Shades group control not working

[drauziooppenheimer]

What happened?

Hi, I've been trying to setup a group to control all my shades, but when sending the commands via Home Assistant, for example, they're not working and failing with the following:

Publish 'set' 'state' to 'Living Room Shades' failed: 'Error: Not supported for groups'

Is there anything differently needed to setup groups for shades so HA can work?

What did you expect to happen?

No response

How to reproduce it (minimal and precise)

No response

Zigbee2MQTT version

2.7.1

Adapter firmware version

0.f build 32 05-28-2024

Adapter

lumi.curtain.acn002

Setup

Docker container

Device database.db entry

No response

Debug log

No response

Notes

No response

[andrei-lazarov]

Worst case you can create a Home Assistant group. Not sure why the Zigbee group doesn't work.

[drauziooppenheimer]

Yeah, I’m using an HA group for now. Do you know if there’s a way to check which commands are supported by the device when using Zigbee groups? I’m very new to Zigbee devices, so I’d like to better understand whether this is a limitation of that specific device or a misconfiguration in how group commands are being sent to it, or how it receives group commands.

[drauziooppenheimer]

This issue seems similar but was never addressed: #25276

[andrei-lazarov]

I think it's the Aqara devices not following Zigbee spec. This comes up a lot in discussions, but I don't know the details.
They might not have the group features implemented at all, or they might require a custom command.

I've gone through the converters a little to understand this.
I see the Z2M converters simply prevent a lot of group commands for Aqara devices in general (not for your device explicitly).
Code is written such that it spits the error, without even attempting to send the command:
If group, don't send. If not group, send.

You can try to load the converter externally and remove that line of code - see if it works. But it's probably there for a reason.

[drauziooppenheimer]

You’re right, it seems to be coming from this line: https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee-herdsman-converters/blob/adbf460cb4fabf85bfae21b0f7449c104469afe9/src/lib/lumi.ts#L5709.

I’m very new to Z2M and Home Assistant, so please pardon my very basic questions. In this case, is the best way to test simply to remove this check from the converter and see whether it works with my device?

Alternatively, is there a way to query the device or send that very specific group command to it, bypassing those checks, without having to upload a modified converter just to validate whether it supports groups or not?

[andrei-lazarov]

Yes that's the best way. Copy paste all necessary code in external converters to overwrite the official converters, and remove that line

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open 60 days with no activity. Remove stale label or comment or this will be closed in 7 days

[andrei-lazarov]

Hi, I figured out that Zigbee group commands are not supported by Zigbee End Devices at all.
This is a limitation of the Zigbee protocol. They only work on Routers

[drauziooppenheimer]

Interesting... Is that in the spec itself? Do you mind sending the reference here for me to take a look too?

I haven't had the chance to test it yet, but I was assuming that even though the roller shade is an end device, since it's always listening, it would work, especially since it correctly responds to joining/removing groups, so it seems the functionality is there somehow.

[andrei-lazarov]

I didn't check the spec, but I recalled a discussion with Romasku:

Multicast messages may be originated by end devices but are not sent to devices where macRxOnWhenIdle is equal to FALSE. (Source)

Silabs docs on Zigbee say that broadcast messages are not supported by sleepy end devices (macRxOnWhenIdle=FALSE).

So my conclusion here:
Zigbee groups use IEEE 802.15.4 broadcasts, but IEEE 802.15.4 broadcasts do not work for sleepy end devices.

So Zigbee groups are not supported by end devices. We should probably even disable group cluster on end devices to avoid confusion. (talking about our DIY devices)

Not sure how to check if your device is sleepy. Maybe it appears in Wireshark while sniffing.
Even if it seems your device is always listening, it may actually poll for messages ~once per second to save battery.

Also I tried my end_devices. Indeed some will successfully join the group, but they won't respond to the messages