I have a ZBMINI-L connected to one of my light switches. I’m seeing a weird behavior. When it’s first paired, it seems to work properly. However, it soon stops working (see behavior in the first gif). Looking at the mesh map (second gif) you can see how the bedroom switch seems to flicker.
The average LQI for this switch doesn’t go over 25 (note that it’s built into the wall, behind the light switch).
Has any of you seen this before? Any recommendations on what to do to stabilize it?
I’m using Zigbee2MQTT and a the SONOFF ZigBee 3.0 USB dongle.
This could definitely be affecting me. Dongle is plugged to an USB 2 port but right next to an USB3 port and, perhaps even worse, it’s sitting right next to my Wifi router. TIL that these things interfere quite a bit with the zigbee signal.
Do you recommend connecting the dongle with a cable far from the server and the Wifi?
I think there may be significant interference now that you mention it so I gotta find a way to solve it
Not too far, maybe a couple of meters or so. The switch is mounted in the wall, tho (behind the wall switch).
Literally just bought some, will wait for them to arrive and report back.
Most people in the community use 1½-2 meter USB extention cables, moving the dongle a good distance from anything. Personally I have it like 2m above the RPi, hidden in a big plant:-) I believe this is your main issue.
A few additional mains/routers will help on overall strength, especially when you build out with more devices.
I have a ZBMINI (not -L) with a similar issue! I’m not using it to drive a light but a contactor to toggle the heating. A Generic Thermostat turns it on and off to maintain a certain temperature.
The problem is that sometimes it toggles a few times extra. Depending on the amount, the heater is on when Home Assistant thinks it’s off. This is of course a big problem! I’m sure that the thermostat is not the problem because I have the same problem when I manually toggle the device. Also in the logs I see only one thermostat toggle entry.
To prevent interference I put the Raspberry Pi 2 (which doesn’t have WIFI) in a different room and changed the zigbee channel to 15. This did not solve the issue.
Below are the zigbee2mqtt logs when turning the device off. The device turns off and back on again. Can someone explain me how to interpret this?
Debug 2023-01-11 20:23:47 Received MQTT message on 'zigbee2mqtt/home_office_heater/set' with data 'OFF'
Debug 2023-01-11 20:23:47 Publishing 'set' 'state' to 'home_office_heater'
Debug 2023-01-11 20:23:47 Received Zigbee message from 'home_office_heater', type 'attributeReport', cluster 'genOnOff', data '{"onOff":0}' from endpoint 1 with groupID 0
Info 2023-01-11 20:23:47 MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/home_office_heater', payload '{"linkquality":64,"state":"OFF"}'
Info 2023-01-11 20:23:47 MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/home_office_heater', payload '{"linkquality":64,"state":"OFF"}'
Debug 2023-01-11 20:23:47 Received Zigbee message from 'home_office_heater', type 'attributeReport', cluster 'genOnOff', data '{"onOff":1}' from endpoint 1 with groupID 0
Info 2023-01-11 20:23:48 MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/home_office_heater', payload '{"linkquality":64,"state":"ON"}'
Debug 2023-01-11 20:23:55 Received Zigbee message from 'home_office_heater', type 'attributeReport', cluster 'genOnOff', data '{"onOff":1}' from endpoint 1 with groupID 0
Info 2023-01-11 20:23:55 MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/home_office_heater', payload '{"linkquality":48,"state":"ON"}
I think I figured it out. I neatly zip tied the ZBMINI to the contactor to have a clean install. I believe the contactor generates enough interference when toggling to make the SBMINI go into an unexpected state. I seperated both units by 30cm and it almost behaves as normal. I say almost because once it didn’t response when stress testing the thermostat. But since the separation I never saw the rapid triple toggling anymore.
