From my reading, I was expecting connection distances larger than my home. I put them all near to the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 controller on the raspberry Pi, which is on a 1m USB extension cable to move it away from the Pi (as I was watching videos on how easy it is to upset Zigbee communication) and they paired.
When I’ve moved them to their final places, however, I’m getting no real readings. What is in history appears to be flat lines from when they originally connected.
Only one is reporting frequently, and that is within 1m of the controller. The rest, three to five meters, say, are flat lining and refuse to interview because they could not find active endpoints.
I didn’t do any additional setting in the devices before placing them in their destination, so the settings are blank except for the friendly name. I’m also reading of people doing various things to force readings out of the units. I’ve also tried relocating the controller and aerial.
So, I’m not sure if my expectations of coverage are out of whack, or whether my lack of settings are to blame, or where I can learn reliable information on what to expect from my small Zigbee network and how to configure it properly… because I’ve now read so much stuff that I don’t know what to trust.
I hope this works. The “Office” is connected to the controller and that is working. The others appear on the map to be connected to the light bulb and the switch… but the green dotted lines?
They are refusing to interview… so I’m wondering what I’ve got wrong?
I think that one way I went wrong, was to put the devices alongside the controller and then move them to their final position. It looks like I should have put them in their final position and then paired.
I am making some progress… I’ve told devices to re-pair when in their final positions and some have… and also show a direct connection to the controller on the map. Some, however, are refusing to interview properly and are not re joining.
I think that the devices that are having trouble… are trying to join via the landing light, or the mains plug… as opposed to being able to talk directly to the controller.
Which makes a bit of a mockery of joining them alongside the controller and then moving them.
“Permit Join (all)” also engaged the switch and the light. Devices in range of those two not only paired “via” those … but “bound themselves to” those.
Effectively not reporting directly to the coordinator.
So… putting the devices in their ending position and selecting, “Permit Join (Coordinator)” seems to have done the job in terms of relationship.
I do have one unit not pairing though… the kitchen… and I’m still troubleshooting that.
At least, that’s how I think I’m understanding it.
OK - so I’m fairly convinced that the “Permit join (All)” was my downfall, and I was somehow setting up bindings which were getting the Sonoff sensors to report to the light and the switch instead of the coordinator.
However, where I thought that the map was representative of this… apparently it isn’t. The Conservatory sensor has a binding to the coordinator, but the map is showing it talking via the landing light.
Now… I know that the directions for the map say… “Link quality is between 0-255 (higher is better)” … but the office is literally one meter away, whereas the lounge is on a different floor and several meters more away, and the kitchen is actually the other side of an RSJ to the coordinator. So I don’t totally understand these numbers.
The conservatory linking to the landing light… I can only presume that as that is mains powered, that it is able to be a stronger node than the USB coordinator, so the conservatory sensor is connecting to that light because it’s can’t talk with the coordinator.
I’d really appreciate someone validating or correcting my understanding of this please.
