TLDR: If I want to have a good working Zigbee network, do I say goodbye to Sonoff, Zigbee2MQTT, both, my setup or ditch Zigbee?
I started Home Automation with Domoticz and used Z-Wave. Moved house and included Deconz Zigbee. However, Z-Wave was not an out of the box protocol anymore so gave me too much headage. I therefore moved to Home Assistant, which I tried before, but at that time was worse then Domoticz. But with a Nuc and HA, it looked like a good combo.
Z-Wave has been running without issues, but Zigbee has been troublesome. I have all recessed zigbee lights and hardly any traditional lights (the ones I do have, are switch by Z-Wave plugs). The problem with Deconz was the Glefapto spots sometimes stopped communicating, and this means a full restart of the nuc, as only restarting deconz would lose all zigbee connections. After ordering some AliExpress zigbee devices, the problem was that some of these devices are not recognized.
As I read here, the best combination would ben Sonoff E with an Ember update, and Zigbee2MQTT. So I did, having to redo nearly all automations.
I agree, most devices are now recognised, but the availability of the devices have dropped dramatically. All devices are losing their connection at one stage and come back hours later. Sometimes a light does not gonoff, 5 minutes after no presence detection. But sometimes the toggle switch (Automation: if on or off, toggle light state) loses its connection too, and when it is detected again, the toggle is called as it changes it stat to off or on. (Found out that was a colpurate after months).
To make matters worse, if a device is offline, you can go to Z2MQTT and switch the state of the devices. Upon changing, it might show itself as online again and execute the task. This is not possible from the HA dashboard as the offline state, does not allow you to switch.
I have the zigbee and Z-Wave dongles between the floor boards of the first floor and the ceiling of the ground floor, slightly away from the wifi modem of the provider, which is in the same cupboard on the first floor. During testing I have even extendedbthe cable to go outside the cupboard laying it in the hallway, but even zigbee lights right above it lost connection, as did devices further away on the ground floor.
One can understand the WAF has dropped, asking me 'how can I even live here if you would go on a business trip, and how can you ever sell this place. You need to work on you system weekly. Even though I don’t like it, she has a point.
I am actually really sick of Zigbee, but there is no affordable alternative. But when I look an forums and videos, everybody seems happy with their Zigbee. So I must conclude the problem lies with me. But where?
Should I buy another Dongle which is up for the task, or should I switch to ZHA. Or am I not crazy, and Zigbee is a terrible protocol after all?
In currently have 62 Z-Wave devices and 68 Zigbee devices. 157 automations and 78 scripts. As you might guess, if I go with other dongles or system, I would love to have the impact as small as possible and not restart again.
