Zigbee samples fail to pair with Hubitat

RE: Zigbee samples fail to pair with Hubitat

Tiit — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:29:34 GMT

Hi Marte,

I did talk with Hubitat support as well and while they are aware of the issue they did not see a way to fix this without causing problems for their other users with devices working in non-standard ways.

I also contacted ZBOSS developers and they suggested I could join the organization as the lowest tier member for access to the specific source files I would need to fix this. But that still comes with a yearly subscription cost that would not make sense for the few users we have with this issue.

So unfortunately it seems that we will just have to accept the limitations of the current version and advise users to upgrade to newer Hubitat versions that do work. I think the core issue comes from the way developers try to make their devices work in standard breaking ways. With Zigbee it seems that any certification is pretty rare and with years of development certain things have evolved on their own to become non-compliant and now that is breaking backwards compatibility.

While unfortunate this is something I can live with for now. Thank you for all the help and let's hope Matter has fewer issues like this in the future.

Tiit

RE: Zigbee samples fail to pair with Hubitat

Marte Myrvold — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:23:10 GMT

Hi Tiit,

I have been trying to investigate whether there are any other workarounds or solutions, but unfortunately, I have not found anything.

I recommend contacting Hubitat support (https://support.hubitat.com/).

Best regards,
Marte

RE: Zigbee samples fail to pair with Hubitat

Tiit — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:49:19 GMT

Hi Marte,

I did try that but it seems that Hubitat sends the key unsolicited and this setting probably just disables the requesting of the key. The unsolicited key still seems to trigger the leave response unfortunately.

Tiit

RE: Zigbee samples fail to pair with Hubitat

Marte Myrvold — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 12:44:43 GMT

Hi Tiit,

I'm happy to help!

You can try to disable link key exchange with zb_bdb_set_legacy_device_support().

Best regards,
Marte

RE: Zigbee samples fail to pair with Hubitat

Tiit — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 10:48:04 GMT

Hi Marte,

Thank you for this in depth answer. This was really the best help I have received on these forums so far. This seems to be exactly what is wrong and while fixing this is proving hard as Hubitat is dong this on purpose for backwards compatibility reasons (which I understand) knowing what is happening has helped me along. I will try to find a way to disable that specific check to see if that fixes the issue. And then if possible I will add an option for users to turn this check on/off on demand if they run into this specific issue. We don't have plans to certify this product for Zigbee so this should not be an issue as far as I can see.

Thank you again for the excellent answer and you can close this ticket as far as I'm concerned.

Tiit

RE: Zigbee samples fail to pair with Hubitat

Marte Myrvold — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:39:05 GMT

Hi Tiit,

The problem is the Trust Center Link Key used by the Hubitat coordinator. In the Transport Key packet (packet #34), the Trust Center Link Key is the same as the ZigbeeAlliance09 key. This violates the spec, which the Nordic device detects, and following the spec, it leaves the network.

From Base Device Behavior (BDB) specificiation (v3.0.1) section 10.2.5, step 9:

If the KeyType parameter of the received APSME-TRANSPORT-KEY.indication primitive is not equal to 0x04 (Unique Trust Center Link Key) or the link key contained in the primitive is identical to the LinkKey value of the apsDeviceKeyPairSet entry, the joining node SHALL terminate the Trust Center link key exchange procedure with a failure status.

In the Hubitat case the KeyType is 0x04, which is correct, but the key value is identical to the device's pre-configured link key, i.e. the ZigbeeAlliance09 key.

Why the device leaves after the failure is because of this part from section 8.2 step 12 in the BDB spec:

The node SHALL perform the procedure for retrieving a new Trust Center link key (see sub-clause 10.2.5). If the procedure is successful, the node SHALL continue from step 14. If the procedure is not successful, the node SHALL perform a leave request on its old network and resets its network parameters. The node then sets bdbNodeIsOnANetwork to FALSE and sets bdbCommissioningStatus to TCLK_EX_FAILURE. To perform a leave request, the node issues the NLME-LEAVE.request primitive to the NWK layer with the DeviceAddress parameter set to NULL, the RemoveChildren parameter set to FALSE and the Rejoin parameter set to FALSE.

According to the BDB spec, the Trust Center (in this case, the Hubitat ZC) must generate a new link key. Since the Hubitat ZC does not, it violates BDB spec 10.3.2 step 8:

The Trust Center SHALL generate a link key for the node. This link key SHALL be randomly generated or be derived via a manufacturer specific algorithm, but it SHALL NOT be all zeros and it SHALL NOT be identical to the LinkKey value of the apsDeviceKeyPairSet entry corresponding to the joining node.

If you compare with the sniffer log from the HA, you can see that it correctly generates a random unique key:

Unfortunately, this means that there's not much we can do on our side to fix it, since the issue is that the Hubitat ZC doesn't follow the specification.

Best regards,
Marte

RE: Zigbee samples fail to pair with Hubitat

Tiit — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 08:46:04 GMT

Hi Marte,

I tried with SDK v2.9.2 using the R23 add-on. Unfortunately I didn't see a way to build Zigbee samples with the newer SDK versions at the moment. Our product will be built for both Matter and Zigbee so ideally we would use the very newest SDK version but for this specific issue I would settle for anything that fixes this.

Isn't the Light Switch sample a router by default? Just to be sure I tried both the Light Bulb and the Light Switch now and the issue is still the same in both of these cases. It seems like there is some major compatibility issue with Hubitat here. Weirdly we have users reporting that they have successfully used our devices with Hubitat as well. So far I have not been able to get a single sample from any Nordic SDK to pair even once to any Hubitat hub we have. I have gone over the packet capture files with help from Claude AI with no success so far.

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../zb_5F00_fail_5F00_hubitat_5F00_c8.pcapng devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../zb_5F00_works_5F00_ha.pcapng

I attached the packet capture files from both the failing Hubitat join process and a successful join to Home Assistant using a SONOFF Zigbee controller. I'm not sure if the packets are encrypted but since Claude has been able to read them I'm guessing they are not. I'm not too familiar with Zigbee so if there is something I'm doing completely wrong here I would be glad for any guidance on how to proceed.

Tiit

RE: Zigbee samples fail to pair with Hubitat

Marte Myrvold — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:50:32 GMT

Hi Tiit,

Sounds like there could be some incompatibility issues with the Habitat hubs.

Have you tried the Zigbee R23 add-on as well? This uses revision 23 of the Zigbee specification, and it includes many fixes and improvements, so it could be that the issue is resolved there.
Do you know if the issue occurs only with end devices, or do you see it with routers as well?

Please upload the Wireshark captures, along with the network key if the packets are encrypted.

Best regards,
Marte