I'm probably not the first to notice this, but I must not have good searching skills. I have a multi-hub setup. Zigbee is turned off on 2/3 of my Hubs.
C-7 - Off
C-8 - On
C-8 Pro - Off
The C-7 had been set to channel 26, but then was turned off. The C-8-Pro was set to channel 11, but then turned off. When I run a Channel scan on the C-8 (my actual Zigbee Controller), it *usually still sees the C-7's disabled signal and *always sees the C-8 Pro's disabled signal.
Further history: The C-8 Pro had been migrated from the C-8, including the Zigbee devices, but then all of the Zigbee devices removed from the C-8 Pro.
I read on another post that when you disable it, really it just detaches it from the hub platform but the radio never actually shuts off. I am sure someone else can confirm this.
Correct. This question comes up once in a while (I asked it four years ago back when the C-7 was new) and AFAIK has never been answered by Hubitat staff, although by now it's no longer a mystery: there's no setting that turns off the hub's Zigbee radio.
'Disabling Zigbee' evidently stops the hub from processing Zigbee messages (disabling the application layer) but has no effect on its radio or at the Zigbee link layer.
Next question: Do I need to worry about interference? What would best practice be. I'm using all 3 of the typical 2.4ghz channels for my Wifi (1/6/11) and have my Zigbee on the actual Zigbee hub set to 20.
Would my best results be to have all 3 set to 20? Something else? Doesn't matter since there really isn't any traffic on the other 2 anyway?
Best to separate 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and Zigbee as you know. Also don't want Zigbee devices on the same channel. If I was doing that, I'd put actual active hub Zigbee channel on 25, and inactive hub channels to maybe 22 & 26. (26 is a low-power channel in the US, but if you aren't using Zigbee on the hub it won't matter.)
You guys are all awesome - very much appreciate the help.
I do have one last question about Zigbee stuff. As I had mentioned:
I noticed that the PAN ID (and the extended Pan ID) that is still being broadcast from the C-8Pro with no paired devices is identical to the Pan ID on the C-8 (which is my actual Zigbee Controller). Does this matter? Can/should it be changed? I'm just wondering if the devices themselves could get confused - I guess I'm asking if Pan ID is similar to SSID for Wifi and having 2 with the same name would be bad news.
AFAIK yes this could be a problem, especially if the main hub goes down the devices might find the other hub and try to connect.
I think if you do a Zigbee reset (from diagnostics) on the hub not using Zigbee, that is supposed to change the PAN ID. *Be sure to enable Zigbee first or the reset may will not work
I also realized I needed that note after I posted so you may have read it before I made the edit. I ran into the same thing on an old hub I was resetting and found it was not reset and had to go back and reset both Zigbee and Z-Wave a second time.
This is concerning to me, as I was in the same situation and didn’t realize it. The migration documentation does list some notes about Zigbee and to change channel if using Zigbee on the new hub also, but doesn’t mention anything about a reset to change the Pan ID (unless the “Full Reset” that is mentioned does this). But in my case, I didn’t do a full reset because I kept my cloud integrations and devices on the old hub, so didn’t want to erase it completely.
That rant aside, I was able to reset my Zigbee on the old hub and get a new PAN ID, but when I try to update the channel (after reboot) on my old C-7 hub to 26 to get it off the same channel (20) as the new hub, it won’t change over. After about a 10-second wait, the channel option changes back to 20. Any idea what’s going on here? I don’t have any Zigbee devices connected to this one (and don’t intend to), so perhaps it needs a device connected to have a “network” and thus change the channel?
You should be able to change the channel without any devices, I am certain I have done this before. I would first try a full shut down and unplug for 30 seconds, if that does not resolve it then try resetting the Zigbee radio again.
Thanks, after 2 Zigbee radio resets, I was finally able to change the channel.
And to confirm your point above, the Zigbee radio does NOT really turn off when disabled in settings. After switching my old hub to channel 26, disabling Zigbee, and rebooting, it still shows up on a Zigbee channel scan from my new hub. But it's now on channel 26 with it's own Pan IDs, so shouldn't cause any issues.
