I’m new to the world of Z2M, having moved a bunch of Aqara sensors from the official hub to a SLZB coordinator recently. My house isn’t massive at around 1900 sq ft but I am using the top floor, main floor, and basement. My SLZB is pretty central in the house via PoE. I recently got 4x Sonoff S31 Lite plugs to use as routers. I’m wondering a few things:
1) If a single router goes down, I imagine the sensors will try and connect to different routers or the coordinator itself, is that correct? I imagine so since that is the whole ‘mesh network’ idea. 2 If the coordinator goes down though, I believe Z2M will shut down and the routers won’t be able to do much, right? 3) I have paired all my sensors to the router plugs which are then paired to the coordinator. Is this the right strategy? In most cases, I am getting a significantly stronger signal when pairing the sensors directly to the coordinator rather than pairing the sensors to the router which is closer or equal distance away. Am I better off just pairing everything to the coordinator? I feel like I’m wasting money building a mesh network when the LQI is often better directly to the router.
Exactly. You’d be amazed how many people don’t get this.
Correct.
It doesn’t matter. The connections will change over time anyway. It usually takes a network a couple of days to settle while all the devices establish good links, and even then connections will change in response to environmental factors like interference.
It’s a good idea for end devices to be placed where they are going to be used before they are paired. I personally usually pair with the coordinator.
If you do a restart, you’ll probably see a lot of the end devices reporting as unavailable for a while. This is normal - the coordinator can’t contact them directly, it has to wait for them to check in, which they only do at intervals.
In addition to what has already been said, there is a whole section the our cookbook on Zigbee. Good reading and there will be info there that will help you.
