I have a number of zigbee devices that I have connected to my network but which either drop out repeatedly or don’t provide all of the sensor data that they should.
For example a window sensor that has a strong signal but keeps going unavailable despite an apparently identical sensor feet away from it having no problems, and a thermometer that connects but HA can’t see that it has a temperate sensor on it.
What should be my work flow when it comes to debugging them?
For example where should I look for log files, and what should I look out for, such as particular zigbee related messages that might indicate common problems.
Other than the make and model, and zha vs the alternatives, what information should I provide in a post asking for help?
Is there an existing guide for this?
Idealy I’m look for an answer other than Just Google it, please.
Start by reading this, even if you are not using Zigbee2mqtt. Lots of good advice.
If asking questions, you will need to specify what you are using, hardware software etc. Anything you have tried ti fix the issues, and anything from the logs which may be relevant. If you can find them In Zigbee2mqtt its in the tab under logs.
If you just ask questions to which the answer is easily found in the docs you will be directed there as its far easier to do that than rewrite it so you don’t have to look for it.
Your issues may well be down to a clash between your zigbee channel and your WiFi channel, this is normally the biggest issue with zigbee.
These are two very separate problems. The sensor not reporting temperature is probably due to it not complying fully with the Zigbee standard (pretty common) and not having a so-called ‘quirk’ in the underlying software that powers your Zigbee network to fix this for your specific device. There is a generous user that collects data about which devices are supported by which integration. Google for ‘blakadder zigbee’ to see if your device is on their list. Are you using ZHA? There are many possibilities for viewing the properties of your devices and your network. There are the regular logs, but you can also enable ‘debug logging’ to get a lot of detailed information. In the device page of each of your Zigbee devices you can see all the Zigbee clusters that it exposes if you go to the dot menu behind ‘configure’ and choose ‘manage zigbee device’. You can also go to developer tools and listen for ZHA events to see what iis being sent.
The info that you find about your device in all the sources I mentioned would be needed to diagnose the cause of the problem and with that possible solutions others could propose
What I meant to say is that separate problems have separate workflows. Checking whether your device is supported in ZHA or Z2M is very different from solving it 2.4Ghz band crowding issues.
I’m more thinking of the steps that you would have to take to begin to determine that one of this was your problem. Rather than after you’d determined which one it was.
In Zigbee2mqtt its in the tab under logs.