Ever since I migrated from a Conbee II to a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB dongle plus coordinator, I have had incessant issues with devices dropping off, sometimes coming back, or commands being repeated as if the coordinator did not know that the device already executed the demand (outlet turns on/off multiple times when I manually do so once).
While troubleshooting why this is happening I find devices that do not appear to be working well, and when I try to “reconfigure device” it fails:
At times, the device succeeds in reconfiguring partially but there are failures so I try again.
I am guessing that a device that can’t properly reconfigure will not be reliable and may also be the cause of other issues on the network. Can someone give me a bit more detail on what this process does, what can interfere with it so I can finally fix this issue?
On a separate occasion I had found that querying a motion sensor for its wake up interval produced 0 or none (can’t recall), while reconfiguring it, it would return the proper value. After this the device would work properly. I just don’t understand why seemingly so many of my 90 devices are being configured improperly. Given this tends to start after I’ve added 40 or more devices, I am guessing that it has to do with traffic. On zwave I can tone down report frequency but I don’t seem to have the same option on Zigbee, or do I?
This is driving me nuts! Also, to be clear, the issues I am having affect random devices although some more frequently then others, and my mesh has lots of well distributed routers. Ths only thing that changed from when the network was stable was the coordinator, re-setting up the network and several version updates of HA sw.
Regardless of the actual root cause, always aim to keep the firmware of the Zigbee Coordinator updated, add more products acting as Zigbee Router devices and most importantly as a precaution prioritize taking preemptive actions to implement workarounds in order to avoid all sources of EMF/EMI/RFI interference which can commonly cause real problems for a Zigbee Coordinator. Read:
Understand and remember that Zigbee signals are weak so rely on a strong Zigbee network mesh (meaning many Zigbee Router devices) as all Zigbee devices and especially the Zigbee Coordinator are very sensitive to EMF/EMI/RMI interference so will make it much easier to troubleshoot and find the real root cause if have already optimized your setup and environment to workaround such potential issues.
PS: If have some interference and a so-called “noisy environment” then Zigbee Coordinator and Zigbee devices will have to retransmit their messages over and over again, spamming the Zigbee network.
I am reading this 8 months later, and I find the same issue. Most Zigbee devices fail if I try a “reconfiguration”. That said, they all work exactly how they should. I just tried it to see what it does. I think it may be a bug in the way ZHA does the reconfiguration.
As far as Firmware goes. If the Zigbee Coordinator is a Zigbee 3.0 co-ordinator, it really shouldn’t need updated firmware unless it is not pairing to devices at all. This issue of not being able to reconfigure is nothing to do with the firmware on the co-ordinator, as that is only the radio. The hub, in this case ZHA, is the thing that needs kept up to date. The hub is the thing that has the quirks, and the device profiles and all the stuff that actually recognises the clusters and the Zigbee devices used during configuration. That’s why Zigbee2MQTT may recognise devices ZHA doesn’t, even if using the same radio, just as an example. The co-ordinator, the USB dongle on Home Assistant device, is just a radio for all intent and purposes.
