Thanks, I really appreciate your feedback! I’ll the firmware upgrade soon and hope for the best.
I did the firmware update to 7.3.1.0 and my Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus finally started to work with Z2M without any issues with looking devices, literally 0 issues in last 10 days. I tried before with the lower software version without luck, some of the devices get disconnected over and over. For me looks like the issue with the dongle itself.
Finally took the plunge and did the update.
Let’s see where this goes!
Not sure why everyone is expecting solid performance with Dongle-E with Z2M as it’s still not officially supported.
I tested it about six months ago and found it very unreliable so went back to my Conbee II. I would like to try again and tempted with this newer fw (not checked if on it already) but only once it’s officially supported.
I totally agree with snzb-03 drop off issues. I have 126 devices consisting of mainly tuya lights, aqara wall switches, aqara motion sensors, ikea motion sensors, sonoff zbminis and the only devices that consistently drop off after a few days are the two snzb-03.
The only caveat is that they are the last devices i’ve added to my setup but I’m convinced they’re just naff.
In general i’ve had the odd issues with many types of child devices dropping off originally but it’s been solid for (6-9 months), now ignoring the odd power cut or ha hw failure. That messes with my refined mesh 
Child devices can be picky about what they pair with and where they live, as you all know.
They don’t mesh like routers so Experimenting by Moving them around, even slightly where possible and pairing them with different types of routers really helps. It can also take time for them to decide the best route. If they become unreliable, i.e. intermittent (not complete drop off), I always restart HA first and see if it resolves itself over a couple of days. And by restart, I mean shutdown and kill power to ha, ensuring dongle clears. This helped me early on with pairing issues
Not sure why you mention this? From beginning of this thread on we are talking about Sonoff ZigBee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus. Just to be sure I checked my dongle, and it’s written “ZBDongle-P” on it’s backside.
How did it go?
To add my experience, the issue ended up not being about my Zigbee dongle at all. I recently upgraded from the Conbee II to the Sonoff Plus-E after experiencing random drop offs of devices. I thought it may be the limited signal strength of the Conbee or its limited number of devices supported. But after setting up the new Sonoff and pairing all of my devices again, I would still experience random drop offs of devices at medium-ranges from the dongle. Then it dawned on me that my Zigbee network is operating on channel 11. Ch 11 coincides with wifi channel 1. In my home I have three AP’s operating on wifi channel 1, 6, and 11. The two closest to the Zigbee dongle are on channels 1 and 6, and the furthest in the garage channel 11. The issue that was occurring is that the wifi AP on channel 1 was clobbering and drowning out the Zigbee dongle signal. Even with the +20 dBm power of the dongle, the +23 dBm of the AP is going to win out.
Then I considering moving to Zigbee channel 25 to move as far away from wifi channel 1 as possible, but I didn’t want to re-pair all of my devices over again. Instead I opted to rotate the channels on the AP’s. The AP closest to the Zigbee dongle is now channel 11, and second closest 6, and furthest in the garage channel 1. This way I can provide as much SNR to the Zigbee network as possible. After making this change, my Zigbee network is solid without any dropped devices.
If I did this on my network where woudl the router one go near mmy location and the other downstairs or the router downstair? I have a spare sonoff thats doign nothign at mo!
Just to add my 5 cents.
It seems the issue is still there, at least for me with SNZB-03 motion sensor and SNZB-02 temperature sensor.
Motion sensor falls out almost instantly, temperature one might hang for a few days and then drop out.
Strange thing that door sensor SNZB-04 works flawlessly for weeks without fallouts.
I’m using latest Z2M with Sonoff P-dongle (recommended one) with latest firmware flashed on it. My WiFi channel isn’t overlapping with Zigbee, so interference should not be an issue (and door sensor works).
If the device drops out it’s enough to permit joins and hold the button on the device for it to reconnect, but it will drop out again soon anyway.
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Apologies if resurrecting an old thread. Since its not been mentioned: Instead of altering the reporting frequency/behaviour of the sensor itself, an other, and far simpler sollution is to navigate to Home Assistant >> Settings >> Devices and Services >> ZHA >>CONFIGURE and scroll down to the bottom where I set both “consider mains powered devices unavailable after (seconds)” and “consider battery powered devices unavailable after (seconds)” to 31536000. Thats a Year in seconds. if you need this feature, to sense when a sensor Actually drops out, feel free to set it lower, its 2 and 6 hours by default, so you can try to double that. and double it again, until your sensors stop dropping out. After doing so i’ve had no more issues with Sonoff SNZB-03 or an aqara motion sensor dropping out / becoming “unavailable”.
From a battery perserving point of view, this method would be beneficial since it wont make the sensors report more frequently. I think the problem really is that the zigbee coordinator expects a too frequent heartbeat from a sensor that just as well can stay asleep.
This obviously only works in zha, deconz may have an equivalent setting. which i am not aware of.
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A petty I am on Zigbee2Mqtt, but this sounds like the most sane thing to do so far.
Have to check, whether there is a simillar setting in Z2M
There is, it’s under Z2m frontend > Settings > Availability > enable advanced availability. Note that in Z2m, the setting is in minutes, not seconds.
I don’t think this will solve any issues though. Increasing this value will simply make it so that Z2M will take longer to detect that the device is unavailable. If the device is actually dead, then you won’t be able to tell since it will still be listed as online until next year.
You’ll only realise when your automations start failing and the above will only make troubleshooting harder.
Thanks for pointing me to the setting!
I won’t set it to indefinite for sure, but extending might keep the state as connected, when it is in sleep.
The motion sensors might wake up only on movement. I don’t know.
Worth to play a bit with it.
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I have the same problem and until now I thought it was the sonoff zigbee devices’s fault as zigbee devices by other brands kept working fine so I started to slowly move away from sonoff devices.
Now I realized it might also be the Sonoff ZigBee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus fault even if I’d expect it to work perfectly with zigbee devices of the same brand.
is it worth replacing the Sonoff ZigBee 3.0 USB Dongle Plus with another brand? I have a compatible device lying around but I thought it might be too much trouble replacing it.
Any thoughts?