I have recently moved over to ZHA after running everything though a Tuya hub up until then. I have now setup 17 devices and have about another 30 to go but I have encountered a problem - several devices are becoming unavailable frequently which is very annoying. My research seems to suggest that this is probably interference with my wifi as they are currently overlapping frequencies. Wifi is on 4 and zigbee 15. I can’t change my routers channel as it is automatic and if I change the zigbee channel I have to set everything up again which is annoying.
Before I do that, does anyone know if it is possible to restore the device network from a backup after the channel has been changed or would this just set the channel to 15 again anyway?
When restoring from a backup in which you changed the channel number will set the coordinator channel to that channel.
At least one coordicator types allows changing the channel only - you can check this “undocument” method in zha-toolkit: ezsp_set_channel .
The network channel change is preceded with a broadcast to all devices notifying the channel change, however this may not work well for sleepy devices (i.e., battery powered devices might not receive the message).
It might be possible to improve that procedure to send a network change notification to the sleepy devices first with “retry” until the device responds.
Generally you can force your WiFi on the channel you like. I suggest that you have a closer look at your WiFi configuration pages
Annoyingly, my router manufacturer describes the only option being auto channel switching as a feature when you look into it. It simply doesn’t let me. This would obviously be the easiest thing to do.
To update this, I have decided to buy a better Zigbee coordinator (I’ve gone for the sonoff ZB Dongle-P) and rebuild the whole network using best practices rather than just adding stuff when I get it. Annoying but should result in a much more stable setup.
I wish I had watched this video before starting my Zigbee network!
