I’ve only had ZHA and zigbee running for about a month. My system runs on a Pi4. I have a Nabu Casa SkyConnect coordinator. I have a LoraTap signal extender, and 3 Tradfri Outlets as repeaters. I have about half-a-dozen zigbee sensors.
If any device (repeater or end device) reports “unavailable” for 2 minutes, the system sends me an email. Similarly, when a device that has been unavailable becomes “not unavailable” another email is sent.
I get a flood of emails where all devices report they are unavailable (for which there is a 2 minute delay), then a flood of emails as they all report they are OK again.
The outages happen once every day-or-so, and might last around 5 minutes.
I have enabled debugging ready for the next outage.
sorry - I have only once had to reload ZHA (normally the system just comes good by itself. I have never been present during an outage to do any investigation.
Sounds as if you only have four router devices, which should be able to handle half-a-dozen sensors, but it does suggest that most of the Zigbee traffic is following the same small number of routes - it would be quite possible for a single failure to bring down the whole network.
I don’t suppose someone else in the household could be switching off power to something? Or does wi-fi traffic (yours or your neighbour’s) change? Someone posted recently that interference from their smart meter brought things to a halt.
Zigbee works best when every light and every socket in the house is a router, so that messages can always find an alternative path. It’s not a good choice for point to point communication between a small number of devices.
The ZHA “map” shows all discovered routes between devices, not just the ones it’s actually using. From the colours, it looks as if there is only one error-free connection to the coordinator (the one going downwards), so most of the traffic will be going that way. If you’re happy with the LoraTap, I would add a couple more near the coordinator. (They’re not really “extenders”, by the way, in the wi-fi sense. Their function is to make the mesh denser so there are more possible routes for messages to take.)
You might also try checking how much noise there is on the channel you are using. Finding a channel that doesn’t clash with wi-fi can improve any Zigbee network. There’s a good blog post on choosing a channel here.
With ZHA you can check channels by going to the ZHA card in Devices & Services, clicking on the three dots next to Configure and selecting Download diagnostics. Right at the end of the file you get will be something like this:
The percentages show the amount of noise on each one, including Zigbee traffic, wi-fi traffic (your neighbour’s as well as yours) and other interference.
Edit: I assume you’re following all the advice about putting the SkyConnect on the end of a long USB cable etc. There’s lots of good stuff here:
I have moved my 3 WAPs to 2.4GHz wifi channels 1 and 6, leaving the upper end of the band free. Any signals from neighbours wifi on ch 11 is about 80dB down. My Zigbee coordinator was on ch20 (default?), and I have now moved it to ch 24. This is the latest energy scan - I presume a small number is good ?
“energy_scan”: {
“11”: 93.76433891498253,
“12”: 92.0598007161209,
“13”: 91.05606689948522,
“14”: 87.33047519856483,
“15”: 28.30261646762903,
“16”: 10.914542804728702,
“17”: 59.15797905332195,
“18”: 52.75969252664325,
“19”: 10.914542804728702,
“20”: 2.2107128772756957,
“21”: 2.84844209578687,
“22”: 2.84844209578687,
“23”: 3.2311094587038967,
“24”: 10.914542804728702,
“25”: 12.244260188723507,
“26”: 70.89933442360993
My SkyConnect is on the end of the supplied USB cable (500mm?)
You might try a longer cable. Mine is 2m, which allows me to place the dongle well away from any other electrical equipment. It also makes it possible to turn the dongle easily - that sometimes improves the signal. You need to make sure it’s connected to a USB 2.0 port on the Pi (not the blue one which is USB 3.0), although oddly a USB 3.0 extension cable is better because it has more shielding.
If you have anything else connected to the Pi, like an SSD, you might consider using a powered USB hub - the Pi can struggle to deliver enough power through its USB ports. Again, it needs to be USB 2.0.
I agree interference can play a big factor with a ZigBee network
I have a coral stick, wifi router and an rtl433 stick all in close proximity with my Zigbee coordinator. If I move the rtl433 (despite not theoretically being a wireless polluter) stick 5 cms it will take down part of the Zigbee network
As soon as I got the coral it also took down Zigbee, get at least a metres worth of space between these devices
Out of curiosity I’m not really convinced with the skyconnect stick at least my sonoff has an antenna
Finally caught a Zigbee outage, and Stiltjack - I see references to undervoltage being detected !!
I will try to rotating hard drive on a powered hub as you suggested.
I found an old powered USB hub (probably only USB 1 it’s that old) and connected the USB hard drive to that. No Raspberry Pi power supply issues for 7 hours and counting - previously was struggling to go an hour). Have a USB 3 powered hub on order (boot-up was painfully slow through the old hub).
Thinking I had found the problem, I had disabled debug logging on ZHA
I arrived back at the computer to find every single Zigbee device was unavailable, and just caught ZHA saying “Initialising” - then everything came good.
Can you confirm the voltage and amperage of the power supply you’re using to power the Pi ?
Power (Watts) = Volts X Amps
Have a read around on the web for recommendations
I can’t without shutting the system down, but I bought a power supply specific for the Pi4. Also, since using the powered USB hub for the hard drive, I have had no more power errors reported by the raspberry Pi Power Supply Checker integration.
Or does wi-fi traffic (yours or your neighbour’s) change? Someone posted recently that interference from their smart meter brought things to a halt.
