ZHA stopped adding devices?

[n0ir]

Hi!

I’m running Home Asssitant on a NUC using a Conbee II USb-stick for my Zigbee devices. I recently switched from deCONZ and Phoscon to the ZHA integration.

I managed to add 20 devices without any issues but now suddenly I can’t add any more battery powered devices!

I have tried several devices, some of the same type I already have added. The LED lights on the devices do not indicate a pairing has been made. I CAN add mains powered devices like an outlet.

The logs do not give any information.

I have tried restart HASS, reboot the NUC and unplug och re-install the USB-stick. Nothing help.

I would like to keep using ZHA instead of deCONZ but why isn’t it possible to add more devices suddenly? What can I do?

Do ZHA have a limit on the number of battery powered devices? When I used the same hardware (Conbee II) using deCONZ and Phoscon I didn’t have this issue even when I synced more devices.

[mrneutron (Eric)]

Check out this thread. It mentions the limit number of each kind of Zigbee device:

Got a CC2531 and started using ZHA today, it went well until it stopped adding new devices

Hey all, So I got my zigbee stick today and began migrating the lights on my hue hub and some of my zigbee stuff from smartthings over to ZHA. So far I have about 11 devices connected. 10 of them are lights - they are plugged in and act as routers, 1 is a battery powered zigbee toggle switch. In the few hours they have been up they have worked really well. These devices are in various places in the apartment. However I have had some issues. The most major is that I cannot add additional light…

[ogiewon]

Are all of your Zigbee devices battery powered? If so, you may be bumping up against a limit of the number of directly paired devices to the controller. Do you have any mains-powered Zigbee devices that act as Zigbee repeaters/routers? Adding those will drastically increase the number of Zigbee devices that can be paired.

[Edhall1044 (Edwin)]

You definitely need some extenders. GE zigbee are great. Sylvania smart switches are also very good.

In theory, the number of end-point devices is around 30. In practice, this number is a little lower. I found with the conbee stick you max out around 24 or so.

For more information google how to create a zigbee mesh.

[n0ir]

OK, I think I figured it out.

I had several mains powered devices (acting as routers) but when I tried adding another battery powered device the usual way it didn’t work.

However, when I tried adding another device using one of the mains powered devices (“Add device via this device”) it worked!

I have never had to choose a specific node using deCONZ (or when adding Z-Wave devices for that matter). The software have always sorted this out automatically and configured the mesh network optimally.

I don’t know if the software will re-configure these new devices depending on the best routes. A Z-Wave mesh network will “heal” itself and optimize the different routes. Is this the same for Zigbee mesh networks?

[Edhall1044 (Edwin)]

I’m glad it’s working. What might have happened is that there wasn’t enough time between adding the router devices to establish a good mesh. This has happened to me at least once.