Soon a new version of the ConBee will be released. In this post I try to show the diffrences between both USB sticks. The main reason for the new stick is that the supply of the standard ConBee was out of stock regulary and the type of USB stick of the new version is easier to maintain in stock
Should we all now replace the ld ConBee with the new one? No! Support for the old one will continue, it will run the deCONZ upgrades for years to come. My advice is to not change to the new stick!
Here is the information what I recieved from the manufacturer Dresden Electronics
:
Top: old ConBee, bottom new ConBee II)
What’s new? (not that much)
Why?
What happens to ConBee (1)?
Linux USB differences:
(It should just work but looks a bit different)
More documentation: https://phoscon.de/en/conbee2
Should we all now replace the ld ConBee with the new one? No! Support for the old one will continue, it will run the deCONZ upgrades for years to come. My advice is to not change to the new stick!
Here is the information what I recieved from the manufacturer Dresden Electronics
:
Top: old ConBee, bottom new ConBee II)
What’s new? (not that much)
- smaller and has a fresh look J
- New micro-controller 32-bit ARM-Cortex-M0 instead of the 8-bit AVR based SoC used by ConBee/RaspBee
- The serial protocol is 100% backward- compatible, so projects like Mozilla IoT and zigpy-deconz should just work without modifications
- Firmware updates become ~ twice as fast
- New bootloader and GCFFlasher which only use serial protocol and doesn’t need root access anymore (improved updates in Docker container)
- Same as ConBee/RaspBee it has a power-amplifier for 30m indoor and up to 200m outdoor signal range
(compared to the other popular CC2531 USB Stick without PA which provides ~ 5-8 m indoor range) - Always-on Watchdog
- greater worldwide availability (like certification for Canada, Australia / New Zealand)
- price tag stays roughly the same
Why?
- Mainly the ConBee (I) production pipeline can no longer fulfill the growing market demand.
(You might have noticed that we run out of stock repeatedly.)
What happens to ConBee (1)?
- Introduced in 2015
- After 4 years it will be completely replaced by ConBee II and no longer be manufactured
- The application and firmware will of course still be maintained for several years
Linux USB differences:
(It should just work but looks a bit different)
- /dev/ttyACM0 instead /dev/ttyUSB0
- vendor id: 0x1cf1 (dresden elektronik)
- product id: 0x0030 (ConBee II)
More documentation: https://phoscon.de/en/conbee2