2.3.5.13X Progress on Zigbee

With the new update on C8. 2.3.5.113 My zigbee is NOT working any better it still is dropping my Hue motion and Aqara isnā€™t even usable at this stage.

I am currently on version .110 and all my Zigbee devices work with the exception of an Aqara leak sensor. I have not been able to get it to pair with the C8 hub. However, that sensor has always been flaky since the day I got it. I also have an Aqara vibration sensor that seems to be working fine. I decided to replace the Aqara leak sensor with one by Moe's (Tuya based) and it works just fine.

Remember that Aqara devices are non-standard Zigbee, so do not complain about Aqara not working well with Hubitat; no one ever guaranteed that it would. The community driver is a work-around at best.

I have Hue motion sensors that are working fine with the C8 hub. I did not even have to rejoin them after the migration. Most of them are version 1, but one is version 2. They all work with the Hue Motion Sensor driver. At one time, Hue motion sensors were my primary choice, but if I need a new sensor, it will be one from Third Reality. They are smaller, less expensive, and seem to work well.

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Upgraded C8 hub today to V2.3.5.113

Went through my environment checking all zigbee devices, had five or six that were working yesterday but unresponsive today.

Went through each in turn with the ZBOSS sniffer and checked them prior to re-pairing and in all cases Hubitat was not sending any commands to any of the failing devices when pressing the on/off buttons on the deviceā€™s web page.

Rebooting the Hubitat Zigbee radio brought one of the devices back online.

I re-joined them in turn and found an issue that even though the Add Device button on the Hubitat web page reported ā€˜found existing deviceā€™ and that device showed a new Zigbee ID, the pairing process still seems to be running so that if I refresh the particular device screen I see the ID change a few more times. This has happened even when the Start Zigbee Pairing+ button claims to have completed, repeated refreshing of the deviceā€™s screen sometimes showed an ID change or two. Usually, if I waited for about a minute refreshing the screen until the device ID stayed constant then the device would work when pressing the on/off buttons on the deviceā€™s web page and the sniffer would see the command being issued by Hubitat and I could track messages via repeaters to the destination device and back.

Most of my devices are GE/JASCO light switches and Sengled Element Color Plus bulbs.

After rejoining all the non-working devices with the new Hubitat software I left the system alone for an hour or so then tried them all again, so far 2 of the previously re-joined devices have stopped working again and the sniffer reports Hubitat not sending commands to the deviceā€™s listed Zigbee address. As before I still see each device broadcasting Link Status messages.

During testing of a non-working device I opened up the sniffer filtering in an effort to see if maybe Hubitat was sending the commands to the incorrect ID, this does not seem to be the case, I could see no commands being issued to any device at these times, it appears that Hubitat just forgets to issue the requested command.

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Possibly some sort of mesh issue now that there are real antennae? Location/orientation?
I have quite a few Aqara leak/motion/button sensors and all are humming along nicely.
I have Tyua ZB 3.0 repeaters spaced around as they play with the odd ZB of Aqara and have strong radios in them.
I did have to rejoin a few after the migration but I wan't expecting a 100% walk away experience.

^^^ This, and my experience (and others). Some have had success w/Aqara and/or Xiaomi and certain repeaters (Ikea, Tuya USB, SonOff, etc.) but the Zigbee antenna and stronger power on the C8 may be causing more attempted direct connections by Aqara w/the C8, which typically have not worked well for most users.

I do currently have five Aqara contact sensors connected to my C8 hub and they have been working since the migration (and worked before it), though two of them fell off my mesh one time each over a period of a few months. The only Aqara gear that is 100% reliable for me is sensors I have on HA via an rpi & a separate Zigbee dongle that I share back to the hub. Those are rock solid, never drop.

Similar experience. Lost a Sengled contact sensor overnight and 2 outdoor Hue sensors. Contact sensor is within 15 feet of the hub and within 8 feet of a repeating device. Outdoor sensors are within 15 feet of a repeating device and 20 feet or so of the hub.

The C8 hub by default operates with more power than the earlier hubs. If you have lots of repeaters like I do, you might not need that much power. I changed my Zigbee radio power setting to 12, which is still higher than the older hubs. I might try cutting it back to 8 which is where the C7 operated.

