+1 Xiaomi / Aqara devices (and also Tuya devices) will give you trouble in all and any Zigbee solution.
Jeedom devs also recently posted a great blog article explaining why those Xiaomi / Aqara devices are so troublesome (and why good Zigbee solutions is hard/complicated to implement for developers):
CC2530 and CC2531 based dongles flashed with Zigbee router firmware does work well as routers for devices using the older Zigbee Home Automation 1.2 protocol but not as well for all Zigbee 3.0 devices.
There is no ‘official’ Zigbee 3.0 router firmware for CC2530 and CC2531 based chips, (there are some unofficial floating around though but it should be noted that is based on an older version of Z-Stack).
Better to buy additional CC2652P/CC2652R/CC2652RB or CC1352P dongles and flash to router(s):
Thanks for all of the advice. I have actually read, researched and implemented a lot of the above recommendations. One additional thing that I have observed is that once Aqara sensors pair with a repeater device they generally remain stable until one of two things happen. 1) Power goes out for more than a few hours. 2) I add more repeater devices to the mesh. I think that possibly, in both cases, the route between the original repeater device and the coordinator changes and that is what causes the Aqara sensors to drop off. I have observed this correlation many times.
In my observations the aqara sensors stickt to the router to which they have paired to - even if you add more routers.
This is a known behavior with aqara sensors - when they do not have connectivity to the router they reset by themself and have to be repaired.
Additionally I had issues with routers from ledvance. Once I removed them and kept my routers online my sensors kept stable.
Maybe you add Sonoff-Sticks as routers - I have flashed two sticks with router firmware and most devices now connect to them.
Note that some Zigbee devices are not fully compatible with all brands of Zigbee router devices. Xiaomi/Aqara devices are for example known not to work with Zigbee router devices from Centralite, General Electrics, Iris, Ledvance/OSRAM, LIGHTIFY/Sylvania, Orvibo, PEQ, Securifi, and SmartThings/Samsung. Better results can usually be achieved by using mains-powered devices IKEA and Nue/3A Home or dedicated DIY routing devices based on Texas Instruments CC253x/CC26x2 and XBee Series 2/3 Zigbee radios.
I was using an HUSBZB-1 and moved to the Sonoff Plus 3.0 (2 of them coordinator and router) I did not have frequent dropouts, but occasional I would say… I also have a handful of lights that the wife and kids occasionally switch off which I know doesn’t help… but either way moving to the new Sonoff and Z2M was a big improvement and worth the effort in my opinion. Device response time seems to have significantly improved and random disconnects are non-existent (unless of course someone has recently powered stuff off… but it is immediately available again when powered back on)
Oh that’s cool never seen those… the electrical in those rooms needs to be redone so I was kind of just waiting with the intention of changing to a smart switch at that time, but I may look into that for the meantime. Thanks
I am helping a friend dealing with a fairly complex zigbee system, I think we might just be at 200! bulbs… quite a large house too so LQI isn’t spectacular from the basement to the first floor (one floor up from ground floor). However we are at liberty to move the device around to experiment a little.
However, to the point, I don’t expect this to doable on a single Sonoff coordinator, however we where trying to see how far it would go. With the newest firmware (20211217) with higher antenna gain we are getting issues at ~40 bulbs, Zigbee2MQTT doesn’t seem to be able to add more…
(These are all brand new Ikea Trådfri bulbs, haven’t checked firmware yet, I might be wrong, but it seems to be that Ikea just released Zigbee 3.0 for all their bulbs.*)
I want to use the Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus as a router in Home assistant. . My coordinator is a Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle (https://itead.cc/product/zigbee-3-0-usb-dongle). *I have HA running on RPI 4.
Do I need aditional hardware (except my xiaomi zigbee temperatur sensors) to flash and run the sonoff zigbee dongle? - My old broken Texas Instruments CC2531 needed aditional hardware to be flashed…
And I only found wndows descriptions. Is there one for Mac or Linux Users?
