [Stuck in “Starting Interview” state: Xiaomi Wireless switch (lumi.sensor_switch) via ZHA](https://community.home-assistant.io/t/stuck-in-starting-interview-state-xiaomi-wireless-switch-lumi-sensor-switch-via-zha/268058)
- [ZHA Zigbee Devices stuck on “Starting Interview”](https://community.home-assistant.io/t/zha-zigbee-devices-stuck-on-starting-interview/266260)
- [Sonoff S40 Lite Stuck at Starting Interview](https://community.home-assistant.io/t/sonoff-s40-lite-stuck-at-starting-interview/607078)
It has certainly previously worked because I already have several devices operating, and those that are onboarded are still working OK.
I made a log with debug logging enabled while onboarding two example devices of types that I have previously onboarded successfully: an IKEA Tradfri Zigbee repeater and an unbranded Chinese motion sensor. I have the same problem with other devices that previously worked correctly including Aqara and other closure sensors, a SONOFF Zigbee smart socket and another type of unbranded motion sensor.
What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?
2023.8.4
What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?
No response
What type of installation are you running?
Home Assistant Core
Integration causing the issue
ZHA
Link to integration documentation on our website
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha/
Diagnostics information
Example YAML snippet
Cannot be reproduced with YAML. Just run the usual manual onboarding process.
Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?
I have a log file but it is too big to upload here
Additional information
Please fix this bug, or advise how to circumvent it, with some urgency because my Home Automation project is stalled until I can use ZHA again.
About this issue
- Original URL
- State: closed
- Created 10 months ago
- Comments: 27 (6 by maintainers)
In my case, I tracked the issue to RF interference from a TV. I invested in a Tiny SA Ultra signal analyser (£150 in the UK), which I can heartily recommend. Looking at the 2.4 - 2.5 GHz range one can clearly see the interference across the band (see figs). I have no idea why the TV is doing that; and turning its own WiFi off makes no difference. The remedy was to move the WiFi mesh hub and my home automation computer with its Zigbee and Bluetooth radios well away from the TV.
I only wish the developers would program ZHA to issue human-readable error messages to the log – something like “cannot complete pairing due to RF interference” to save me having to post here for a translation.
@AndySymons The TVs WiFi is not real active (or more correct shall not being) but it its some screen mirroring like miracast that is “scanning” for clients but normally it shall only doing beacons and not sending all the time so i think its one bug in the TVs firmware that is doing it. My old Samsung TV is connected with Ethernet and the media-hub in it is having over 50 active connections all the time and its more then i working on the laptop so its also crazy Very interesting findings !!!
230902d Log file.log.zip
(Why did I not think of that?)