I’ve bought some Zigbee devices as a test how they work. Up until now I had ZWave relay behind each light switch. I bought: Zigbee Sonoff USB dongle (the Texas Instruments CC253x -P plus variant), Aqara Door sensor, Aqara Humidity sensor, some Philips Hue light bulbs. As integration I used ZHA.
I’ve got a house, HA runs on raspberry Pi in the basement, Zwave stick and now Zigbee stick are plugged into it. I’ve put the Philips Hue bulbs in the hallway of each floor (basement, ground, first floor) so the Zigbee signal has an easy time to jump via the bulbs as they are supposed to be routers that built up the Zigbee mesh (as I understood it). Aqara door sensor I tried on the door in the basement (so on same floor as the actual RPi and zigbee stick) and aqara humidity sensor in bathroom (first floor, so it needs to propagate its signal through the Hue bulbs).
As light switches, the “dumb” part of them are pulse switches (so they’re not closing/opening electricity circuit when pressed) and the “smart” part of them are Fibaro relays. That way if understand it, even if physically the switch has been pressed, the light bulb should still be receiving electricity and thus should be able to receive smart commands (right?).
My issue: after a while yesterday, I noticed that most of the Zigbee devices became unavailable and I’m not sure why. Either I got this electricity situation is wrong and the normal switches are actually cutting electricity to the Hue bulbs, thereby shutting their router capability off and they can’t propagate the Zigbee signal, or maybe I’m expecting too much from the range of the Zigbee signal itself? Here’s what the topology looks like when I look at the controller (sorry for small picture, not sure how I can get everything in one picture other than zooming out):
in this case I’m not sure why the Aqara humidity sensor is unavailable if the signal is reaching the Philips Hue bulb right next to it.
Am I missing something obvious here?
Also another issue I noticed is that the Hue bulbs, when I simply press the physical switch, have a sliiiight delay in actually turning on compared to the dumb bulbs. It’s slightly noticeable when I have them side by side with the dumb bulbs, maybe I won’t notice it when it’s just all smart bulbs. But is that a usual /known thing with smart bulbs?
for Zwave stick no, for Zigbee yes I had too because there wasn’t enough physical room in the Raspberry Pi to plug both dongles into it. Might that be causing issues, some sort of power undersupply?
if relevant: the zigbee dongle also sits right next to where most of the electricity cables run, could that cause interference? I could move it away from them.
Generally: how do I test how strong the Zigbee signal/network is so I can fiddle about with it.
It’s not about power, it’s about radio interference. You have yellow and red lines connecting your devices, that means that the signal is weak (you want green). Not sure how you use the physical switches, but the bulbs should always have power (meaning the physical switch should always be on).
As long as you have a extender cable (mine is 2 meters) placed somewhere smart it shouldn’t matter how the Pi itself is placed. I have more zigbee devices than you but no issues having the stick tucked away in my attic with several walls between it and the closest router (bulb).
When selecting into which USB port to plug in the dongles, is there a preference to use USB3 over USB2 or doesn’t matter that much? And for the USB extension cable, just any standard extension cable will do or is there something to keep in mind?
You should not only use a long “shielded” USB extender cable for your Zigbee Coordinator USB adapter, (note "shielded cable so the tip there is to buy thick expensive cable as high-quality components tend to get you better electromagnetic shielding), but you should also note that it is very important to connect it to a USB 2.0 port (and not a USB 3.0 port), or connect it via a powered USB 2.0 hub if your computer only has USB 3.0 ports, as USB 3.0 ports and peripherals are infamously known for causing serious interference to Zigbee (and Bluetooth).
I’m not sure what I could to more. I’m not using USB 3.0 ports, antenna is extended away from the RPi, I’ve waited some time but the network doesn’t seem to be improving. What’s more confusing, there are some devices (like the Aqara door sensor and one Philips Hue bulb) which are essentially RIGHT next to the coordinator itself, and the door sensor seems completely disconnected (even though I can see state updates in HA itself) and the Hue bulb.
I’m not sure if I can even trust this network map. Like one of the innr bulbs in the living has a red connection to the other innr bulb in the living room (no distance between them) but has a green connection to a bulb in the other room. How does that happen? Can I force refresh the network map somehow, or should I try to rebuild the whole Zigbee network from scratch?
What is your situation as far as Zigbee and WiFi channels? Many routers by default are on auto channel selection is it possible your WiFi channel changed? I previously had an old router I fired up and wipe out half of my Zigbee network because I forgot what channel it was on.
honestly my Wifi should be pretty clean. I’ve got a router, managed switch and APs(only 2) from Ubiquiti, and just 9 devices connected via Wifi (6 of them being thermostats which barely transmit any data), with an even distribution over channels 36, 11 and 6
