The ZigBee network visualization is much fun to look at and toy with.
However, it appears to arrange the nodes quite at random. It arranges them differently whenever I come back to the page. The edges are quite faint and I haven’t been able to find out what the colors stand for. Finding out what device a particular node represents is only possible by clicking on the node. This will zoom into the graph so that you can read what’s written in the node. You can’t see the environment of the node any more.
Finding any unconnected nodes is fiendishly difficult. The edges are very faint and edges leading to other nodes might cross the unconnected ones. Once you find one it won’t be in the same place any more if you happen to leave the view and come back to it again.
Seeing the topology of the mesh and seeing what terminal node connects to which router is well-nigh impossible in the graph as presented. You can rearrange the nodes so that the topology becomes visible, but woe to you if you don’t realize you have to disable the ‘physics’ before. More woe if you happen to click on anything that makes HA leave that page.
Even when you have arranged the nodes so that they reflect the topology, you have to click on each individual node to see what device it stands for. You can see that only if you zoom into that node (either manually or by enabling the auto zoom).
Manually zooming with the scroll wheel works at times, at other times it does not. When it works, the graph becomes larger and smaller as expected. When it does not, the graph starts shrinking, the it suddenly jumps and is very large again.
In a nutshell, everything I want to use the network visualization for is extremely awkward. I can not imagine that it was meant to be that way.
So, what is it supposed to be good for?
