Force route to routers on some devices

[labanex (Antonio Edward)]

I am showing this. For some reason, some of these do work and some do not. My home is a single wide mobile home, with three bedrooms, about nine hundred square feet or so. The walls are strong but made of wood. The outer walls are a combination of metal and wood.

In the graphic, the top part is a not-to-scale layout of our home. The bottom part is the Zigbee2MQTT Map. On the map, you can see that the kitchen, living room, and offices work fine most of the time. It is the hallway near the bathrooms and bedrooms that are unreachable.

Smartthings runs the bathrooms and my wife’s office (Serenity). There are about fifteen devices on it, and I will keep it that way until I am able to stabilize the rooms that I am working on now. Right now, it is my office (Antonio), living room, hallways, outside lights, and master bedroom. As you can see on the map, there are a few Zigbee devices that are not always connected probably because it is far away. So, I bought a bunch of Sonof plugs that I use mostly for night lights.

This has improved the network tremendously. When I switched to Home Assistant about four weeks ago, I mostly had Sengled Zigbee bulbs. It will be costly to try and replace all of them from Sengled end-devices to a router bulb. I thought Sonof would be enough.

If you look at the map, there are about six Sonof plugs, and some are connecting. I wish I knew how to connect, or force connect because as you can see, there is PLENTY of room for the Sonof device to connect the remaining devices. Any ideas? Should I get another Sonof coordinator and flash it to a router? Eventually I will replace all my bulbs with router bulbs, but that is going to take time. I know HUE is rated the best as far as reliability is concerned, but it is also expensive.

I currently have over 69 Zigbee devices in Zigbee2MQTT. The Smartthings is working great now because there are only 15 devices. I have that connected to HA as well, so I can run automations in HA. I would like to remove ST with HA completely once I figure out how to really make a reliable smart home.

Second question: My wife and I are planning to move from Texas to Tucson, AZ. Want to buy an acre or two and drop a double-wide in the middle of it. I do plan on expanding the smart home to include yard lights and so much more. I believe the limit is 128 devices. Would I need SmartThings or something similar or could I connect a second Zigbee cordinator to HA? In a single wide mobile home, I have 69 devices. Can you imagine a sub-luxury double wide where I plan on really taking things to new heights. What is the best way to really expand the network? Do I really need to cut my home in half (Virtually)? Can HA really operate as HOME and SLAVE together? What are some options for this? Thanks in advance!

[labanex (Antonio Edward)]

I bought three color Oshram Silvania bulbs and replaced the Sengled color bulbs at the furthest point in my home. I am getting three White bulbs for the bathrooms on Monday or Tuesday, will be replacing all eight bulbs for all bathrooms with Ikea or Oshram bulbs eventually. I will be replacing at least 10 color bulbs with router bulbs throughout the house to improve network efficiency. Now, the MAP feature in Zigbee2MQTT is showing more connected devices, only a few that are not connected. The only bulbs showing Offline in Devices tab are the bulbs I removed. This is working better for me now. The more I replace the end devices bulbs with router bulbs, I think it will improve the network. I wish when I started this that I knew more about Zigbee and how router/end devices worked. Now knowing this, I wonder if Smartthings would have worked better.

I am happier with HA and even though it is not everything, it is a lot better than I can imagine. Local control and not relying on Samsung to do everything for me. I still have two rooms that are still on Smartthings, my wife’s office and one of the guest bathrooms. I want to perfect the network more and to ensure my wife has a good connection, I will be replacing all her bulbs. Cannot upset the wife and Smartthings is working fine for her now with Sengled.

Little by little, it is working fine. I cannot wait to get the three more bulbs that will be connected in the main bathroom, all adjustable white bulbs from Oshram. This will add more network stability.

As you can see now, the device list is not showing anything Offline. The two bulbs are the ones I just removed.

[labanex (Antonio Edward)]

We are moving from Texas to Tucson, AZ sometime in the summer. We are currently in a single-wide mobile home but will be buying some land and dropping a double-wide in the middle of it. The home will be larger and will need a good stable network.

I mention that I am still using Smartthings. Smartthings is on channel 20 and HA is on channel 25. My WIFI is on the highest channel as well because I am the only one in my neighborhood that is on that channel. I used a network analyzer to see where my neighbors are using. When I move, I will have one acre between my house and my neighbor, so less traffic. Hopefully by then, I will not be using Smartthings anymore. Any ideas on which channels I should use for Zigbee, my future ZWave addition, and WIFI?

My current map. The three devices are battery powered end devices. It shows Online in devices, so I am not worried. I removed the battery and re-added the battery, it works great now, especially with the new routers I’ve added.

[labanex (Antonio Edward)]

Okay, I have identified eight Singled end-device bulbs that are constant. This is after several days of observation. These are the oldest bulbs on my network. I have replaced over thirty bulbs with router bulbs, so the network is much more stable. However, it is the same eight bulbs that keep going offline. This has to be the bulb itself. From now on, it will be router bulbs. The issue was resolved because I do not have these issues with other Sengled bulbs. It is the same eight, all the time.

Even though I am moving from Smartthings to HA, it was the same eight bulbs before as well. My network is much better now. Will be replacing the eight bulbs that are faulty or simply old. When I turn them off or repair them, they work for about one or two hours. No other Sengled, end-devices of any type, or any other devices are having this issue.