Examining the zigbee mesh?

I have a Zigbee bulb (an Osram Lightify) which I’m not currently using. So I put it in a lampholder attached to a plug, and plugged it in to the wall, with the idea that, even though I didn’t need it as a light, it would be good to have it as a zigbee repeater. (I turned the light off using software.)

I then wondered: how I would know if it was actually working and being used as a repeater? Is there a property that can be queried? (I’m using a Conbee and deConz.) Even more interesting would be an ability to get a map of the mesh connections, so you could see which devices were benefitting from which repeaters.

Anyone know if this is even possible in the protocol? (I’m just being too lazy to look it up, but I thought it might be an interesting topic for discussion too.) This is one of the nicest aspects of Zigbee, and seems to me there must be a better answer than, “Turn it off and see if things seems to be less reliable…”

If you run the container or desktop version of deconz you can get a rendering of the mesh

Ah, thanks! I’ll fire that up tomorrow…

Maybe this project helps you:

That is a completely different solution with different hardware than OP

Hi I have the same question. I have an pi 3b running HassOS 3.7 and the deCONZ add-on (5.1).
I have some sensors and a smart plug in my network, and I would like to see the mesh.

How can I run the container or desktop version of deconz in my current configuration?

It’s a while since I’ve used deConz, but unless something’s changed, there’s a configuration option in the add-on to enable a VNC (desktop) server. The deconz GUI runs in that, and you can then use a VNC viewer to connect to it.
(You might want to disable it after you’re done, though, since it’ll use a reasonable amount of resource if you’re just on a Pi).

If you happen to use a Mac, BTW, they have a VNC viewer built in. You can use the ‘Connect to server’ in the Finder and type an address in the form ‘vnc://server_ip:port’.

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Great thanks it worked