watched lots of videos, read lots of threads… have a pi running a newer sonoff 3.0+ dongle… 60 devices… trying to chase dropouts… dongle is on zigbee channel 25… hue is on channel 20… 2.4ghz wifi access points are all on channel 1 or 6… 12 third reality switch repeaters… 18 sengled bulbs 20 tradfri motions… lots of xfinity zigbee open/close/temp sensors…
very hard to pair new devices… and some stuff just won’t stay connected… not that big of a building…
what am i missing? have i messed up on channels? there’s only 4 hue bulbs so it could go away…
i know the sengled bulbs and most of my devices are end devices… i’m looking at additional bulbs that are repeaters… looking on amazon and ali express… i figured that was my next possible step… what’s a cheap reliable repeater bulb??
60 devices and sounds like most are end devices. You need to invest some coin in some good routers and think about where to place them. Not sure of your country, which can direct your choices. You get what you pay for, what is your time worth vs. a cheap bulb or Hue bulb. Asking as my ‘significant other’ did when the lights did not work and I was not home…, still paying
I would recommend either or both :
Hue bulbs
Jasco wall sockets (perhaps a US specific item) | Zigbee2MQTT
Nothing wrong with Ikea devices per se, but Zigbee is not their ‘business’, It is Hue’s business. And that can be important. I’ve good luck with my 3rd Reality wall plugs, they seem focused on mesh networks are their core product.
I have added the third reality switch/repeaters… 12 of them… I’m replacing some wifi smart bulbs with zigbee… hoping to get router bulbs to fill in the gaps…
Defending Ikea is not my business, but understanding root causes is. Neither Ikea nor Hue are in the business of spending any more money on a cheap consumer device than they have to, and both sell systems, where the failure to respond to wireless commands will cause consumer returns.
The identical wireless board also resides in the wall switch. In both the LED bulb and the wall remote, the wireless chip (EFR32MG1) is from Silicon Labs in Texas. This chip handles several wireless protocols that include BLE, ZigBee and Thread.
Other bulb teardowns revealed an Atmel ATMega2564 (AVR microcontroller with Zigbee) and a ST HVLED815PF (LED driver) but my bulb seems to be different. Inside is an Atmel SAM21R21E18A – the same ARM microcontroller with Zigbee as found in the Bridge.
All three chips are IEEE 802.15.4 compliant, full-function Zigbee devices which perform as routers when powered (ie, when integrated into a mains-powered device such as a lighting bulb).
I’ll simply echo what everyone else has said and say “you need more routers”. Even just adding a couple Zigbee wall switches might cure your issues. Also bear in mind that Zigbee can be impacted by 2.4GHz wifi too, you could try playing with your wifi channels to see if that helps at all but given the size of your network it’s almost certainly having routing problems.
And let us not forget about the firmware on top of the hardware. That is most of the time a layer that can improve things without hardware rip and replace. My point, whom do I see doing the ‘good’ jobs of trying to keep a standard running despite the universe of devices they connect to. I too am not defending business models or other dimensions outside tech. In this wild west of vendors varying from standards, when you have invested coin in sixty devices as the original poster has, you have to noodle on what makes that the most stable and useful for the end users in your life of the tech and sometimes ‘suck up’ your other opins.
yeah, my original post outlined my channel configurations, which i am hoping solved any wifi vs zigbee battle for bandwidth… i removed the hue bridge/bulbs entirely… i’ve ordered more of the 3rd reality switch/repeaters that seem to be the biggest bang for the buck… 4 of them for $30 on amazon… i’m also getting an order together for Ali Express to snatch some repeater bulbs and routers… i’m doing a primitive calculation here of dividing total nodes by routers and am trying to get it down to <3 per router…
i was doing this whole place with an old smartthings hub… zero repeaters… but i’ve added many devices… i don’t know that it’s about radio range as much as capacity…
I’ve started over… relocated my hub… turned down the power on my wifi access points on the 2.4ghz band… (I saw improvement there) I added some wall plug repeaters so i now have a total of 16 Third Reality routers…
Additionally, I’ve ordering a boatload of tuya zigbee bulbs from ali express… theses are router/repeaters hopefully… i’m hoping to get enough routers that it works solidly…
does anyone know if all or most of the tuya zigbee bulbs are router/repeaters?
my dongle is in a black usb2 port… connected via a shielded 4 foot extension cable… the dongle is about eye level hung on the inside of a hollow wooden closet door… antenna pointed up and other than the door isn’t surrounded by much… there are metal alarm panel boxes (think honeywell vista 20p) hanging on the wall and the pi4 is inside one of those which has a small power supply board and two backup gel cells as the only other occupants… I’ve got another extension cable coming that i’m moving the zooz z-wave dongle outside of that box and isolating the zwave and zigeebee dongles as far apart and as vertically separated as much as possible inside that closet… the metal boxes and metal closet rod are below the level of the dongle antenna for zigbee…
i’m hoping this new configuration along with the new zigbee bulbs is a winner… i’ve been playing with radios and electronics since i was 12 years old… lol… zigbee is the most persnickity thing i’ve seen in a long time…
