Sonoff Zigbee device ‘unavailable’ and recommendation for router for UK

Configuration Zigbee
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I’m finding that some of my Zigbee battery powered Sonoff temperature/ humidity sensors periodically seem to go offline, when this happens all of their values say ‘unavailable’. When this happens, how should I be reconnecting them to the Sonoff Zigbee gateway? Should I be re-pairing them?

Next, how can I best trigger a notification to alert me to this disconnection happening?

Finally, I assume the issue is of Zigbee range as the affected sensors are also the most distant. If this is the case then I assume I need to have a well situated mains-powered Zigbee device to act as a router, thereby extending the range? Can someone recommend such a device for the UK? I don’t want smart lightbulbs so I assume the next best option is to have a smart plug? Do the Ikea Tretakt plugs serve as Zigbee routers? They seem cheap and reputable.
Are there alternative devices that anyone can recommend? I don’t actually need a smart plug, its purpose would be to simply extend range.

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Hello gsoper,

Zigbee is a mesh. The most likely problems is you need more devices for the area you are covering.
Read more about Zigbee in these posts.

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Thanks for your helpful response, I understood that much about Zigbee and understand that battery-powered Zigbee devices don’t act as routers and that most mains-powered Zigbee devices do. As I don’t actually need any additional Zigbee devices, I’m looking for a safe and cheap mains-powered Zigbee device purely to act as a repeater. Ikea’s Tretakt smart plug looks like a good candidate as it’s cheap and reputable but the thread at Tretakt smart plug as a zigbee router confuses me as to whether it will work. So far, I have simply used a Sonoff USB Zigbee gateway to integrate my Zigbee devices with HA and don’t know about ZHA or zigbee2mqtt . Can someone vouch that the Tretakt smart plug will work as a Zigbee router for me and thus extend my range?

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Tretakt will work fine I presume. Probably same thing inside as a French Tretakt.

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Thank you, I can see from the ‘View network’ option that other Zigbee devices are now connected via the Tretakt socket which shows in the diagram as a router.

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Can I return to these two questions? For the first question, the only way I can get the device to come back online is to repair it but that feels like overkill. Placing it adjacent to the Sonoff USB Zigbee gateway and leaving it for quite a while doesn’t seem to have enabled it to reconnect.

Also, I’d still like to set up a notification for when a Zigbee device disconnects, what would be a good trigger for that?

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1 Like
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It has indeed been working fine as a router, I can see that the expected (most distant) devices are routing through it…

Thanks!