I recently entered the Zigbee world, but I’m not really happy with the results. I’m using the Sonoff v3 coordinator, some Nous sockets, an Eglo smart bulb and a Sonoff temperature sensor. HA is running on a Pie 4, I’m using ZHA for Zigbee and the Sonoff stick is plugged into an USB extension.
As you can see, no device has a good connection to my coordinator. One of the Nous plugs can’t connect at all, but I’ll ignore that for now as it’s on a different floor. I think the network strength is pretty weak, considering that all the devices aren’t very far apart.
This is what the floor plan looks like:
C: Coordinator
P: Plug
B: Bulb
S: Sensor
Is this acceptable? If not, what could be the cause and how can I improve my network?
And also two general questions about ZHA visualisation: What does it mean when there are two values for link quality (like 238/172)? And what exactly does it mean when a connection is greyed out?
You will probably just need to add more Zigbee router devices as Zigbee relies on mesh technology and really depends on you having many Zigbee router devices to extend the network range and coverage.
You also have to understand that Zigbee technology uses low-power radios that send short data messages at low data rates (so messages that do not come through will need to be resent), and using 2.4GHz means that signals from and to Zigbee devices has a relatively very short rang and very poor building-material penetration power, (as well as generally bad signal reception) and thus the solution (other than doing your best to actively avoid interference) is just to add more Zigbee router devices, preferably buying some known-good Zigbee router devices to work as dedicated always-on Zigbee repeaters.
You can buy pretty cheap range extenders from IKEA which also act as USB chargers and mini nightlights. I added three of those to my network to help with these kinds of problems. TRÅDFRI Signal repeater - IKEA
-David
Thank you for your answers. I have tried a few things and made some changes to my network. The coordinator is now in a different room where I can place it further away from my wifi repeater.
However, the visualisation still doesn’t make sense to me. I still have orange connections to devices that are literally in the same room as the coordinator.
But the important thing is that all the connected devices are working properly and staying connected. Button inputs are relayed instantly. So there is absolutely no problem with my network.
I have now decided to just ignore the visualisation. There may come a time when I run into problems, but for now everything is fine.
I wasn’t able to connect one of the smart plugs, but it is now working after I moved the coordinator to a different location.
The visualisation is still reporting medium quality connections at best, which doesn’t make sense to me as one of the plugs is in full view of the coordinator, maybe 10m away. I was going to tweak the network to have only green and red connections, but I’ll leave it as it is for now, as it’s working fine at the moment.
The ZHA visualization is only a rough indication, as the connection quality that Zigbee devices report/shown is not always correct and the scale can differ among different devices because those LQI (Link Quality Indication) values reported are not standardized between different chip manufacturers and Zigbee devices, with some devices reporting/showing more positive and others more negative. See:
This has been my approach, as well. I did try to dig into what those colored lines meant, but in the end everything works great and it’s just not worth learning a whole new protocol and all the associated jargon.
