Gladys Assistant 5.3.2: Zigbee2mqtt recognizes your dongle, flow sensors and easier migrations

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Hello everyone!

Gladys Assistant 5.3.2 is out! It’s a small release, but it brings the first results of our Zigbee2mqtt audit, a new device category and a few fixes.

Highlights:

  • :honeybee: Zigbee2mqtt recognizes your dongle: Gladys selects the port and model for you
  • :traffic_light: Zigbee2mqtt status you can trust: Gladys shows Zigbee2mqtt as running only once it really answers, and tells you why when it doesn’t
  • :droplet: New “Flow sensor” category, with m³/h and m³/s units
  • :truck: Moving to a new machine: external integrations now restart by themselves after a Gladys Plus backup is restored
  • :wrench: MQTT: empty payloads are no longer saved as 0

:honeybee: Zigbee2mqtt: the first results of our audit

Zigbee is one of the most used integrations in Gladys, so with @cicoub13 we took a close look at the whole Zigbee2mqtt experience: installing it, choosing the dongle, knowing whether it works, understanding what went wrong when it doesn’t…

The first results ship in this release, and it’s only the beginning: we have a lot more planned to make the Zigbee integration in Gladys as simple as possible, from plugging in the dongle to pairing your first device.

1. Gladys recognizes your dongle

  • The setup page now lists ports by the name of the device plugged into them, like SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus (/dev/ttyUSB0), instead of a list of cryptic serial ports. The machine’s own serial ports are hidden behind a link.
  • When a single known dongle is plugged in, its port and model are selected automatically. Gladys can even tell a SONOFF ZBDongle-E from a ZBDongle-P, even though both have the same USB IDs.
  • New models in the list: SONOFF Dongle Lite MG21, SONOFF Dongle Plus CC2674P10 (Dongle-PP10) and SMLIGHT SLZB-06p10.
  • In USB mode, you now have to choose a model. Before, leaving it empty quietly used the zstack adapter, so a ZBDongle-E never started.

:information_source: Existing installations: nothing changes until you save your Zigbee2mqtt configuration again. If your configuration has no model, Gladys suggests the one it recognized. It is only saved when you click save.

2. A Zigbee2mqtt status you can trust

  • Before, Zigbee2mqtt was shown as running as soon as its container started. It could be crashing in a loop (wrong driver, old firmware, unplugged dongle) and still look fine, while the “permit join” switch stayed greyed out with no explanation.
  • Now Gladys shows Zigbee2mqtt as online only once it answers a health check.
  • On the discover and device pages, a “Zigbee2mqtt is not responding” banner shows the container error when Gladys knows it. If Gladys can’t reach the MQTT broker, the banner says so and shows the MQTT error.
  • On the setup page, a sentence tells you whether Zigbee2mqtt is starting, failing to start or not answering.

:warning: If you run your own Zigbee2mqtt (not the one Gladys installs), the health check needs Zigbee2mqtt 1.21 or later. The Zigbee2mqtt installed by Gladys is 2.14.2.

Big thanks to @cicoub13 for this work, tested on a Raspberry Pi 4 with a SONOFF ZBDongle-P! :folded_hands: If you have another dongle (ZBDongle-E, SMLIGHT, Dongle Lite…), please tell us in this topic whether Gladys recognized it. Your feedback will help us with the next steps!

:droplet: New “Flow sensor” category

Following this request, Gladys has a new Flow sensor category, with m³/h and m³/s units. It covers:

  • river monitoring stations (Hub’Eau, Vigicrues…), which report flow in m³/s
  • pipe flow meters and pumps

It can be used with MQTT and external integrations. Zigbee2mqtt now understands the m³/s unit, and the AI assistant can read flow values.

Thanks @Will_71! :folded_hands:

:truck: Moving Gladys to a new machine

Following this topic: when you restored a Gladys Plus backup on a new machine, external integrations failed to start because their Docker images weren’t on the new machine. You had to uninstall and reinstall each one.

Now Gladys downloads the missing images in the background at startup, and the integrations start once the download is done. Zigbee, MQTT and your scenes don’t wait for the download, and the integration shows as “loading” until it’s ready.

:wrench: Other fixes

  • MQTT: an empty payload, a null value or a missing JSON path on a custom topic is now ignored. Before, it was saved as 0, so a temperature could suddenly read 0 °C. Thanks to huangkongsheng for this contribution!
  • Security: dependency update (axios) in the (deprecated) OpenWeather integration.

Updating: if you use Watchtower, Gladys updates itself within 24 hours. Otherwise, you can update in one click from the settings.

Share your feedback here! :slight_smile:

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