I have several new WS-USC01 (aqara no neutral single switch US) units in my house that are becoming unresponsive a few hours after pairing. They don’t show as being “unavailable” in zha, they just don’t respond to commands and eventually get a timeout error. If I manually click the switch and change the state HA will eventually show the updated state after 30 minutes to a couple hours. To get them functional again I have to put them into pairing mode and add them in zha. I have at least a dozen other zigbee devices (sonoff and Tuya) that have absolutely no issues. The sonoff switches I have are routers also and it is a small space so signal is good where the aqara switches are located.
Using Raspberry Pi 4 with Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 usb dongle plus (firmware is up to date)
What I have tried so far:
Changing the Zigbee channel
Updated dongle firmware
Rebooting of Raspberry Pi
Power cycling the aqara switch
Completely removing from zha and adding back.
I think this is going to be an issue with the switch rather than the network - don’t give yourself a lot of grief with changing channels etc.
A couple of thoughts:
Since these are no neutral switches they are presumably not routers. Have you tried pairing them through different nearby routers as well as through the coordinator? Some Aqara devices are known to “stick” to their original parent instead of re-evaluating the connection periodically as they are supposed to, then if the parent becomes busy or has some connection problem they don’t respond. A different parent might help.
This may not be relevant, but some old Philips devices have trouble re-connecting after leaving the network because they present themselves as new devices which the network does not recognise. There is a generic fix for this here which ought to work for other brands as well.
You are correct that they do not act as routers. I have also tried connecting them through a sonoff outlet/router but same thing happens. I have been trying the link you sent and it seems to have improved the uptime by a couple days but they all still went offline one by one. Based on some threads online it may be that the firmware needs updating but sadly for me that required the Aqara hub to do the updates. I ordered a hub and will update the firmware to test the direct zigbee communication again and if it doesn’t work I guess ill just return the lot. Thanks for the help.
I am posting here because this is one of the top results when searching for this switch.
I was researching this switch and was finding a lot of different issues with this switch and I think I’ve stumbled across the solution.
My setup was the Aqara WS-USC01 connected to an outlet. On the outlet, the switch would control, was a smart bulb.
The smart bulb was on while I paired the aqara. Everything paired fine with zigbee2mqtt. I then put the switch into decoupled mode. I was able to control the smart bulb off and on without turning the power to the outlet off.
Then I setup my automations for using the single press to toggle the smart bulb on and off. The switch would control the light for a while and then stop responding. I noticed that if I turned the smart bulb on through the zigbee2mqtt interface (meaning not using the now unresponsive switch) that my automations would start working again.
Here is the issue…
When the smart bulb is off, there is no power to power the aqara switch. You can watch the indicator light slowly get dimmer as the switch loses power. Once power is totally drained, the switch and its automations won’t work.
The solution:
It isn’t pretty but basically you need to put something on the outlet that will always be powered on. In my case, I put a mesh network hub on the outlet with my smart bulb. Now my aqara switch is powered all the time and my automations work perfectly.
I’m sorry if this isn’t the best place to put this but I’ve read so many threads about this issue and solutions like updating firmware etc., that I thought it best to share this and hopefully it will help someone.
The switch is slick looking and cheap so hopefully this will answer some questions about the switch.
TLDR: Put a device on the outlet controlled by the Aqara WS-USC01 that is always on.