I recently purchased one of these to control 2 pair of lights in the garden. All connected is good. It recognises the manual switch and also can do in HA.
The problem is after a few hours (like 4-5) the Sonos disconnects from HA and therefore kept the lights ON.
I have a RPi4 + Phoscon RaspBee II connected and few routers in between them to have the signal stable.
When is connected, according to the map it has good connection with the rest but sometimes is just randomnly disconnects.
Every time I restart HA more than once in a row, I lose control of at least one mains-powered ZigBee device, and along with it up to two dozen other devicet (thermometers / door sensors / leak sensors) that report being in-network but they stop reporting sensor updates. To fix this, I usually have to go into mains boxes to reset and re-pair the devices.
Worst is when a device will react to a turn_on command, but the subsequent turn_off command does nothing and pops up an error on the app / webpage after ten seconds or so. Come on! You got the message, the network is fine, why ignore the subsequent one?
Wish I had known about ESPHome from the start. $2 ESP devices are orders of magnitude more reliable than anything I can get ZigBee.
I regret going for ZigBee. BTW, future Matter users, Thread is a near clone of ZigBee down to key fundamental assumptions, so your user experience will be as bad as ZigBee.
Well, with a ESPHome + relay you can probably achieve the same but it’s maybe more work to do. $2 + relay cost sound quite low price. In Europe this can be probably around 25 euros both and you miss the manual override of a switch. With this zigbee it was only 12 euros and can have manual override.
But indeed it feels weak and no idea why this happens. Last night it didn’t turn off the lights but that was cause automation had incorrect time.
What I am thinking now is that my rpi4 with the Raspee2 can be affected by a bluetooth adapter I have also connected to the usb ports. That is also in a metal enclosure in the middle part of my house.
If I take a usb cable, connected to the usb2 and take it out of the enclosure and use a Conbee2 will it improve connection?
Will a based tube ethernet coordinator have better range than the USB?
The advantage of an Ethernet based coordinator is that you can put it anywhere where you want (and have cable available), so not restricted where your HA server is located. Mine is located in the middle of the house, not in the end of the house where my HA server is.