I am new to Zigbee, coming from Tuya/wifi, and I have to say (for me anyway), the range is terrible. Maybe I have something wrong in my setup, but I’m lucky to get 15 feet between devices and still the signal is weak. Here is what it looks like:
The Presence detector is maybe 8 feet from the nearest outlet and the LQI fluctuates between 0 and 30. Even an outlet in the same room as the dongle only gets to 80 max. All the other outlets are maybe 15 feet from each other, some with a wall between, and others within line of sigth.
I’m using a SZLB-6U ethernet (not USB) dongle, have switched to channel 25, and moved the dongle away from the NUC. Is there any other settings that I may have configured wrong to get such poor performance?
The Outlets are Third Reality and have good reviews for range on Amazon. Maybe I got a bad set?
Zigbee is not a range protocol, it is a mesh protocol. You are building a bunch of relays that talk to each other and pass messages. Make sure every node is within like 25 foot of a routing (powered) node. Battery nodes almost never route. Some bulbs do not route. Most other powered nodes route.
Personally, with (mostly) cheap tuya-zigbee gear, I’ve been pretty happy with zigbee range, both in terms of range and wall penetration. Yes, it’s running at 2.4 GHz (just as WLAN, Bluetooth and many other things) and therefore faces the same physical limitations, but it’s been behaving pretty well in my testing (like ~20m to the outside, through an external brick wall).
Thanks for the link to the guide @Sir_Goodenough, what a great resource. Unfortunately after reading most of it, including the links, my reception still sucks.
I moved the whole NUC with Z2M dongle 35 feet away from any wifi sources. The dongle is 5 feet away from the NUC using cat 5e ethernet cable. The NUC is connected to my main router with ethernet cable. I think that eliminates interference as the source of the problem. I have a Third Reality outlet 6 feet away from the dongle and this is the result (Zigbee 4 is the closest). The presence sensor is 8 feet way but on the other side of a stone wall.
According to google, I shold be getting an LQI of near 200. I thought maybe 4 outlets/repeaters was not enough, but the dongle is now too close for that to matter. All of the outlets (4 total) are mains powered. The presence sensor is powered by USB adapter so may not repeat.
According to blakadder, it has not been confirmed to work with a Z2M gateway. But numerous Amazon reviews say it works perfectly with Z2M.
Under settings, my maximum packet size is the default 1048576. In fact, all the settings haven’t been touched.
Since wifi is 2.4GGHz, why wouldn’t it be better to used Zigbee channels 1-10, which are 915Mhz? I have a few 915Mhz devices and they work great.
While the protocol supports 915Mhz, almost no actual devices you can buy use that band. There are Zigbee devices that do, but they are almost exclusively from closed commercial systems.
LQI numbers are almost meaningless IMO. Devices each use different calculations. LQI numbers on EZSP sticks are almost always significantly higher than ZStack. It doesn’t mean one is better, they just use different scales.
My highest is 153, my lowest is 14 both rock solid (and in the same room).
My Third reality plugs range from 40 to 91, most in the 60s-70s.
Wow, that’s so helpful. I guess I don’ t have a problem after all. I only just installed them so don’t know how solid they are in operation, but your experience makes me think everything is okay. Sorry for wasting everyone’s time!
