I will start with i LOVE the idea of HA, i have wanted it for ages.
Used to run zemismart zigbee hub 48 devices, worked 95% fine
I bought a HA green with zbt, thought i would be it all correctly and pair direct with HA. All good really fast. But 7.30pm last night it went to shit lol.
Pirs dont pick up
Kitchen lights take 20secs to turn on
No stairs light at all at 4am
No toilet or turned on and not off at 11pm
I have put after sunset in the automations, do i need to do times, which is a pain
Should i move everything to zigbee2mqtt
Should i buy a sonoff zigbee stick
Do things go to sleep and can i stop it
Re doing the whole house is going to be a nightmare
So is it a rant or are you actually looking for help?
If you want help then please read the “before posting” article How to help us help you - or How to ask a good question.
There is a lot missing for us to be able to help you
Sorry, it was 5am and nothing was working and i have basically ruined my house, which my wife thinks is great after me saying how all this HA stuff will be amazing
Right then:-
ha green
Zbt-1 stick
Not in the best place as in the garage but most things seem ok, i do have a repeater upstairs.
First Questions really are should i put everything on z2m as i have read zha doesnt like over 40 devices and should i have bought a sonoff stick not the zbt-1.
Also do pir go to sleep at night (they didnt on zemismart) and if so can it be stopped.
Thats good to hear, i have alot of plugs so i would hope they would work as routers.
Do pirs go to sleep, as they didnt flash in the night.
The kitchen is still not working this morning even turning on with my phone. Would it be better to buy another zigbee co ordinator or somehow get it into the house not garage. Even though the loft plugs seem fine.
HA Green
Running 2025.9.2
OS 16.2 as of 3 mins ago
Zbt-1 is on a usb lead about 1.5m away from wifi router
It is installed in my garage so breeze blocks to the house but i have a repeater upstairs and that seems to connect fine, yesterday when i set up the system its seemed ok.
Problem i have…
Pirs dont seem to work at night, no flash or intermittent, do they go to sleep on HA?
Kitchen area which is 3M from zbt-t through block wall now is virually dead, do i need to get the zbt-1 into the house somehow?
I have a zbt-1, would switching to sonoff or equivalent give me better range?
I read z2m is actually better, could this solve my connection issues
Your router’s 2.4GHz will play havoc with ZigBee coordinator’s range. USB-3 has a similar effect.
What brand and model?
Are they battery powered?
You can move the repeater and it will reconnect to the mesh if previously paired.
How many ZigBee devices are currently active in your mesh?
How many are repeaters vs end devices(battery powered)?
ZigBee meshes constantly seek the best signal strength by adjusting device connection routes. The longer the devices are online the better it will get.
Thank you for the additional info. It appears you have plenty of devices for a solid mesh. I’m just trying to understand what the catalyst was that caused the mesh to fail.
I would need a little bit of time to refresh myself with ZHA. I had more success with Z2M’s overall control over my ZigBee mesh.
The coordinator needs to be able to connect with as many routers as possible, so you need to place it centrally, with a minimum of obstructions. Looking at mine, there seem to be seven or eight direct connections at the moment (out of 27 routers in all). If all the traffic is being channeled through one or two connections, that creates a bottleneck and messages will be lost. I suspect this is the root of your problems.
Just to clear the air a bit…
Zigbee signals are very weak by design, otherwise you couldn’t have small battery-powered sensors. They have been known to have trouble getting through furniture, let alone block walls.
“Range” in Zigbee sticks is a myth. What counts in any network is the number of possible connections between routers. Connections change continually, depending on traffic and environmental factors like interference.
ZHA and Z2M are just integrations. The Zigbee network remains the same (with the same problems) whichever one you choose. Which you use is entirely a matter of personal preference, but either one should be able to handle 100+ devices.
“Sleep” only applies to devices like battery-powered switches and buttons. A sensor should report in as soon as it detects a change. If it doesn’t, it has lost its connection.
You give a list of devices, but no details. Some lightbulbs, for example, don’t act as routers. There is a database of Zigbee devices here:
You need to check each one to make sure it’s going to work with ZHA. When you’ve done that you can an informed decision about changing to Z2M.
I have put the bathroom 3 x gu10 ewelink lights and bathroom pir back on my old zemismart tuya hub now and they work perfectly, the tuya intergration in HA seems to be awful, i can see the lights but cant do a thing with them.
Im just about to buy a sonoff 3.0 usb dongle and i will run that on z2m and just connect the kitchen and the bathroom to it.
I will be honest im thinking its the gu10 lights and dongle placement because i tried to connect kitchen gu10 to zemistart and it wouldnt connect, as soon as i popped the light out the ceiling it connected to my zemismart hub, put it back in and went dead or just randomly turning on when it liked
It was mentioned once already, but be sure to keep your coordinator well away from any USB ports or WiFi adapters. In other words, don’t stick it into the USB port of your HA machine. Use at least a one-meter USB cable.
Then, as also mentioned, make sure there are a bunch of mains-powered devices which you know to act as routers between the coordinator and your edge devices. If you find some edge devices not behaving, stick another router in between. It’s good to have a few smart plugs handy for this, even if you don’t plug anything into them.
Zigbee mesh networks can be very reliable, but it’s best to build them out from the coordinator and monitor as you go. You shouldn’t need a second coordinator or integration (Z2M and ZHA). That just complicates maintenance and introduces more potential points of failure.
As previously mentioned zigbee is 2.4Ghz so it’s also very helpful to fix the 2.4GHz channel zigbee utilizes, along with you wifi router, so your wifi signal isn’t stepping on your zigbee communications.
Don’t redo the whole house. I’ve read a lot of nightmare stories from people on this forum who add a million devices all at once and then expect them all just to work. And then when it doesn’t they delete everything and try the whole thing from start to finish again, and inevitably find themselves running into new permutations of the same problems.
Start with a few lights or mains-powered switches–that are as near your Zigbee coordinator as possible–and build things out, ideally over a matter of days. Observe newly added devices to see if they work reliably or if they start doing weird stuff. Just because it turns on instantly the first time you try it doesn’t mean it will do the same thing later in the day when your neighbors all start using their ancient WiFi routers.
Get to know individual kinds of devices and how to deal with them. You really can’t expect just to get your whole house into a single system all in one day, probably even if you’re dealing with a single, expensive proprietary solution. This is a classic Rome-wasn’t-built-in-a-day type of project.
I don’t mean to lecture, but I want people to be able to help you and for you to get things running, and it’s very hard to help when things aren’t broken down into individual, clearly stated problems and instead take the form of “nothing works.” I hope eventually everything works for you.
. Or take 30secs