My stupid/elementery question then is: How do I find out, which of these I have got /am using?
(because, my son has helped me, with it all . and he is not available to help me now).
And, I try to understand it all, as good as possible…
And he has been struggling with the zigbee2mqtt (the picture) …
with me, trying to keep up …
(I know my way around frequences, wifi, etc - but not the cool sw-world etc of home-assistant)
Just disconnect a Hue bulb or two, and add them to your dongle network might already make a huge difference.If your sensors work, and the add-on is not started, you are using ZHA
thanks - I also “thought” so, but I wasn’t sure (actually I thought, tha the zongle by default just did “zigbee2mqtt” and that the error was due to an extra service, not wanting to “cooperate”.
but - I am a bit reluctant to switch the hue-bulbs from the super-stable hue-solution, and over to the erratic /work-in-progress dongle-solution…
But - in order to seek out the cause of the problem, I will probably have to do so …
the long-term solution to me, seems to be, to buy a stand-alone Sonoff zigbee bridge, and then split the sonoff end-devices between the usb-dongle & stand.alone-bridge… and have the hue’s work stable (with their stable hue-bridge)!
(because I don’t want the hue’s to become unstable, unavailable, etc - we need them every-day …)
Which just complicates the solution without any verification that your coordinator stick is at fault. I’m with Francis. Move a hue bulb or get some repeaters. If that doesn’t help take a good hard look at the sensors you chose.
That coordinator dongle is quite popular and many people use it with no issue.
thanks … a good idea.
And, a repeater is the thing, at least on paper …
I just thought, that why not separate things - and make sure the small dongle doesn’t have to do too many serial communication tasks … well then I could 100% separate the communication tasks…
thinking in the same way, as with for instance wifi-access.points - where I have 2 LAN-wired Mesh AP’s, with each one ONLY dealing with some units …
That works 100% …
…
Going “through” the dongle, after being repeated, just doesn’t seem to offload anything - to me, as a HW-technician, a repeater only re-outputs the signal, and probably in doing so, creates “an ecco” (leading to new signal interference problems)
Adding routers as suggested would be the first step
The next thing I would try is a ZBDongle-P to replace the E.
I’ve had better experience with the P in general.
But with either P or E, a few routers are still recommended.
It is not a “repeater” (that is the wrong technical name), it is a Zigbee Router, and that is not what a Zigbee Router device does. Zigbee Router will consolidate messages from devices behind it and as such off load the Zigbee Coordinator and build out the Zigbee network mesh. Zigbee depends on “network mesh” technology to expand the network with more devices. Read → https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#using-router-devices-to-add-more-devices (and https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/zha#introduction)
Follow tips here about avoiding interference and adding more “known good” Zigbee Router devices → Zigbee networks: how to guide for avoiding interference and optimize for getting better range + coverage
I use a Sonoff Dongle-E and its been rock solid. I live in a three story house, with the dongle situated on the bottom floor.
To begin with, I’d track something like the LQI score of each device and see how they are affected during the day. For example:
In ZHA this is a hidden entity you can enable for every device.
Or you can use something like the ZHA network card:
To give you more info.
I have a mix of repeater and end devices, totalling about 60 in all, and rarely have any issues.
yes - but the problem here is that somewhere in the
longer software-chain, something goes wrong.
and that can be anywhere in the chain - since things has ro ooperate, so-to-speak
So you are certain its nothing to do with signal strength or interference, you’ve ruled that out ?
I’m not just talking about WIFI vs Zigbee channels, but other RF interference that can come from house hold appliances, usb3 ports etc.
It absolutely is not the coordinator (unless you have a faulty one), as my network, using the same coordinator is rock solid.
yes.
as a hw-technician, I am 100% sure.
and, I don’t question rhe dongle.
I question the SW-chain
If you have deployed OpenHAB, and have no drop offs anymore, let us know.
thanks. I will.
And, I also want to thank the HA-builders & contributors, for the fabolous SW, and support in here!
