Aqara motion sensors with zigbee2mqtt unresponsive after a few hours, need constant re-pairing

Hi All,

I wonder if anyone can help. I have 2 Aqara motion sensors [RTCGQ11LM] paired with a zigbee2mqtt stick. They’ve been working find for months. For about a week now, and there has been no update to any of the components that I use, they have been dropping off like after a few hours. In the last few days I have had to repair them 2-3 times a day. They will work for a few hours but then they would become unresponsive. Re-pairing them solves the problem but then it happens again. I would say, have not confirmed, that when they are not triggered for a long time, say we go out or overnight, they would become unresponsive. Batteries are 100% on both, I will replace them just in case the battery sensor is incorrect. I have also ordered 2 new ones, just to make sure it’s not hardware related. I have also changed the channel on my router to 1 and zigbee2mqtt is 11 and I will see if this makes any difference. Next thing I will try is change the channel of the Zigbee stick to 25 and see if that helps. Other devices like SmartThings sensors and some Aqara contact sensors seem OK.

Does anyone know what else I can try, troubleshoot, etc.?

All versions of add-ons, supervisor, etc. are latest. I have a raspberry pi 4 running hassOS, all latest versions as well.

Many thanks!
DN

I eventually connected all my Xiaomi devices to my SmartThings hub using bspranger’s device handlers and I have had no dropouts since then. I use them in HA via the integration. Looks like ST has better connectivity than my zigbee stick when it comes to Xiaomi devices.

Do you have light bulbs paired to that USB stick?

Yes, I have 6 hive spot lights

There is a good chance that they are ruining it for you. Lights are using the ZLL protocol which is a subset of the full Zigbee protocol. But lights do tend to repeat (Sengled is the exception), though they aren’t very good at repeating messages that are not ZLL compliant. The Xiaomi sensors are Zigbee compliant (or close to it) but use messages which are not ZLL compliant. So the bulb repeats nothing. And can even advertise the Xiaomi as being connected but does nothing. And that is the moment you think it disconnected.
So, now you have ST hub being a dedicated Zigbee network and HA as a ZLL network which is how it supposed to be if you want to use ZLL next to non ZLL stuff. Two networks and all problems are solved. Or one network but without repeating smart bulbs. Such as Sengled bulbs.

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Many thanks for the explanation. This makes perfect sense! I guess I will stick to this setup, ST and HA, for now as it’s stable.

Again, thank you for taking the time to explain.

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Hi!

Is it possible and, if yes, how is it possible to run two different ZigBee networks in Hassio? I am asking because I am having similar problems with some ZigBee devices (i.e., three Heiman sirens, which in particular work really well as MQTT-controlled sirens) that hamper the stability of the rest of my network. My idea to get rid of this problem is to create two separated networks, where one network covers all problematic devices.

Yes it’s possible. Though maybe not the same kind. I mean for instance two conbee sticks could be trouble I have no experience with that. I personally have the hue hub with all bulbs and a conbee stick for all non light stuff. I also have the non light network fully on UPS backup power. Because I have all burglar notification and locks on that network. Also my internet and camera’s are on the UPS power supplies. :joy::grin:

Hello!

My HUE bulbs are also on a separate network, which is no problem for Home Assistant since this network is managed by the HUE bridge integration. My other ZigBee sensors (motion, door, buttons, smoke, and sirens) are connected in another network that is handled by a 2531er coordinator operated with the source routing firmware and seven 2531 routers, all integrated into Home Assistant via zigbee2mqtt. The sirens are from Heiman. The siren operation itself works great. However, the sirens also operate as routers which seems like a problem. It seems that there are problems when the message is routed through the sirens, i.e., the message from sensors do not arrive to coordinator. In contrast, when the message is routed over the 2531, then everything seems to work fine. Thus my idea was to put all the problematic devices (sirens) into a separate network.

Hi Frits,
Quick question, if I want to get rid of the ST hub, is it possible to have 2 zigbee2mqtt sticks in 1 Pi both talking to the same mqtt? The idea is to run 1 network for battery devices and the other for powered devices like lights, etc. Do I need a new pi running a new zigbee stick or can I do this with 1 pi? Or a separate pi with just zigbee2mqtt and talking to the first pi’s mqtt? I have trawled the forums and can’t find an answer. The reason is that there is a slight, but very annoying, delay when the sensors are on the ST hub vs when the sensors are connected locally, temporarily of course as they do drop off, to the Zigbee stick, just for testing. hence I’d prefer to get rid of the ST hub and run everything locally.
Hope you can help.