Hello all! I apologize if this is a repetitive post; I couldn’t find a topic that covered what I needed.
I’ve used a SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus-E with ZHA to control my Hue Bulbs for about six months. Before that, I used the Hue Integration with the Hub without any real issues. The only reason I switched was so they could be run locally.
In the six months I’ve used ZHA, I’ve had many instances where a bulb or two doesn’t change colors when I activate a scene or changes several seconds after the other bulbs. This is something that feels fixable and is a big pet peeve of mine. I know it makes sense that these would work worse without the hardware explicitly designed for them, but I’m hoping this can be resolved.
Things I think could affect this:
I have the SONOFF dongle and Hue hub running at the same time because the reliability of my Hue Dimmer Switches on ZHA was abysmal. (I would love tips for this so I could get rid of the hue hub altogether)
My Zigbee network includes only my eight Hue bulbs. However, I live in a one-bedroom apartment, and the maximum distance between bulbs is about 12 feet, with no walls or blockages.
My SONOFF dongle is plugged directly into my desktop’s front I/O without a USB extender.
I’m not using Z2M, which could resolve my issues.
I’m willing to send a screenshot of my Zigbee network, but I’m not sure if that would be compromising in anyway.
Your Hue hub, Sonoff dongle and 2.4GHz WIFI all use roughly the same frequency so there is a high chance they are all interfering with each other. Definitely use the Sonoff or the Hue but not both. Switch Zigbee to channel 11 and WIFI to channel 11 to avoid interference (there are other combinations). If you are in a 1 bedroom apartment you may not even need 2.4GHz WIFI but you could also be getting interference from neighbours.
How can I strengthen my Zigbee network if I don’t need more devices? Every Zigbee device I own is a router on my ZHA network. The other network only has two dimmer switches, which aren’t routers, at least I don’t think. Do I need more than eight bulbs to have a strong network?
Can you confirm that my experience with my bulbs not switching fast enough or at all is likely a result of interference? I haven’t been sure what problem to tackle, if this sounds like the problem I will happily do a deep dive.
No. Understand that can be hard to impossible to troubleshoot and find the root cause if you have not already done your best to follow those tips to move Zigbee Coordinator away from known sources of EMI/RMI/RMF as well as make sure your Zigbee network has enough Zigbee Router devices to give coverage for all your Zigbee End Devices. Regardless, you should follow that anyway as it is best practice. I do not mean to frighten your but actually have to do some work yourself to help us help you.
