i have HASSIO running on a raspPi4 and mosquito and zigbee2MQTT integrations/addons and im using a a couple of Sonoff USB3.0 zigbee dongles to connect my 81 devices. 1x coordinator and today 5x routers (but still from beginning 3x routers).
because i often have problems with disconnections of single devices i have to reconnect devices regularly. I check to which dongle a connection is established to ensure good distribution.
i just know to use the map to find out which dongle (connector/router) a single device is connected. This is a little bit anoying and time (and resource-) consuming and I wonder if there is no easier way to retrieve this information directly for a specific device?
prefered using the zigbee2mqtt addon gui?
other way like mqtt explorer or mosquito integration gui?
i have to say, that auto-pairing is not always connect devices to the “nearest” dongle and preselecting single dongles for connecting, does not work correctly. so i have a wild mix of connected devices, sometimes the “most farest” dongles are used, what lead into bad link qualitys and/or to many devices to one dongle, what i assmue to be guilty for lost connections…
sometime it could take a couple of weeks without of any problems, or jist one specific device is having problems. But then (mostly after rebooting, or udating hassio addins etc…) problems rise up for a lot of devices… what is horrible to correct (not all of them are easily accessable)
I’m a ZHA user, so I’ve probably got the wrong end of the stick (heh, sorry ), but my understanding of zigbee is that devices are constantly connecting and reconnecting as they search for the best route through the mesh - and the “best” route changes from minute to minute according to traffic. Which means that there’s no point in trying to dictate which router they connect to, or “correct” the path commands take. Your network map is a snapshot.
If some devices are not working, I’d say it’s because you don’t have enough routers. Five is a very small number for that many end devices (although it depends on the layout and structure of your property).
I may need more than average because it’s an old building with small rooms and there is a heavy wall cutting the property in half, but still… Zigbee works best then there are many, many alternative routes for commands to use.
@Stiltjack it took my nearly 2h to reconnect all of my devices manually. i had tryied to connect them to specific routers, but in the end they did what they wanted! so your understanding of zigbee seems to be correct…
the connector i dont know, how do i get this info? its not in the zigbe21mqtt device list…
CONNECTOR ?
ROUTER1 20220125
ROUTER2 20220125
ROUTER3 20220125
ROUTER4 20221102
ROUTER5 20221102
I am very concerned about making firmware updates to the old dongles, loosing entity_ids or what ever bashing my zigbee devices and automations in homeassistant?
It’s hard to see on the picture, which end-devices you have, however a lot of them look like Aqara?
As mentioned above, you should upgrade your coordinator and routers, the firmware is very old. Try 20221226 or 20230922, which are reported as stable versions. The upgrade of FW do not require a re-pair.
If a lot of the devices are Aqara, be aware that Aqara Zigbee 1.2 devices do not change the route, even if the router is offline. So, you need to help them with the best route when pairing. Most other devices will change route if a router are lost/offline.
@khvej8 yes i do have a lot of aqaras. How do i know what a zigbee 1.2 device is?
and how to “assist” them to find the best route? i had tried this by use of the Permit Join dropdown in zigbe2mqtt dropdown… but this does have any effect… (but iquite shure, at the beginning, with less devices and less routers it worked well?)
i will flash both coordinator and routers to the newest fw and report if routing of devices has changed to a better way… thanx to all for inputs…
but coming back to by initial question: any way to read out the router/coord a single device is connected to? building up the complete map everytime is sometimes laggy and not usefull e.g on a smartphone… and i have to search for the device everytime. gui does not support a search so i have to use browser search in page, but even then io have to wait until the initial “chaos” map is floated into a better organized map …
for me its interesting, when a device has to low linkquality. so my first look in into the map, but i cant do it on the phone…
), but my understanding of zigbee is that devices are constantly connecting and reconnecting as they search for the best route through the mesh - and the “best” route changes from minute to minute according to traffic. Which means that there’s no point in trying to dictate which router they connect to, or “correct” the path commands take. Your network map is a snapshot.
