Zigbee devices no longer meshing after moving the coordinator

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1

I moved my coordinator, and now my Zigbee routers seem like they’re no longer talking to each other. Here are the details:

  • My network was built with the coordinator in Room A and everything worked great
  • I unplugged the coordinator, moved it to Room B, and waited 30+ minutes before plugging it back in (apparently, this will trigger a network heal?)
  • Both Room A and B had at least 2 routers with line of sight to the coordinator within 3m
  • I left the coordinator in Room B for 24 hours to let things re-route
  • I checked the network map and noticed, most devices appear to be orphaned. The few that are still in the graph only have direct connections to the coordinator and not each other (see “Coordinator in Room B”)
  • I moved the coordinator back to the original locaiton and things work well again (see “Coordinator in Room A”)

So the question is:

  • Why does the network breaks down after moving the coordinator? I was under the impression that since previously all the routers had reasonable connections to one another (directly or indirectly), the network would continue to work well as long as the coordinator was still able to talk to at least one of the routers in the network.
  • Bonus question: Is there any way to programmatically force a re-healing? I have googled this, and I know the answer is probably “no, unplug it and wait” but something about that seems off to me.

Coordinator in Room B:

Coordinator in Room B
Coordinator in Room B1575×887 162 KB

2

Here’s the Coordinator in Room A:

Coordinator in Room A
Coordinator in Room A1620×810 173 KB

3

As strange as it is, I think I found my problem… It was the power supply that I used. I’ll see what happens in the next few days, but it looks like the mesh is working. I’m still surprised, as it doesn’t make a ton of sense. But who knows?

4

Running Zigbee2mqtt on a Pi ? Power supply is often the source of problems on a Pi.

5

Yeah… power supply issues seem to plague pi’s in mysterious ways. Although, I’m not 100% certain if this is my problem anymore; I’m doing more testing now.

I thought changing the power supply fixed it earlier today, but I seem to be experiencing the same problem again. It may be an intermittent issue. I’ll have to keep experimenting. If you have any other ideas I’m all ears.

6

The usual 2 culprits:

  • use a USB extension cable
  • make sure you use a USB 2 port, not a USB 3 port.