This repo contains some scripts to bypass the controller software included with these hubs and replace them with a simple TCP relay. The gateway software and much of the initial investigation into this hub was possible thanks to banksy-git/lidl-gateway-freedom and the blog posts Hacking the Silvercrest (Lidl) Smart Home Gateway and Cloud-free integration with Home Assistant.
This device is quite similar to the Tuya ones hardware-wise. Relevant chips are:
- SOC: Realtek RTL8196E
- ZigBee MCU: Silicon Labs EM3581
- Flash: Winbond 25Q128JVS
The PCB is marked "Mini HUB V2.1 2016-12-14" and has some test points for UART TTL 3.3V for the SOC, and a JTAG header to the ZigBee MCU. I've only tested UART to the SOC however. There's space on the board for a WiFi chip, but it's been left unpopulated on this model.
The MCU and the SOC communicate via UART at 57600 bps with pins PB1 and PB2 on the MCU.
You can find pictures of the board and case in res/images
The software is pretty lousily built, constant writes to flash, most of the program lives on a JFFS2 partition, I'm thinking that this won't last more than a year or two by either running out of memory or wearing down the flash. The main ZigBee controller software is referenced as "vihome" or "vihome2", I wasn't able to find any info about it, it seems like it was custom built for this orvibo brand.
The root partition comes with standard busybox, ftpput, ftpget and nc, useful for transferring files, no dropbear however, so I had to come up with some tricks to pipe files via telnet.
To initialize the ZigBee MCU the vihome program writes the following values to
/proc/gpio:
echo jn_reset 1 > /proc/gpio
echo set_receiver_pid $$ > /proc/gpio
echo set_reset_ensure_time 5 > /proc/gpio
echo jn_reset 0 > /proc/gpiojn_reset seems to be a reference to other board revisions that use a JN5168A
as the ZigBee MCU, setting it to zero enables the MCU and setting it to 1 disables
it. The baud rate to communicate with the MCU is 57600.
- Username:
root - Password:
sidlee
The device seems to have the ability to update the EmberZNet firmware from the same UART port it uses for communication, however there seems to be some hardware error where the RX line on the NCP is left floating when booting the bootloader. The lack of a pull up resistor on this line means that the bus is effectively unusable.
It's possible however to open the case and connect an external UART adapter with a pull up resistor on its TX line and use that to communicate with the bootloader. Baud rate for the bootloader is 115200 bps.
The three pads on top of the NCP as seen in the top PCB view
hook up to the same UART lines used by the SOC to communicate with the NCP.
From left to right the pads are: GND, RX on the NCP and TX on the NCP.
Keep in mind that regular communications (outside the bootloader), require
hardware flow control with the RTS and CTS lines. To avoid messing with the
RTS and CTS lines you can fire the bootloader from the serialgateway using
the bellows command like so: bellows -d socket://<ip of the hub>:8888 bootloader.
Once you connect via UART, press enter and you'll get the following prompt:
EFR 32Serial Btl v5.7.4.0 b99
1. upload ebl
2. run
3. ebl info
>
The walthowd/husbzb-firmware repo provides a script to upload the firmware using XMODEM
Here's the latest firmware I was able to find for this chip, if you find something newer, you're welcome to open an issue.
Interestingly, with the current situation of the pull up resistors, it would seem
as though the SOC would be unable to update the NCP firmware on its own. I tried
running the function update_zigbee
but I couldn't get it to work, the JennicModuleProgrammer
program messes with the GPIOs (echo jn_update 1 > /proc/gpio) to apparently set
the NCP into programming mode, but again the lack of a pull up resistor messes
with the UART bus anyways.
- The whole jinja2 for scripts is kinda tedious since we're just using it to assign variables from the scripts, it'd be a better idea just render a variables and then source them from scripts.
- Allow for the install script to run after uninstalling, or have some sort of upgrade mechanism.
- Complete readme :P
- Add command to stop init process and install the mod from scratch.
- Allow for serialgateway to listen on localhost, that way SSH can be used to secure communications between HA and the ZigBee MCU
- YouTube: Smart Home Security Device: Mini Hub: a look at the hardware for a different revision of this hub
- 4pda.to: Smart home - General topic: post showing the chips in a "Hommyn Zigbee Hub (HU-20-Z)", a rebrand of the orvibo hub. HW revision is V1.2