I am an amateur radio operator. We have always been told not to use any more power than required to make the contact. If the front end of the receiver is overloaded, signal quality decreases. I know my LQI reading are lower now than with the C7, but I do not know whether the LQI is calculated differently or if the signal quality is really lower.

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I'm going to try to enable CW on my Zigbee devices. That should get through any QRM.

(for non-hams on the thread that was a joke... don't try it at home)

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I upgraded from C5 to C8, i have about 10 ā€ŽMCCGQ11LM aqara door sensors, i had to repair all of them when i upgraded to c8 and they only work for like 10 min and then they drop off and does not work again. The type of device are Xiaomi door/window sensor. Everything was working fine on the c5 for almost a year.

Pretty common issue w/those (Aqara and Xioami) sensors on the C8 (and on the C7 as well) for many. I haven't followed C5 use of them as I don't have that hub. They aren't officially supported by hubitat. You might have to keep them on the C5 and share them to the C8 via hub mesh if you decide you want to keep the C8.

I am updated to 113. I have tried power levels 8, 12, 16, and 20. My IRIS v1 buttons and contact sensors seemed to have dropped off after updating to 110, they did not come back after updating to 113. IRIS V1 motion sensors never worked with the C-8 hub so I removed the two I was still using, and replaced with IRIS v2 motion sensors. These seem to work. I have a bunch of the V1 sensors though. It would be great to use them in certain places eventually.

My IRIS V1 smart plugs all seem to be working

I am having trouble with my Yale Zigbee DoorLocks after 110, they also did not come back after 113. The Door Lock events log is tracking the physical locking and unlocking, but no command from the system seem to be making it to the lock from either the device page or from any automation apps.

All of my Sengled bulbs have been pretty much offline since I unboxed my C-8. I can get them to reconnect briefly, but they always stop working again really soon. I have some Sengled LED RGB bulbs I'd like to add to the system, but the standard cool white bulbs still don't work, so I'll wait.

That's about all I have noticed that is still not responding under the 113 update.

QUESTION: Would it be worth the time to recommission my C-7 and shift all my non-working Zigbee devices back to it? I'd want to eventually end up with one hub, so when the C-8 is solid, I'd want to switch them all back. . . Worth it?

V1 devices not pairing w/C8 is a known issue that is being worked on. HE staff has some V1 hardware shared by an HE user and are investigating the issue.

Every release should have a "known issues" post in News and Updates>Release Notes in the forum. You can check that first to ensure you don't try to fix something known not working.

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Even on my C5 I've never been able to keep this on my mesh. It always falls off, so bad I've just abandoned it as it sits lonely on my floor.

Just lost an ST water leak sensor that had been stable for a while...

Those are like rocks...very surprised to see that fall off.

I've lost my second Hue outdoor motion sensor, so while they lasted longer than before, they are definitely not sticking for me.

Yeah no kidding. I had a bunch of them go south early on that I had to re-pair. This is the first one in a while.

I lost a Hampton Bay fan controller today, that usually only happens on occasion if the power flickers off and on for bit. I did swap out one of my sengled bulbs with a Wifi bulb because I can't have that light not working and I'm just tired of it not working.

The single Sengled light bulb I have on my mesh is holding on, though it sounds like from reports here that they are falling off fairly commonly.

I had started having my Sengled bulbs falling of my mesh some weeks back, and finally gave up and replaced them all w/Hue bulbs that I already had. That was on my C7, so I do wonder if the Sengled issues were already cropping up on the C7, and maybe worsened on the C8.

No idea why, I had been using Sengled bulbs w/out issues for years.

I've seen another report of Hampton Bay fan controllers going off...

There are a lot of mysteries with ZB and the C8. I have a full wave antenna on the ZB radio at 12 and 16 power and all of my aqara and Sengled bulbs have been stable.
The magic of RF.

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ditto, the person who wired my house thought it would be fun to bring electric to the lights first and then to the switches so I lack neutrals in most of my switches. All of my house is using sengled bulbs. I only have 4 that are giving me problems and only one that was a must work.

I know they have non neutral switches now but up until this hub "upgrade" the sengled bulbs were flawless.

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