Zigbee and HA....ahhhhh

[karluk29 (Karl)]

Went all in, as i thought it was the next step in home automation and its been a nightmare the last 2 months.

I very new to it all but i had a fully working tuya zigbee system but wanted a fancy tablet on the wall etc lol. So decided to get a HA green and a zha dongle. All good, i re set up all 45 devices and made a dashboard, had a couple of issues but not bad.

Fast forward 2 months and now virtually nothing works out the blue, sensors take 10secs to turn the lights on, i put some devices back on old zigbee tuya system and that doesnt work.

Today everything worked perfect for about 1 hour and now its all gone again.

I have alot of powered plugs so thats “should” make a strong mesh. At wits end now as my house is fully geared to automation as i have no switches.

zigbee dongle is in the garage so i assume that doesnt help…but how come it works perfect sometimes

Back door sensor working for months suddenly stopped today

Most pir sensors are intermident

Bulbs are pointless, not turning on or not turnung off.

Sorry for rant but completly out of ideas.

Attached a part screen shot of system if it helps, also im running the latest upgrade

Thanks for any help

[tom_l]

Have a read of this: Zigbee network optimization: a how-to guide for avoiding radio frequency interference + adding Zigbee Router devices (repeaters/extenders) to get a stable Zigbee network mesh with best possible range and coverage by fully utilizing Zigbee mesh networking

[jackjourneyman (Jack)]

@karluk29

zigbee dongle is in the garage

There’s a clue there. Is the HA machine in the garage too? If not, how are they connected?

Edit: In your image you seem to have quite lot of routers, but not many connections between them. A possibility is that they’re a bit too far apart to form a robust mesh.

[karluk29 (Karl)]

Hi thanks so much for the reply, the HA green is in tje garage, the wifi router and the tuya zigbee zignito hub ad well. The zbt dongle is connected on a extension lead that came with the HA GREEN.

I was thinking of putting the zbt through the wall and putting it behind the wall tablet to get it into the house.

My house isnt that big, small 3 bed detached. The 5 stairs lights are all in a line up the stairs togther. But all seperate connrction to Green. Weird is my outside sockets work perfectly

[ShadowFist]

@karluk29

The zbt dongle is connected on a extension lead that came with the HA GREEN.

It’s not just the extension lead which is mentioned in the interference guide Tom linked. You need to check whether your zigbee channel is conflicting with a wifi channel (either a neighbour or your own router if the channel is set to auto).

The fact that your tuya hub isn’t working any longer means it’s probably wifi interference.

@karluk29

I was thinking of putting the zbt through the wall and putting it behind the wall tablet to get it into the house.

The ZBT1 has a tiny onboard antenna and needs to be placed somewhere relatively central in your house, ideally with no obstructions. Sticking it behind a tablet will probably block most of its signal strength and you’ll be back facing your same issues.
It might be better to switch to an ethernet/PoE coordinator so you can place it somewhere central without having to pull wires through walls. Get something with an external antenna like an SMLight and you should be good to go.

[karluk29 (Karl)]

Thank you very much, i was looking at the sonoff one and was going to try and and wire it somewhere, hard to find a place as i hate seeing wires lol

So basically the issue with massive delays is connected to the dongle its self maybe.

The zbt is bang in the centre of the house as its on the ceiling of the garage basically. All my loft plugs work perfect for some reason. But kitchen…bathroom lights have massive delays suddenly.

Where do you guys have the zigbee dongles placed, my issue is everything is hidden in the garage.

Im going to read that link, thankyou tom

[karluk29 (Karl)]

Do you guys think that buying the sonoff one with an antenna and a Poe adapter for my router and then connecting the troublesome one to that would be a good idea, as some work perfectly like all my media system and stair lights.

Run it on zigbeemqtt, never used that yet

[jackjourneyman (Jack)]

@karluk29

Do you guys think that buying the sonoff one with an antenna and a Poe adapter for my router and then connecting the troublesome one to that would be a good idea, as some work perfectly like all my media system and stair lights.

No. I would strongly advise you to stop looking for hardware fixes and start building a denser network by adding routers. This is not like adding an extender to wi-fi - Zigbee needs lots and lots of connections between routers. Messages need to have multiple paths available so that they can bounce around until the reach their destination.

Z2M and ZHA are just integrations - the network will be exactly the same whichever you use.

[mpoole32 (Mark Poole)]

@karluk29 I feel your pain. I’m running the Home Assistant Green unit and have been using the Sonoff ZBDongle-P for a Zigbee mesh. My system updated to the latest versions of Home Assistant pieces this past week.

Over the past several years I’ve experienced periodic drops of Sonoff devices. The worst of these devices were the ZBMini-L. I’m in an old house where there are no neutrals in a lot of overhead fixtures, and their boxes are metal and small.

Other Sonoff devices like the SNZB-02D temperature sensors that I have (4 of them) have been solid for years. In the past week they dropped off the network and would not rejoin. When put in pairing mode they would do their blinking thing that happens while in pairing mode for as long as 30 minutes. On occasion they would do the interview, pair, and then remain in pairing mode before dropping back into interview mode. In the log it would show “Cancelling Previous Initialization task for…”

I have a couple of SmartThings motion sensors that have never dropped. One of these two dropped and also would not add back. There are other devices that have dropped and would not re-pair. After double-checking that I had no Wi-Fi interference, I took the step of switching the Sonoff ZBDongle out for a Home Assistant SkyConnect Zigbee dongle.

It was a simple process of making a backup of the Sonoff dongle setup and then switching dongles. Then you can do the step of migrating. The SkyConnect dongle did a firmware update first, and then all of my devices showed up and were working properly. I’d already deleted those 4 Sonoff ZBMini-L switches, so I added 1 of them back. This one re-paired with no issues. After 6 hours it is still working.

Another problem device for me has been the Harbor Breeze ceiling fan\light. They have been an issue on SmartThings, Hubitat, and Home Assistant. They are a known issue, and with all of these recent Zigbee failures I’d given up on them. After migrating to the SkyConnect, both of my remaining Harbor Breeze units paired with no issue and are still connected after 6 hours.

I have a 30" long extension USB cable connecting the dongle and had it in place with the Sonoff dongle. I have 3 Unifi APs that are each on channel 11. I had the Sonoff dongle on channel 15 and now have the SkyConnect dongle on channel 15. I tried my Wi-Fi APs on channel 1 and that made no difference while running the Sonoff dongle.

I’m using 3rd Reality plugs as repeaters and they have been solid. Two of these have been misbehaving since the recent Home Assistant updates when automation routines called for them to come on or turn off.

Over the past few years I’ve used Tuya Zigbee repeaters and they fell off in the past month and would not add back. I added 1 of them back this evening with no issues.

Swapping that Sonoff dongle for the Home Assistant SkyConnect dongle was a simple way to figure out where the issue was for me, but as everyone likes to remind us, your mileage may vary.

[karluk29 (Karl)]

Thank you very much for your reply and I am actually running the home assistant dongle at the moment I’m going to move it away from the router as it’s dangling about one meter above my router in my garage behind two breeze block walls so that doesn’t help

@jackjourneyman as for routers I have five plugs in the loft that are all about 1 meter away from each other in my kitchen which is Tiny I have 2 plugs at high level and one behind the cupboard I have a plug in the living room I have a plug in the dining room and I have a Center core of five bulbs going up my stairs I don’t think I’ve got any more spaces to put actual routers ha ha. This doesn’t include my two plugs in the garage and then proper outside socket in the back garden full stop oh and I missed out another router in the living room and various bulbs and azigbee extender in the dining room this is why I’m confused about the mesh and think maybe I need to move the dongle