I have enjoyed the in-depth program, and using the HA-app (that was nearly as featurerich as the browser-version, which happens very seldom).
My hope, which is probably impossible to implement, is that HA would also come in a windows-version.
The OpenHAB decision, to run their SW as a Service, within for-instanced windows, is to me Genious.
I am not saying, that I think OpenHAB is perfect…
Actually I am considering trying running the 2 in parallel…
My hope is then, to have HA as the “with nearly all” compatible - plus as a sandbox (which it is, to me) - and to have OpenHAB as the stable but a bit limited main and trusty “Coordinator/Managment-SW”…
.
As I have heard, so far, the sonoff-dongle is very stable - which leads me to thinking, that the problem lies somewhere in the SW-chain … which in my case is longer, than had I used a Pi …
There is the "SW (HA) on top of SW (Virtualbox) - and there is the plugins-etc… and there is TIMING.
I suspect, that more “out-of-sync /not getting a handshake”, can make an end-note decouple or HA / the dongle de-couple…
A situation, most users, probably don’t experience, since they don’t have so many SW-layers and the “virtual” HW-connection! (that VIrtualbox and other server/virtualizer-SW’s do have!
2 dongles will sure help, but that could be done with HA too.
A lot of folks run under VirtualBox without issue.
VB has never been my choice as a hypervisor, but I can’t imagine running in a VM as any sort of problem.
I haven’t run anything other than a desktop on bare metal in over 20 years, hundreds of 24 x 7 x 365 systems.
Passing through a usb a 2.0 device is not a problem.
Very confirming to hear that 2 usb-dongles (or different HW) is actually possible, and not just a technicians thoughts.
Using both dongles, through HA:
Doing it this way, has before proven smart … in other areas …it is always good, to have a backup, and a sandbox!
(and in this case, the sandbox is also quite isolated, so that it shouldn’t crash-etc windows - at most I hope HA will just “kill/hamper” Virtualbox).
well, I can only confirm, that we have problems, and the signal-conditions are “ideal” and well thpught-out.
that’s the thing with HW+SW, that so much can happen.
so, to say “never” or “always” is a reduction of reality
Note that the Zigbee gateway applications will interact with each other in any way at the Zigbee level. It will be just like if you buy two commercial Zigbee gateway/hub/bridge appliances from different manufacturers, other than them maybe interfering a little with each other by transmitting on the same frequency range they should all work fine by themselves in their own sandbox.
So, you can have as many Zigbee Coordinator radio adapters to a single computer as you like, they can just not be connected by the same application. Many people here run ZHA and Zigbee2MQTT in the same operating-system, and even multiple instances of Zigbee2MQTT in the same operating-system.
All applications just need to be connected to their own Zigbee Coordinator radio adapter and those need to be kept away from each other, preferably by using very long USB extension cables to a powered USB 2.0 hub. Again, highly recommoment that you read all of this before taking the next step → Zigbee networks: how to guide for avoiding interference and optimize for getting better range + coverage
+1 Virtualization with layer on top of layer, etc. should not be an issue as long as the computer that you run have the resources. I would however not personally recommend running a virtual machine in Virtualbox on top of Windows client OS on client computer if that VM is supposed to be in “production”.
Check out these statistics from Home Assistant Analytics → https://analytics.home-assistant.io/
I believe that most people who run Home Assistant OS in a virtual machine at home for “production” probably either run it on an always-on NAS that comes with a built-in virtualization hypervisor / virtual machine manager or a dedicated home-built server running a Debian-based Linux OS distribution (to be HAOS supported).
Im also using VirtualBox on top of windows, when I found out how much of a pain it is to get USB passthrough working with windows native Hyper-V.
Its running on a dell micro with a 7th Gen i5 and 8GB RAM, but the VM itself only have the minimum recommended in the installation guide.
I would still recommend tracking one of your problem devices LQI score and seeing if you see drop outs, that would at least give you some evidence that its not network signal thats causing your problems.
