That’s weird. I can change channels easily the the zigbee2mqtt settings page. Sorry,. I don’t use ZHA so can’t help you there. Maybe someone else can chime in on that. I can’t understand why anyone would select 15 as the default. It’s obviously not as good as 25, so if ZHA is really doing that it should be fixed as 2.4 GHZ wifi is very common!
Some devices will not need repairs, they will scan when they no longer here the coordinator. So hopefully it will not be that hard for you.
I added the channel 25 instruction in my configuration YAML and I then wiped the NVRAM on the coordinator and reformed a network. This in theory was going to create a new network on channel 25 but after joining all the devices back I found out that my channel change was not saved… so it is most likely on channel 15, possibly where it was before.
I did an energy scan using
python -m zigpy_znp.tools.energy_scan /dev/serial/by-id/usb-ITead_Sonoff_Zigbee_3.0_USB_Dongle_Plus....
and it showed ch15 as the busiest but I wonder whether it was because of all the devices living on that channel. Ch25 was only at 5%…
I am guessing that once I move everything to ch25, that channel will be shown as the one having the highest energy… but at least I will know that prior to adding devices there, it was clear. I really can’t tell right now what the actual energy on ch15 is without disabling all the devices, right?
Here’s some info regarding ZHA and changing channels.
Changing the zigbee channel - Configuration / ZHA - Home Assistant Community (home-assistant.io)
Zigbee Home Automation - Home Assistant (home-assistant.io)
Zigbee Changing channel · zigpy/zigpy Wiki · GitHub
I too have been having lots of connectivity issues with my zigbee network. Was using zigbee2mqtt on channel 15 but that wasn’t solving the issue. Main router and AP were channel 1 and 6 so zigbee was smack dab in the middle Strange things is, out of the 29 devices I have it only affect the 6 light bulbs. Everything else is fine. Did switch to ZHA to see if that made a difference but nope. Moving the main router from channel 1 to channel 11 did help but still had some drops. This past Friday I deleted all devices and re-setup z2m using channel 20. Its been 6 days and so far so good. I hope I don’t regret not using channel 25 lol
@billyjoebob999 Thanks for the links. I referenced those pages too in my research and attempts but unfortunately I made a mistake (did not verify that the channel config was saved prior to reforming the network) and landed back on ch15 however something has changed as it appears to be working better than before… 42 devices have LQIs that are >100 and that is way more than before. I did upgrade firmware on my coordinator (latest development branch firmware as there are changes that help larger networks) so it is impossible to say whether reforming the network or the firmware are what helped. Likely both…
@aruffell Did you ever find a solution to the poor routing with the Sonoff coordinator? I think I’m experiencing the same thing. Devices will not route through routers, they drop off the network rather than route via routers that they have in direct line of sight.
@imagio - I moved my coordinator to using ch25 and things got much better. I then updated the coordinator to a newer beta firmware release which also appeared to help as more than double the devices now had a direct route to the coordinator. Before the update, I believe it was limited to 23 or so direct devices, last I checked I had over 40. I am guessing there will be a new release (non beta) relatively soon that you can find here:
Thanks for the tips! Unfortunately I’ve already done all of that and the problem persists.
Where did you find the beta version? The newest version I can find is CC2652R_coordinator_20220219.zip from 10 month ago.
Hi Tom, could you please share which application/integration did you use to get that picture with your zigbee link qualities? I’m looking for something similar to optimize my network and that would help.
Thanks a lot in advance.
Meanwhile, a long time later I reply…
It is indeed. It is all to do with SNR or Signal to Noise Ratio. If you whack up the gain, you whack up the noise the same amount. Better antenna and lower power is best. My Sonoff is actually mounted vertically, but upside down from a metal plate on the ceiling. Gives the whip a ground plane and a good signal.
I am currently using this antenna:
It has a better gain than the original Sonoff antenna but not as high as another omnidirectional antenna I tested. The actual reason I chose this one is not gain but lobe… it tends to have a higher gain in the direction it is pointing and a significantly lower gain in the opposite direction. Given my coordinator is in the non ideal side-of-the-house location, I figured it might help attenuate wifi interference (wifi ch9) from my neighbor (low gain side of antenna facing their house) and increase coverage in my house. While it is hard to say whether I achieved my goal, it does seem to help. Regardless, I still get high channel usage warning messages (never know if it is referring to traffic or rf usage) and relatively frequent devices having issues.
That’s actually a great lobe diagram. I wish more antennas were sold with those. Will it fit the Sonoff? Mine is at one end of the house and that would definitely be better
Great, thanks. I can never work out SMA, RP-SMA etc etc!
How did you get this graph? This is great for at a glance…
Iv’e got the same issue. I’ve got a device (Power92) which is close to a number of other power meters with router functionality and also which have good connections to the coordinator but the LQI on my Power92 device is really bad (8-10). I’d have thought that the zigbee protocol would route packets through other routers?
Coordinator: Sonoff Zigbee Dongle-P running the latest coordinator firmware: 20240710
Here’s a screenshot of my zigbee map showing Power92 with poor LQI and other nearby devices with excellent links back to the coordinator:
