Enable Zigbee Dongles for DSM7

This document helps with the setup of a startup script for DSM 7 to detect and load Zigbee Dongles like Conbee or Sonoff prior to loading Docker Containers.

Intro

Synology DSM7 does not load, by default, drivers for external USB devices. These drivers can be loaded by the user however when the NAS is restarted - the drivers need to be loaded manually again. But with a couple of tricks - there is a possibility to load the drivers at every restart or boot-up.

DSM7 uses systemd for services statup operations. Systemd allows additional scripts and complex chaining of these. To be able to use the ConBee or a Sonoff USB dongle, three drivers are missing: usbserial, ftdi_sio and cdc_adm. These three must be loaded before docker daemon starts and pulls up your Deconz or Zigbee2MQTT container.

Usage

If you are using the Docker App

Login via SSH into you synology. Copy the pkg-zigbeedocker.service startup script into /usr/local/lib/systemd/system by using the below command

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/EddieDSuza/synology-zigbee-dongle/main/pkg-zigbeedocker.service -P /usr/local/lib/systemd/system

Go to the below directory

cd /usr/local/lib/systemd/system

Provide elevated access to the file

sudo chmod 777 pkg-zigbeedocker.service

Test The Elevated access

ls -l /usr/local/lib/systemd/system/pkg-zigbeedocker.service

You will see the below output

-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 340 Nov  6 19:43 /usr/local/lib/systemd/system/pkg-zigbeedocker.service

If you are using the Container Manager App

Login via SSH into you synology. Copy the pkg-zigbeecontainer.service startup script into /usr/local/lib/systemd/system by using the below command

sudo wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/EddieDSuza/synology-zigbee-dongle/main/pkg-zigbeecontainer.service -P /usr/local/lib/systemd/system

Go to the below directory

cd /usr/local/lib/systemd/system

Provide elevated access to the file

sudo chmod 777 pkg-zigbeecontainer.service

Test The Elevated access

ls -l /usr/local/lib/systemd/system/pkg-zigbeecontainer.service

You will see the below output

-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 340 Nov  6 19:43 /usr/local/lib/systemd/system/pkg-zigbeecontainer.service

Test the script

Run the following:

sudo systemctl start pkg-zigbeecontainer.service

This will run the script. Now you can check modules in the kernel with lsmod as

lsmod |grep cdc_acm

cdc_acm                18255  2 
usbcore               202075  12 etxhci_hcd,usblp,uhci_hcd,usb_storage,usbserial,ehci_hcd,ehci_pci,usbhid,ftdi_sio,cdc_acm,xhci_hcd,xhci_pci

This means modules are loaded.

Enable the script

The script must run at startup, so you need to tell systemd to do it

sudo systemctl enable pkg-zigbeecontainer.service

If you now reboot, this script will run before docker and the container will find the old ACM tty.

The Startup script using Docker

[Unit]
Description=ConBee Module loader
Requires=pkg-volume.target
Wants=
Requisite=
After=
IgnoreOnIsolate=no
OnFailure=

[Install]
WantedBy=pkg-Docker-dockerd.service

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "modprobe usbserial && modprobe ftdi_sio && modprobe cdc-acm" 
TimeoutStartSec=3600
TimeoutStopSec=3600
RemainAfterExit=true

The Startup script using Container Manager

[Unit]
Description=ConBee Module loader
Requires=pkg-volume.target
Wants=
Requisite=
After=
IgnoreOnIsolate=no
OnFailure=

[Install]
WantedBy=pkg-ContainerManager-dockerd.service

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "modprobe usbserial && modprobe ftdi_sio && modprobe cdc-acm" 
TimeoutStartSec=3600
TimeoutStopSec=3600
RemainAfterExit=true

Disclaimer

USE THIS AT YOUR RISK