Zigbee flaky, weird utilization

Configuration Zigbee
1

What’s up with my setup? I’m on 15, yet things are quite flaky. I know interference is also huge but I’ve tried lots of stuff along those lines; antenna location/orientation, wifi channels. etc.

"energy_scan": {
  "11": 76.47058823529412,
  "12": 75.29411764705883,
  "13": 75.29411764705883,
  "14": 72.94117647058823,
  "15": 40.0,
  "16": 58.8235294117647,
  "17": 71.76470588235294,
  "18": 69.41176470588235,
  "19": 51.76470588235294,
  "20": 31.764705882352942,
  "21": 18.823529411764707,
  "22": 20.0,
  "23": 15.294117647058824,
  "24": 10.588235294117647,
  "25": 11.764705882352942,
  "26": 51.76470588235294

2nd run

"energy_scan": {
  "11": 76.47058823529412,
  "12": 75.29411764705883,
  "13": 72.94117647058823,
  "14": 72.94117647058823,
  "15": 44.705882352941174,
  "16": 57.64705882352941,
  "17": 72.94117647058823,
  "18": 69.41176470588235,
  "19": 48.23529411764706,
  "20": 21.176470588235293,
  "21": 21.176470588235293,
  "22": 30.58823529411765,
  "23": 18.823529411764707,
  "24": 27.058823529411764,
  "25": 23.529411764705884,
  "26": 37.64705882352941
2

Honestly, don’t care for those energy scans they’re proving to be more trouble than they’re worth and only a point in time reference AFAIK. We can’t say much from those. I’ve seen great perf from networks showing ‘busy’ and crappy perf from clean ones.

WAY more helpful is a description of your physical environment - what Wifi(2.4g) Channel you’re on how your stuff is hooked up. etc.

3

I’ve tried several permutations of wifi channels with my modem and router on channels 1,6 & 11. Doesn’t seem to make a difference at all. I’m using a conbee II coordinator on a USB extension cable. Things were working kinda ok until a recent HA update messed things up so badly I had to re-pair everything. I’ve tried re-pairing the flakiest ones again to no avail. The worst ones (Sengled bulbs) are very close to the coordinator, maybe 8ft and one wooden floor in between. LQIs are at or near 255 with a green line to the conbee in the visualizer. Just for grins I paired them to a routing switch in the same room and that was worse.

1 Like
4

Perfect, so am I. What kind of machine runs HA, what kind of disk drive does it use (yes it matters)- what kind of port is it plugged into? (USB 2/3?)
at 8 ft. yeah prob some kind of interference but may not be external.

You said you’re on Zigbee 15, what Wifi2.4 are you on now (And because you bounced it around with no change I’m thinking that’s NOT it but we’ll check anyway)

5

NUC i7
Samsung 970 SSD
Conbee - USB 3.1
Router 1
Modem 6

also have a z-wave stick on an extender in the adjacent port

1 Like
6

THIS.

SSDs on USB3.1 are NIGHTMARES for coordinator sticks in general and Zigbee / Thread in particular. Guess what frequency USB3 runs on (about 3 Ghz)

Put it on a 2.0 port and/or get a 2.0 powered USB hub (use your existing extension)

There’s a SkyConnect vid out on YouTube that shows how heinous this can be - it’s like a light switch - poof no zigbee.

Do that and see if it comes back.

7

I have read that many times but I was getting by so I figured it wasn’t hard and fast.
The USB 2.0 port is on the front. Goodbye aesthetics.

1 Like
8

Nooo its very hard and very fast. It’s the first thing I check after channels.

Here:

9

You can put the HUB on one of the USB3 ports if your USB2 powered hub is far enough away. It filters out the noise :wink:

10

How any devices have you got, and how many are routers? I don’t think Sengled bulbs are, so you would need a few other things nearby to give a good spread of possible connections. Again, I think green lines and LQIs are snapshots - they change all the time.

1 Like
11

Sengleds ARE NOT routing devices. I use them SPECIFICALLY because they are not. I have at least one GE / Jasco Zigbee outlet (usually two) in each room and that forms the backbone of my mesh. On top of that a few sockets but mostly battery powered sensors beyond that. (I’m mostly Zwave - 84 devices on that mesh)

and I ignore the map in ZHA it’s notorious for being wrong. You dont even have basic connectivity lets get that first.

12

Agreed, sengleds don’t route that’s why they are close to the conbee.

How much distance does the 2.0 hub need? The 2.0 port is 4 unshielded inches away from the 3.0

I had similar issues back when I was on a rp3 but I will certainly try the 2.0 port tonight.

Thanks guys

1 Like
13

Just a few inches. You saw how drastic it was just moving the stick to the drive… I think that was about 6" maybe 10cm? It’s not much. Fortunately those hi frequencies fall off fast.

14

One last thing Does the z-wave (also on 3.0) cable radiate anything significant? I have it run next to the zigbee cable for a few feet.

Feature request: Some diagnostics we can hang our hats on :slight_smile:

15

Or fewer. :grin: Zigbee is such a black box that diagnostic tools sometimes make things more confusing.

16

No. I have my ZWave Coordinator plugged into the same usb hub right next to my zigbee coordinator. I put a Bluetooth stick on the side port to give a few inches of separation but I’m not using it anymore since I started moving to esp32 Bluetooth proxies so it’s probably going to get yoinked.

17

LQI was supposed to take noise into account. They tried.

1 Like
18

Famous last words…

1 Like
19

If you worked yourself of @Hedda’s tips & tricks from top to bottom already you might be out of luck and your neighbors WiFi are winning the (airtime) “battle” against your ZigBee.

For me, my neighbors (wifi) won and I replaced all my ZigBee gear with esphome WiFi ones. Since then everything works a treat and in case it would start to get flawky in the future I have powerful debugging options (unlilke it was the case with ZigBee for me…)

20

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