I use the Vera Plus with more than 200 zwave devices and it’s super reliable, it also supports Zigbee.
Is it extensible? I mean would routers act as routers or as end devices?
I only use it to be a hub for all my devices, HA controls all the devices via its integration. The Vera has a very decent api over http. It does support scripting via LUUP but I don’t use it.
I see. Could you give a link to the product. The one I’ve found selling in my country is said to be Zvawe|zigbee hub wich I suspect does acceps mains working as a routers in its network, meaning that there would be range limits - only direct connections to it… when you have 3 floors of a network It is an obstacle to avoid
The official web site: http://getvera.com/pages/veraplus
Here is a comparison: http://wiki.micasaverde.com/index.php/Comparison_of_Vera_units
The Plus is being phased out and going to be replaced with the Ezlo (same company, new name) Plus hub, which is more powerful. You can still find the Vera Plus on Amazon and a number of other web sites.
Thanks!
Usefull stuff, but which ones of thees prooved to be ‘bulletproof’ stable in reality…?
As of now, I took notice of your remark and flashed my spare Sonoff with latest Tasmota:
|Program Version|9.2.0.4(zbbridge)|
|Build Date & Time|2021-01-23T12:41:54|
|Core/SDK Version|2_7_4_9/2.2.2-dev(38a443e)|
And the latest ncp-uart-sw_6.7.8_115200 firmware to give it another try…
By the way, do you have motion sensors connected to zbbrige? Because maybe temp sensors are not demanding for the immidiate action and you never noticed the fall out, since there is never a problem with mains powered devices - they are steady online and very quickly get operational after power turns on. Usually, I notice that something goes wrong when all my motion traction dissapears - if wait for several hours it gets back, but it is easier to reinstall the integration since all the device data stored in the zigbee.db…
Yes, 10 Aqara motion sensors
Nothing to loose… 6.7.6 was not stable for me. I do not know, if it was for the number of the devices, or the unfortunate zbbridge sample…
I am experimenting with two motion sensors, a Ikea and a Aqara LUMI. The Ikea is connected VIA a LEDVANCE Plug router to the Tasmota Sonoff coordinator and the Aqara LUMI is connected directly to the coordinator. I have not measured their responsiveness in terms of any kind of latency measure, so cannot speak to that. Neither have disappeared from the network since I installed them. Both seem to detect presence or not correctly. They both report differently sensor values, I am not sure which reporting method I think is better. The Aqara LUMI also has a luminance or lux sensor, but I cannot figure out it’s readings as yet, it does not seem to work correctly.
Below is a chart from my little ZHA monitoring program, that shows how long the period of time was between ‘checkin’ or sensor readings for each of the motion sensors over the last (about) 5 days. You can see they behave differently during the periods when they are not seeing any motion. The Ikea did not see motion for one period of about 11 hours, according to my little monitoring program, the ZHA coordinator declared it ‘offline’ after about 6 hours. It never ‘vanished’ from the network as I have happen with some of the temperature end devices I am experimenting with, and as soon as it saw motion it woke up sent a motion detected packet and the coordinator put it back ‘online’.
As you can see from the two charts, over the 5 day period, the ‘normal’ ‘wake up’ behavior for the Ikea sensor during periods of long no activity was to wake up about every 100 minutes and send a ‘hello’ packet. I have no explanation why that seems to have changed for the Ikea sensor in the last two days.
You can see from the 2nd chart that the Aqara LUMI sensor checks in about every 55 or so minutes during periods of no activity, and has remained consistent.
Does the fact the Ikea sensor connect VIA a router vs. the Aqara connect directly to coordinator play in? Maybe. Both are located within 10 to 20 feet from either the router or the coordinator, and in similar indoor environments.
That’s a very interesting observation you’ve made.