Hard to argue with the price! I’ve really kicked around this problem and there are a few options:
Remote flavors with line/load directly connected (or with backup sonoff in box relay): RGB Genie makes a great lutron style five button switch that feels like it belongs in a normal house. Combine with a Sonoff (or similar) in wall on-off switch if you need an extra router or want to power cycle finicky bulbes without hitting your breaker.
Mains powered remotes: there are a few of these floating around, they are pretty cool but not human friendly. There’s a few flavor of these with the glass panels, some allowing for multiple group or scene control.
Zigbee switch/dimmer, with line/load connected: probably the cleanest solution if your network is strong, but pricey. You install a zigbee switch, bypass it for the purpose of powering the lights, then bind it to the smart light bulb group. It works great in normal rooms but not great in long rooms or in staircases where you tend to get a ton of popcorning.
My solution is to “hack” an IKEA Tradfri-Button. I soldered two wires on the micro switch and connected them to a momentary switch. The light are separated from the switch and therefore the bulbs have continously power.
Works like a charm and I can use the same switches as on the other non smart lights.
“Installed behind light switches, the Philips Hue wall switch module lets you use existing switches with your Philips Hue smart lights. Your lights always stay powered on and reachable — and you can even use the switch to set multiple scenes on an individual light or in a Room or Zone.”
Philips Hue Wall switch module are however not yet compatible with ZHA but think it’s being worked on:
Zigbee and Z-Wave dimmer/switch modules with no “smart lightbulbs” is my solution for all ceiling lights.
I only use “smart lightbulbs” for window lights which do not have a switch at all (not even cord switch) so they they are always powered-on and there is no chance for accidental switch-off (unless unplugged).
Believe limit was set based on available RAM and Flash Storage on first-generation CC2652/CC1352. Reason for limits is latest security routines for Zigbee 3.0 devices take a lot of RAM/storage overhead:
“Due to new security requirements in Zigbee 3.0, Zigbee 3.0 coordinators can only support a limited amount of Zigbee 3.0 devices. For Zigbee 1.2 coordinators there is no limit on the max number of Zigbee 3.0 devices that can join.”
Texas Instruments has however since then release of the first revisions of CC2652/CC1322 released with CC26x2/CC13x2 models that feature more RAM or Flash Storage than the first revision models:
Note the newer CC2652R7 for example feature 704KB flash memory and 152KB RAM which is double compared to CC2652R1/2, CC2652RB1/2, and CC2652P1/2, (so is hope for a future “CC2652P7”).
While I am not sure, I do however not think the limit could be raised for this first revision of Sonoff Plus dongle because the CC2652P it uses do not have more RAM and Flash Storage than first-generation CC2652R/CC2652R, but in the future if there is a demand they could release a second-generation as “Sonoff Plus 2 dongle” which would use a newer CC2652P that have more RAM and Flash Storage.
PS: The reason why no limits for Zigbee 3.0 devices in Z-Stack Home 1.2 coordinators is that Zigbee 3.0 devices connected to it will run in backwards compatibility mode so not used as Zigbee 3.0 devices.
Totally hear you on this. I ended up with some ceiling mounted ones for two reasons:
I had big rooms where many cans were on a single switch, so breaking them up is very nice for things like media viewing vs using an accent lamp.
Tunable “white” light. I live in a city and have classic street light colors drenching my house at night. It’s nice to be able to tweak these colors at night and have a nice bright white light for doing certain projects during the day.
Dimming/dimming noise. I have yet to find any combination of high quality, LED specific dimmer, and LED dimmable bulb, that has no audible hum. I haven’t experience any of those issues with the zigbee bulbs I have bought.
@Kallenator By the way, the rumour is that Silicon Labs upcoming EFR32MG23 and EFR32MG24 will probably come with more onboard RAM and flash memory storage than any of Texas Instruments chips.
I believe those were already scheduled to be released a year ago but Silicon Labs suffered more than most in the current worldwide chip shortage situation and thus they have been delayed until next year.
EFR32MG12 Series 1 SoCs already featured up to 256KB RAM and 1024KB flash storage memory but think they were not designed to act as Zigbee coordinators (or at least no one made such adapters yet)