Pairing Aqara Switches / Sensors Through Repeater

Configuration Zigbee
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Hello all! Might be a dumb question, but hear me out please (quite new to all this). Here’s the setup:

  1. HA on a Pi4 with the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 dongle as the coordinator.
  2. Aqara non-powered light switches (no neutral) and various sensors.
  3. Couple of Tradfri wall plugs to act as repeaters.

Basically, things were working fine via the Aqara app, but the whole “getting things into HA via homekit” thing was really getting on my nerves, so I tried switching to the ConBee II but that was terrible so I tried the Sonoff and it seemed to work fine.

My issue is the following: I can easily pair Aqara devices that are near the Sonoff coordinator (at the very end of the house). The Tradfri plugs are distributed evenly across the ground floor and already have some third party AliExpress stuff connecting through them with no issues. However, if I try to pair one of the Aqara devices that are far from the Sonoff, they never get discovered. I would have assumed that “pairing packets” for the lack of a better term should be also relayed by the repeaters, but this does not seem to be the case.

What am I doing wrong? Would buying another bunch of Sonoff coordinators and reflashing them as routers work? Or would they act the same as the Ikea plugs?

Also, if you all are ever so kind, what would be the best way to carry over the work to the first floor (we build everything in concrete and cinderblock here so signal between floors is an issue). The Aqara setup had two E1 USB hubs but those coordinate among each other nicely so that was not a problem.

Would greatly appreciate the help or direction to other existing articles / topics that can help me better understand this. Thanks!!

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If you’re using ZHA, it should be as simple as going to the device page of the nearest Tradfri wall plug, click 3 dots next to reconfigure, then Add devices via this device

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We build that way too and I got around it by using smart bulbs for the stairway between floors to route the signal.
There are other options you could try if this is not desirable, such as smart sockets at the ends of each stairway, assuming you have sockets available.
Otherwise if all else fails, you could run a separate instance of zigbee (you’d have to use Z2MQTT for that) using a separate coordinator. You’ll end up with a zigbee mesh per floor, but that’s not really an issue with HA.

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Thanks loads for the quick reply! I just tried to do that (there’s a light switch right next to the Tradfri plug) but it is just not seeing it. You think it could be because Aqara switches do not connect to the Tradfri? But that would not make sense if they can connect to a generic coordinator like the Sonoff one. I’m just confused!

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Well, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I seem to recall there’s a few posts regarding routing issues between Ikea routers & Aqara end devices. (EDIT: ran a search and didn’t come up with anything, so I could be imagining things)

Have a search through the forum to see if you can dig up anything, including any potential resolutions. I’d suggest to start here

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