Quick tip

I recently replaced the batteries on two of my Zigbee Tradfri remotes and had to pair them again to ZHA in Home Assistant because they had been offline for a while.

Screenshot from Home Assistant showing `Interview complete - Configuring` state of a Zigbee device

I noticed the same thing happening for both devices: they got stuck on the Interview complete - Configuring step. They are different models, so this made me suspect a software problem. I had a look and found this topic on the Home Assistant community forum.

In it, 2 potential root causes with their respective workarounds are proposed:

  1. Cause: The Zigbee device is falling asleep.
  • Workaround: Keep pressing one of its regular buttons to keep it awake during pairing
  1. Cause: The ZHA controller is missing a step or edgecase or the device is not sending the appropriate signal when it is paired.
  • Workaround: When you get to the Interview complete step, go to Integrations -> ZHA -> "your coordinator", press the 3 dots next to it and select: Reload. Afterwards, you’ll see your device added to ZHA.

Number 1 didn’t work for my Tradfri remotes, but number 2 did. I hope writing this helps someone else who runs into this.