Brand new to HA, but long time SmartHome person (SmartThings → Hubitat → HA in April)
Bought a new home and making it smart. As I’ve done with my homes since 2014, I have been buying and adding enbrighten (nee GE/Jasco) zwave and zigbee switches side by side throughout my house to give max mesh coverage. Anyway, all was going well for me until yesterday. I was installing 4 zigbee and 4 zwave and the power was such that I did a bathroom first (1 each) and then was doing the primary en suite next (3 each). Anyway, both zigbee and zwave switches added fine to the guest bathroom but after that the zigbees won’t. All the zwaves have however. I’m at 24 zigbee devices and have the sonoff zigbee 3.0 dongle as my radio and up to date HA.
Am I missing someone key at 24 for zigbee that I should have known?
All of the zigbee switches just blink 3 times. They work manually fine, and I’ve airgapped and also flipped the breaker as well as did the 10x up paddle to reset all to no avail.
75 Zigbee, 67 z-wave and counting here, Sonoff dongle E as Zigbee coordinator, Aeotec Z-stick gen 5 for z-wave. No enbrighten devices though. No problems at all. Maybe (wifi?) interference issue? Z-wave and Zigbee should never interfere as the frequencies are way different.
I have indeed. (should have noted that). I did get one suggestion to try pairing from a closer device (which I had not done before because I didn’t know I could do that! ) Will update as soon as I see if that works. Thank you for the reply!
Well I paired via the one literally about 6 inches away (its on the same wall, just in primary bedroom and this switch that isn’t being found is in the primary closet). I guess I’m going to have to figure out how to force those switches into pairing mode. Unhelpfully Enbrighten says once they’re powered on they go into pairing mode which is a bit unfortunate in this case. I see quite a few of the types of devices I added showing up, but I am not sure if they are the ones or not? As a newbie, the log doesn’t really make sense to me yet.
Don’t know if this helps, but when I pair a new Zigbee device, I wire it up on my workbench close to the Zigbee dongle. This way there are no intermediate devices in the signal route. Updates, when necessary, through the Zigbee network are really slow. For a device near the dongle an update takes just a few seconds. In another room, with two or three intermediate routers takes upwards of an hour.
I have a Sonoff Zigbee USB 3 dongle as my router (I think that is the proper terminology?) and about 20 switches and 4 zigbee battery sensors. Is there a way to make one of those or many of those switches routers?
Sounds like that’s the problem. Most mains-powered devices act as routers, but not all. Two-wire switches don’t. Battery-powered devices can’t.
With a new installation you would normally build a solid network of routers first (typically lights and sockets), then add switches and sensors afterwards. The coordinator dongle would not usually have to connect directly with many devices, and there will be a limit to how many it can handle (though that varies from manufacturer to manufacturer).
There’s quite a lot of zigbee information in the Cookbook:
Thank you I will go read this. The one issue I have right now is that I have one of those in router mode that is about 6” away on the same wall just on the other side and it won’t talk. Would there be some error I might look for in the log? Reviewing it and I see lots of errors and warnings but none really that jump out and say zigbee.
If your Zigbee Router devices are “in-wall” switches then you be aware that, epecially compares to lower frequency technologies like Z-Wave, Zigbee’s 2.4GHz low-energy and short-burst wireless technology has very bad radio propagation (meaning bad penetration of building materials) so if your junction boxes are made of metal or your walls are made of dense building materials then the radio signals will not go far though those walls/floors/cealing, so you will need to add additional Zigbee Router devices to further expand the reach (range and cover) of you Zigbee network mesh. When in doubt, add more Zigbee Router devices!
PS: By the way, the ZHA integration documentation does also cover some of that and more but in less detail as those docs not meant to be a step-by-step guide → Zigbee Home Automation - Home Assistant
Many mains powered devices like in-wall dimmers and switches which are not easily accessible have the feature of going into pairing mode after you cut the power x amount of times. Try flipping the breaker 5-6 times, see if that makes them pair.
) Will update as soon as I see if that works. Thank you for the reply!
