My Conbee II looses contact with my Aqara Smart Plugs (Aqara Smart Plug - Fjärrströmbrytare Zigbee | Kjell.com)
I have homeassistant running as a virtual machine on my rackserver (ESXI 7.0 U3)
It looses contact randomly and often, sometimes all the smart plugs but not always all (I have 4 in total)
Restarting the homeassistant through configuration/server management regains contact with all of them.
None of my other zigbee devices have this issue
Aqara is not Zigbee compliant and does not play nicely with a lot of smart plugs.
So i would need the aqara hub for them to work as they should?
No, there are some repeaters that work well with them. This is a Hubitat article but it applies to Home Assistant too:
I have previously used Conbee and Aqara plugs with ZHA. They function well together.
You setup, SW (Deconz/ZHA/Z2M), Conbee firmware updated. Remember a long USB extention cable and long distance to any Wifi and USB3.
What other devices do you have?
1.8meter extension for the Conbee II, No Wifi nearby.
Firmware update? Gotta look into this i think.
Specifically USB3? Rack server is an old Dell R720 so it doesnt have USB3
My setup was with a firmware on the conbee from August 2021 (I have moved to Sonoff dongle and Z2M). I have 7 Aqara plugs and they did work very well, using Conbee II and ZHA. Both as plugs, and as zigbee routers for my other devices, a lot of them Aqara sensor/motion etc.
I have the same Aqara plugs still running, now in a Z2M and Sonoff 3.0 dongle setup. Still working well.
What SW do you use, ZHA?
Are the plugs in a place where there might be some interference? Are they well integrated into the zigbee mesh, or in a “corner”.