I have a Home Assistant Green, running OS 16.3, with a SONOFF Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle. [I’m connecting the dongle to the Green with a short USB cable, as the dongle is too wide to fit the back of the device.]
Right now, I’m just using Aqara bulbs connected through Matter.
The bulbs are very erratic – some are not connecting. Each time I restart the Green, different bulbs are connected/disconnected. This problem seems to be recent – I had a few hiccups in the past, but nothing this erratic.
All Green updates have been run.
Any suggestions on keeping the bulbs would be appreciated.
Mains powered devices are generally router devices too.
When you connect/disconnect the power you disrupt the routes that the devices use and they have to find new ways to the Matter server.
This renegotiation of routes can take some time to finish, and quite a long time in larger setups.
I suggest you use HA to turn off the bulbs that are on a timer instead.
That way the bulbs still have power and can route packets for other devices.
The lights on a fairly sophiscitcated security system that shuts off power to those daily… will it help if I set those up to at least not work as a router?
Also, I’m using a $30 SONOFF plug-in module on the Green for Zigbee. Would I do better to get the Home Assistant SkyConnect, or won’t that make a difference?
The Sonoff dongle E and the Skyconnect/ZBT-1 use almost the same chipset, so I doubt if it will make much difference.
For your bulbs, you probably can’t make them not work as a router.
Thanks, Francis. Maybe I’ll just need to remove those bulbs from the system – there are only five of them and I don’t change the config of those very often.
Would moving my HA device closer to the middle of the house improve signal? It’s 2000 sq feet that’s fairly spread out. I’m still scratching my head why just different bulbs connect every time I reboot the Green – even the ones that are relatively close to the hub.
I am seeing 11 nodes in Matter that are offline consistently – seems to be the same ones.
I’ve set the switched lights to stay on. I made sure IPv6 was activated on my mesh wifi network, removed, reset and re-paired all of the bulbs – and I’m still seeing the same issue: bulbs setup and run fine for a few hours and then go offline.
Make sure the bulbs firmware are updated.
I am not sure how Aqara updates go, so check the vendor sites.
Add more mains powered nodes, but avoid Onvis Smart plugs, if you do not have an Apple Matter Hub device (It is the only way they can be updated and they might come with an early critically bugged firmware).
Ikea have just announced a whole bunch of Matter products, but when they are available in stores, I am not certain about.