I’ve been using Home Assistant a few weeks now and finding it a very nice addition to help me further automate my home. But also still learning a lot. I’m currently running it on a Raspberry.
One of the products I use a lot is Philips Hue lights. As such I have a Hue hub (which is almost maxed with 46 devices). And I am fine with it. But I want to integrate more Zigbee devices. So ordered a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 dongle.
My question regarding that only came up after I ordered it:
Can both use the same Zigbee channel or will they cause interference? Its an exceptionally ‘busy place’ in my house. With Wifi, SonosNet Wifi and Hue Zigbee. Let alone all the other networks of neighbors. Its very crowded on the 2.4 GHz band. What would be best to set it up?
Am I right to assume that the Zigbee mesh of Hue’s Zigbee won’t work with other Zigbee devices? My HA is currently physically located in the attic and the first devices I want to hook up devices the the livingroom.
What would be the thoughts of ppl here with more experience than me? Thanks!
They form entirely separate networks. Imagine it like your Wifi and your neighbor’s Wifi. You don’t WANT them to be able to touch and yes, they can interfere - just ask my neighbor how he liked my Pringle’s can antenna, wait - no - ok, I’m being told that never happened.
Yes, they can / WILL interfere with each other. AND Wifi 2.4 interferes with Zigbee so Plan your channels accordingly.
Since the Sonoff Zugbee dongle spans its’ own Zigbee mesh it must be on a different channel!
Technically in terms of Zigbee protocol other devices could be part of the mesh however the Hue bridge/app won’t let you pair non-hue or non-friends-of-hue stuff to the Hue-bridge.
But you could move your lights/switches from the Hue bridge and re-pair them to the Sonoff coordinator.
I’m still running a Hue bridge in parallel too, but I will eventually move everything to my CC2652-coordinator using Zigbee2MQTT.
Thanks! That confirms what I thought (but hoped wouldn’t be the case). Zigbee channels don’t have the overlap like Wifi do they?
I found this resource online and it seems save to stick them together a wee bit out of range if the big bad wifi channels? Or is spreading them also good practice?
(I have quite a few wifi issues on the 2.4ghz band its just to busy)
If you only have one WiFi router / accesspoint you should either pick channel 1, 6 or 11 for the 2.4GHz Wifi.
Check with the Hue app on which Zigbee channel the Hue bridge is running on and pick the 2.4GHz Wifi channel to not overlap the Zigbee channel frequency.
Then for the Sonoff pick another Zigbee channel not equal to the Hue bridge and not overlapping with your Wifi.
Example: If your Hue bridge is on Zigbee channel 11 (interfering with Wifi channel 1) pick channel 11 for the 2.4 Wifi. Then pick like channel Zigbee 15 for the Sonoff coordinator.
I don’t have one router like in Andreas’ scenario, I’m on a Ubiquiti mesh - but the same principle applies in that case. I told the Unifi console to only allow 2.4 Ghz channels below 7 then let it go to town auto assigning my 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi APs on channels on 1-6. Then I set all of my Zigbee networks to channels above 19… (Where Wi-Fi 11 should be.)
In either case you’re cutting a hole in your Wi-Fi space to fit in your Zigbee channels.
I’m using a Unifi network with 6 Wifi access points. What I did was to manually assign the 2.4GHz radios to channels 1 and 11 (trying to alternate APs as best as possible to prevent interfence between access points) and then used Zigbee channel 18 for my CC2652P coordinator in HA (which is almost perfectly in the middle between Wifi channels 1 and 11) so the least possible interference.
@NathanCu Zigbee channel 19 is still on the same frequency as Wifi channel 6. Your idea with limiting the mesh to Wifi channels 1-6 is good but Zigbee should be channel 23-26 as anything below Zigbee 23 still interferes with the sideband lobes of wifi channel 6! The above linked document on MetaGeek has some nice visualization of the channel overlap.
I have my 2.4 wifi set to channel 2 (a lot of neighbors use 1. Not sure 2 is a good idea however). My SonosNet is set to 6. I believe thats just Sonos own wifi router on 2.4. And Hue is on zigbee Channel 25 (so thats wifi 11ish). Hue seems to be press the button and it picks random and asks if your okay with it. No direct control.
My idea would be to add the second zigbee channel somewhere near the other. Staying out of the range of the wifi. So 23, 24 or 26?
I’m using a mesh network consisting of 2 Asus RT-AX8UU and one RT-AX58U routers. And a Sonos Boost for my Sonos system.
Oh I know about 19 - I actually have mine on 23 and higher but there’s a buffer there if I need it. I was going to do mine like yours, but my neighbor came in hot with an abnormally strong mesh blaring on 1.
