I’m running Home Assistant OS that’s updated regularly, and for the last few months, I’ve had problems where a specific type of device falls off my Zigbee mesh, which usually results in the whole thing collapsing. I haven’t found any specific log entries to show what the problem is, and I’d love some help figuring it out.
I’m running on a HA OS on a Pi 3, with the HUSBZB-1 radio. The bulbs that drop off are Cree Connecteds in the A-19 form factor. They all seem to be running firmware 0x0000020a. The bulb closest to the hub went first, then the rest went offline within about ten minutes.
Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated. I’ve looked for anyone who reported similar problems and haven’t found anything.
Regardless of the actual root cause, always aim to keep the firmware of the Zigbee Coordinator updated, add more products acting as Zigbee Router devices and most importantly as a precaution prioritize taking preemptive actions to implement workarounds in order to avoid all sources of EMF/EMI/RFI interference which can commonly cause real problems for a Zigbee Coordinator.
So before troubleshooting deeper make sure to first upgrade Zigbee Coordinator firmware
Understand and remember that Zigbee signals are weak so rely on a strong Zigbee network mesh (meaning many Zigbee Router devices) as all Zigbee devices and especially the Zigbee Coordinator are very sensitive to EMF/EMI/RMI interference so will make it much easier to troubleshoot and find the real root cause if have already optimized your setup and environment to workaround such potential issues.
PS: If have some interference and a so-called “noisy environment” then Zigbee Coordinator and Zigbee devices will have to retransmit their messages over and over again, spamming the Zigbee network.
Thank you! I’ll update the Zigbee Coordinator firmware and might move the home assistant hub to see if that helps. It’s ~10 feet from an AP now, but it’s only close to two or three zigbee nodes in its current location.
Suggest step-1 should be to buy a very long USB extension cable for your Zigbee Coordinator adapter.
Recommend buy a relativly thick USB 3.0 extension cable as they are normally better sheilded, however always be sure to still only connect it to a USB 2.0 port (or via a powered USB 2.0 hub).
Using a long USB extension cable should allow you to both get it far away from all or most EMF sources and place the Zigbee Coordinator in a more optimal location in the center/middle if your house.
For step-2 recommend buy a few dedicated “IKEA Trådfri Signal Repeater” devices if you do not already have a lot of known good Zigbee Router devices, as those are both cheap and very good repeaters.
It seems like my issue was at the Zigbee layer and not the hardware layer. I’ve re-positioned the antenna and moved a couple of router devices closer to it, and haven’t had the network drop in a few weeks. Fingers cross that this fixed the problem. Thanks everyone!