Losing devices with ZHA

[Hedda]

Again, highly recommend reading/following all these general best practice guides and ZHA/Zigbee information:

• https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#best-practices-to-avoid-pairingconnection-difficulties

• https://community.home-assistant.io/t/guide-for-zigbee-interference-avoidance-and-network-range-coverage-optimization/515752

• Zigbee Home Automation - Home Assistant

• https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#using-router-devices

• https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#binding-and-unbinding

You really do need to take some of the most basic actions suggested there to avoid EMF/EMI/RMI interference!

@cipnt

The odd thing for me is that I migrated all my devices from SmartThings and they were all working just fine there, but I’ve been doing the migration in stages so maybe I didn’t yet had all the wall plug repeaters for a more solid mesh. The mesh also takes a few hours to “stabilise” and for each repeater to build its neighbours list (check in your /config/zha/visualization).

As FloatingBoater pointed out, be sure to pair devices in their final location, but also keep in mind that you may need to manually re-pair some ”Zigbee End Device” devices if you later add more ”Zigbee Router” devices because not all devices will automatically change their connection to a new Zigbee Rouer device after their initial pairing/joining, (at least some with buggy firmware like older Aqara/Xiaomi will not move to a other Zigbee Router without being manually re-raired/re-joined).

The important thing to understand there is that while Zigbee Router devices (which are normally mains-powered) will build up the network mesh and thus rearrange its connections, many Zigbee End Devices (usually battery-powered) will most of the time not automatically connect to a closer Zigbee Router on its own, instead you will need to manually re-pair/re-join that device if you later add Zigbee Router devices that are closer to it, otherwise it is a good chance they will keep their being connected to the first device that it connected through .

@ottawahacker

I’m wondering if the Hue firmware on the bulbs could be to blame… Also I know Philips did issue an update recently but it hasn’t been published on any of the sites

Unfortunately the ZHA does not include OTA (Over-The-Air) firmeware updates for Philips Hue devices by default so you either need to manually download and copy the OTA files to the ZHA installation and enable it in for the ZHA / zigpy config the configuration YAML file for Home Assistant, or you can use the ZHA Toolkit (custom component) whích makes downloading and adding OTA files at least some what easier → https://github.com/mdeweerd/zha-toolkit

@ottawahacker

I have the ZBDongle-E (Silicon Labs EFR32MG21) - I did some research on the firmware but I cannot find anything tangible about updates on this one. Is there a recommended version for ZHA?

There is newer unofficial Zigbee Coordinator firmware for the Sonoff ZBDongle-E however the default firmware that it ships with should be fine as it is known to be very stable if the rest of your setup is good, but if you done every other action to workaround potential interference and so on, including upgrading Philips Hue device firmware then you should consider also upgrading to a later version, see this other thread → ITead’s “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus V2” (model "ZBDongle-E") based on Silicon Labs EFR32MG21 +20dBm radio SoC/MCU

@ottawahacker

Same here but that tends me to think that it has to be a software or mesh issue somewhere - not a signal one. From the network map, it looks like my hue bulbs have really a lot of connections - is there a way to prevent some devices from being a router? Also wondering if they possibly have too many connections?

Not in the ZHA integration at this point as it is not a feature in the zigpy library that it depends on.

As mention above, best practice is to first add more known good Zigbee Router devices to your network mesh and then manually re-pair any devices that does not automatically move over to a closer Zigbee Router after a 24-hour period.