His channel 1 blew out everything on one side of my house and my system auto adjusted to 6/11. I WAS on zigbee 19 at that time. But I’ve learned through the experience, a LOT of repeaters (GE Outlets) can overcome a mediocre Wifi signal (If I set my ap’s closest to my coordinators to 1 and the ones farther away to 6 it was tolerable)
The hole starting at 19 and higher was an artifact of that and going over to educate my neighbor that he really didn’t want any 2.4 Ghz Wifi stuff except the old Alexa stuff and his guest network anyway - so he could turn that down and deprioritize it to one spot in the back of his house… When I moved to HA from Smart things I pushed everything up to 21 and higher.
It’s not far enough away from 1 to matter for planning purposes. Generally, try to stick to 1,6,11 but if it’s working - it’s not hurting anything either.
If your neighbor blasts on channel 1 then using channel 2 for the wifi will not help as they almost fully overlap. Sometimes it helps to educate the neighbors like to reduce signal strenghts (which is often misunderstood and people tend to think it’s a good idea to put their router on “maximum power”)
Better for your 2.4 Wifi would be channel 6 and then use Zigbee channels 23-25 for your Hue bridge and coordinator.
In crowded environments it‘s often impossible to have everything free from overlaps.
Also just because there is another Wifi on the same spectrum must not lead to problems if the signal (from neighbors or similar) is weak.
It helps to deploy some Wifi-scanner program on a laptop, walk around the house and see which channels are used with which signal strengths (if you see like -70dbm it’s a very weak signal)
I had separate Zigbee and Hue networks when first getting started with Home Assistant… I eventually moved all of my Hue stuff to an HUSBZB-1 and it significantly improved my Zigbee network. I had occasional drop outs all the time on both the Hue bridge and the HUSBZB-1 before combining them. I have since moved everything to a Sonoff 3.0 Dongle Plus… I only had a handful of hue bulbs and one ceiling fixture but in my opinion they all respond significantly faster on the Sonoff and Z2M than they ever did on the Hue bridge… (but that could be partly due to their own firmware updates or the overall density of my Zigbee network at this point)
Overall I would suggest moving everything to the Sonoff Dongle and ditch the hue bridge. Get bulbs that are “routers” to help… my HA is in my basement and have had no issues with bulbs on the 2nd floor or outside… I have since added a couple Sonoff Dongles as Routers… pretty much just because they were so cheap… not because I needed to.
…and of course heed everyones advice on the 2.4 Ghz Wifi issues… I fired up an old router/AP for something and because I didn’t check what channel it was on I wiped out my whole upstairs zigbee mesh… took a good hour to realize what the issue was as all of my bulbs/devices were becoming unavailable. As soon as I changed the channel on that AP everything was back to normal.
First off, massive thanks for all the help! I’m keeping my own Wifi network on 1 (switching from 2, it indeed doesn’t solve anything). My SonosNet on 6 and will stick the Zigbee networks on the higher levels. Avoiding 26.
I used the Apple Airport Utility (which has a Wifi scanner) a few times and most other networks are in the -85 range. To be honest not even sure which neighbor. There are so many generic routers/modem combinations here provided by the internet provider. All named after the Internet provider with a random number. I don’t think most neighbors actually know what it all does and they don’t let you configure them. I have the same provider and they are very pushy on their own range extenders and signal boosters with no real config for them. Blasting me out of the sky.
A bit of a side-track to the Zigbee /Wifi original question. But anybody know if the Mhz range matters? I can use both 20 and 40 Mhz or pick one.
For 2.4 I‘d stay on 20MHz channel width as some older IoT devices would not work on 40Mhz. (Doubling the channel width will increase your available bandwidth (=transfer speed) but that’s usually not required at all for your IoT stuff. (Doubling channel-width practically means to also use adjacent channel(s) therefore increasing the likelihood of interference.
On 5GHz 40MHz or 80MHz are possible, with Wifi 6 even 160Mhz but keep in mind that an even wider channel has more risk of interference.
My rule of thumb is: use 20MHz for 2.4GHz and 40MHz for 5GHz WiFi
Yes, because you are using more than one channel you can have more interference but it does not have to be the case. If the used spectrum is free & clean it can instead be an advantage in speed/bandwidth. It depends on your WiFi surroundings.
The be on the safe side, use 20 for 2.4GHz and 40 for 5GHz. If you really need more wireless bandwidth (most users simply don’t) do some tests on the 5GHz band with 80 or 160MHz.
General recommendation is not change Zigbee channel since not all Zigbee devices support all Zigbee channels. The advice is to instead only change Wi-Fi channels on your WiFi router/access-points.
Note that the recommendation is, however, not to change the Zigbee channel from default as not all Zigbee devices support all channels. If you have issues with overlapping frequencies, then it will generally be a better idea to change Wi-Fi channels on your Wi-Fi-router or Wi-Fi Access Points.
That’s great but not really an option. My Wifi is on channel 1 and my SonosNet is on channel 6. And my Hue is on Zigbee 25 (i.e. in the 11 range). And this is the setup that least hurts my wifi. As I’m being blasted on all other channels basically.
The main thing is, did I change it or not this way?
When I moved to HA from Smart things I pushed everything up to 21 and higher.