It is experimentally determined fact that each program that controls zigbee device gives it different initialization setup, so the behavior of same hardware differs. I came to HA 4 month ago after some guy brought to my knowledge it exists at eWelink support Telegram channel when the Chinese cloud fell out again. And I was trying to use Sonoff snzb03 motion sensors in their native environment with no success - it just did not work, under their setup it falls asleep for eternity after initial motion detection… When I moved to HA, I flashed their bridge with Tasmota and gave snzb03 another chance - this time it was perfect, very good sensitivity, I cannot detect when it goes asleep at all, and now I made my own integration for presence tracking which eliminates unpleasant phenomena of unwanted blackouts (all types of sensors that determine presence - motion, ML NN from surveillance camera (not implemented yet), others maybe, belong to object presence_tracer for every room, and state of the room determined from the state of that object, not directly from sensors attached, which gives some intelligence to the state in|out and the light does not disappear just because you do not move when reading… at least not that often…).
The problem I am yet to solve is that if the sensor (snzb03) goes to off state while zbbridge is unavailable (reboot is the most general example), it does not send (at least in more or less reasonable time period) its state signal again, and system thinks it is in on state, while it is not. And I cannot figure out how to quire the sensor state when I need it. I saw ZHA offers services for that, but how to use them… When I try to get the attribute’s zone_state (id: 0x0000) value from ZHA - no reaction… Do you have experience with reclaiming device attributes via ZHA?
Your ‘global’ presence detection idea sounds like a good one.
I have messed around a little with querying zigbee devices using the ZHA UI on HA, it seems to work. I just tried it again, but I really don’t know what I am doing… I can query routers and end devices. However, I was under the impression that when a end device is ‘sleeping’ and you send a message out, the coordinator or the router connected to the end device as it’s parent will hold the query until the end device wakes up. However, when I tried this with a couple of my end devices, I had to keep sending the query, till I got a response. Not ideal. And the example of my Ikea motion sensor above going ‘offline’ for 8 hours until it saw motion, not good… I could really use an education from a zigbee guru. Short of that I think when I have some time, I am going to augment my little web socket utility with a zigbee sniffer. I have one of the TI chips with the sniffer code installed and will hook it up to Wireshark and see what I can learn.
Below are pictures of querying a CentraLight wall plug, Ikea motion and SmartThings Door sensor with ZHA Cluster UI in HA:
‘In your bug report I donot see that you say what devices you are having issues with, can you share?’
Must have missed you question yesterday.
Yes, it is like all my non-mains devices dissapear from the network for indefinite period of time. Motion sensors keep flashing, but not sensor states changes happen. Climat sensors get stuck - no data transfer. I actually have substantial doubt I can trust ZHA network visualisation, since it is very often the case, that for well operational devices it shows no lines leading to the router, but there is no difference how they placed in the network topology - if it is not mains - it is gone. Sometimes I go to sleep and everything is back in the morning, but very often, I just get annoyed while waiting and have to reinstall the integration. Mains devices, meanwhile, seem to stay on the network, though I never checked every…
What is the brand of your mains devices, which I am guessing are all acting as routers? From my own experience with three different mains wall plugs: CentraLight, LEDVANCE and Aqara LUMI. Each of these behaved in different ways acting as routers for end devices: Aqara Weather Sensor, Sonoff Temperature Sensor, Ikea switch, Ikea Motion Sensor (maybe)… Wondering if you have a similar ‘compatibility’ issue…
What about range? I’m planning to add Zigbee functionality to my HA setup as a result of the plan to add a ZHA lock (https://www.bunnings.com.au/lockwood-zigbee-digital-deadbolt_p0092400).
The lock is about 15m away (different room) from the Zigbee coordinator hardware and I read in other posts that some users only get 10m range on a ConBee II for instance and the website states 30m for the ConBee II for example.
What’s your experience re range?
Do you have any other mains powered zigbee device between the coordinator and the lock? If so, you might be lucky and the lock routes the traffic through this device ibstead of directly to the controller.
Nope. Lock will be the first device. So is this 10m a somewhat “reliable” guide re design? I would want a stable connection given the importance of the device.
Depends on the obstacles between the lock and the coordinator. I have a door sensor approx 20m away from the ConBee with free line of aight and it works without any issues.
Ok, so I may have to bite the bullet and get a coordinator as it opens up a whole world of devices for the house.
I’m sure there’s a way to measure signal strength to see whether 15m could work in my case without any intermediaries or if not I may have to get another device to route through…