I currently have 52 zigbee devices situated on 2 floors of my house. The upper floor is where my HE Hub is situated, roughtly in the center of the house, in order to provide the optimum coverage. I also have a Hue Hub which is setup to control all my lights, roughly 39 individual lights in total.
The majority of the 52 zigbee devices are of the Xiaomi flavour which I find are not very reliable at keeping themselves connected to the network.
I do have a number of zigbee repeaters, of which are Tradfri power outlets, situated in each room of the house, as well as some powered Xiaomi wall switches in the mix. Therefore I would expect there to be a fairly strong mesh created.
I am aware that there is a limit of 32 Zigbee devices directly connected to the hub, so I would like to think that as soon as this limit is reached, a device will connect to the network routed through the nearest repeater. Am i right in thinking it should work this way?
I have also been through the process of ensuring that there is little risk of interference from my WIFI having set my 2.4ghz network to channel 9 and my Zigbee channel to 25.
Am I expecting too much from a single HE Hub or do you think I should invest in a second hub, having each hub dedicated to a floor in my house?
I think your hub can handle it, BUT ... You are aware of the Xiaomi non-standard protocol that does not completely agree with HE? I assume you do based on your choice of repeaters. This is probably what is giving you the grief. @markus created drivers for xiaomi and I hear that they're more stable. Perhaps you should give those a try? The purpose of a second hub would be to separate your questionable devices like the xiaomi's and keep the known supported devices separate from your questionable devices.
Are you saying my grief is because of the choice of repeaters or because of the Xiaomi non-standard protocol?
I am using @markus created drivers and they do seem to be a lot more stable, great work by the way @markus, however I am still having issues with the Xiaomi devices falling off the network.
These can cause issues together with other Xiaomi/Aqara devices. I would recommend trying to run your mesh without them, at least just to try and determine if this is the issue for you as well. It recently was the culprit for @andydvsn.
Exactly which models are these wall switches?
The reason behind this issue with the Aqara wall switches seems to be a combination of how HE strictly adheres to standards (in this case) and doesn't adapt to the non-standard way these wall switches send packets (they don't always send an ACK). This can cause network flooding since they do respond to the request from HE, but without the ACK, HE then keeps sending the same request over and over again. The issue is a bit more complex than this description, but this is the gist of it.
I bought a "Xiaomi Wall Switch with Neutral" to try a few months ago. (Pre @markus's drivers) and it trashed my zigbee network.
Removed it and things went stable again.
I'm not saying this is your issue but personally I have chosen to avoid these at all costs.
The non standard protocol. You chose the right repeaters for the job. Not self-inflicted. And From what I read about Markus' post about the wall switches. How would we know that?? Ugh ... seems we try to make educated decisions only to have setbacks for other reasons. It can be frustrating. I removed everything Xiaomi from my mesh about a year ago after all the trouble I had with devices.
I have 4 of the Xiaomi/Aqara wall switches, 3 upstairs and 1 downstairs. It is a shame to have to remove these as they match nicely with the wireless wall switches, of which I have 4.
I'll give it a try anyway and let you know if there is any improvement.
Do you know what happens if you reach the limit of directly connected Zigbee devices? Does it just automatically reroute as required? I do tend to pair my repeaters first before pairing any of the other non-repeating devices.
I'll give it a go anyway and see if it makes any difference.
I have been battling with these for a couple of years now. Reluctant to give up on them as they are a nice unimposing size.
Another thought was to go down the route of obtaining a MI Hub and using a rasberry PI to interface with HE. Surely that should work with all their devices.
From what I understand, your devices should attempt to touch a repeater first as long as the path is good. But if your mesh is unstable, you may get the directly connected devices more often. With repeaters, this shouldn't be an issue in a perfect world.
However rather than removing them, could I not do a test where they are just not paired with HE, or do they still cause disturbances on the network because they are powered?
Not a bad idea. I'd be interested in hearing about it. Maybe connect it with node red? I've not looked into the available nodes, but there are a lot of different ways to do that. But Also keep in mind that the effort will begin to outweigh the cost, but there's nothing wrong with tinkering. That's how we Hubitaters roll.
It does and I'm still running some of my Xiaomi/Aqara devices this way.
I'm gradually moving then to be directly connected to my HE hub since @markus's drivers were released and the positive feedback these have received.
Device motion (connected to Mi Home hub) -> Mi Home -> RPi -> HE Hub -> Rule evaluation -> HE Hub -> RPi -> Mi Home -> Device turn on (connected to Mi Home hub - Has to be slower than.
Device motion (connected to HE hub) -> Rule evaluation -> Device turn on (connected to HE hub.
Plus you need to make sure you get the correct hub and I did get the occasional fall off of devices on the Mi Home setup. (Not often though).
See if any of markus drivers match what you have already. If so use them for those devices then remove the devices that markus has not written a driver for... that's my best solution. You dont have to remove all your Xiaomi devices,.
I am currently using all of @markus drivers apart from for the powered wall switches. I believe markus has brought out a beta driver though which is compatible with these switches, so will give that a try also.
Curiosity question here. I haven't dived into any of these cheaper xiaomi devices yet.
Would there be a benefit to moving the Xiaomi devices onto a xiaomi hub and then using mi-connector to bring them into HE? I would assume the devices would work better on their own hub.
OK, I have now removed the powered wall switch devices from HE and deleted the drivers. Been round the house and re-paired all the devices that had fallen off the network. Fingers crossed... lets see which is first to leave the party!
