Every time they go down, theyâre taking your zigbee end devices offline because youâre losing zigbee routers/repeaters.
A stable zigbee mesh requires routers that stably remain on the mesh.
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The only Zigbee end device that I'm losing is the keypad, which is mere feet from the hub (so I wouldn't have thought losing repeaters would affect that). Door sensors, battery-powered buttons, and the like are all fine.
If it is a bad plug, how do I know which one is dying? I'll be happy to experiment with replacing them but I have a ton of them in the house.
Have you mapped the route from the hub to the keypad? Do you know itâs not going through a router thatâs going offline?
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It's connected directly to the hub. Sometimes I have seen it connected to one of these outlets but that one has not experienced trouble (and that outlet is connected directly to the hub).
It is really hard for the community to diagnose what appears to be a fairly unique issue specific to your current setup. Your Zigbee mesh is having issues, but it is not clear where the root of the problems is.
Possible Hypotheses (off the top of my head)
- The Centralite 4200-C Zigbee outlets have some sort of quirk that causes them to misbehave. Perhaps the issue only occurs when there are more than 'n' of these in operation at the same time? Perhaps they have buggy Zigbee firmware?
- One possible solution would be to reduce the number of these to see of the issues disappear. Maybe keep one per room in your house?
- Another possible solution would be to replace these with another vendor's current Zigbee 3.0 offering?
Note: The reason I ask this is because a few years back, everyone bought up a bunch of Zigbee "Peanut Plugs" - these caused issues that only got worse the more one added to their system. Removing these smart outlets resolved the issues folks were having.
- The Hubitat C8 Hub's Zigbee radio is misbehaving.
- Sounds like you already have a C7 hub. Is this hub currently in use? If not, you could consider moving all of Centralite 4200-c outlets over to this hub to see if the problem persists.
- The Hubitat C8-Pro hub recently received an option to upgrade the Zigbee radio's firmware. Even though I had no issues, I did upgrade this firmware as others had reported no ill-effects. I believe the C8's zigbee radio cannot have its firmware upgraded, thus this option is only offered on the C8 Pro. Perhaps this newer Zigbee radio firmware from Silicon Labs would help?
- Possible 2.4GHz WiFi interference. Are you in a single family home? Or an Apartment? Just trying to understand if neighbors' WiFi signals could be affecting your mesh network? Also, what type of walls are in your house? Wood 2x4 framing with drywall? Or masonry? Or old plaster and lath?
- I know you've done a bunch of tweaks to your WiFi and Zigbee radios. What are you currently using for Zigbee channel and power on the C8 hub? How about the 2.4 GHz WiFi channel(s) and channel width? Just trying to reestablish the current baseline...
- Some other Zigbee devices on your network are wreaking havoc with your mesh network. A while back users noted that specific brands of Zigbee smart bulbs ruined their mesh network as they were terrible Zigbee repeaters.
- Do you have Power/Energy monitoring enabled on any of your Zigbee devices? This can easily overwhelm a Zigbee mesh network. If your 21 Centralite 4200-C outlets are all constantly reporting their power/energy usage to the hub, this could be the problem.
- Any other possible 'chatty' zigbee devices on the network? Some of the recent mmWave motion sensors are known to be overly chatty and have caused issues.
So, you can see why it is very hard for the community to provide a quick definitive answer. 
But we're trying! 
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Yes, I very much appreciate that it is a complex issue and I also appreciate your detailed reply.
It's funny you mention that- I used to use Peanut plugs and had that very issue. The Centralites that I'm using now are what was recommended to me when that issue was discovered.
Given it goes offline and comes online, this is a distinct possibility. I do have a C7 hub and it is in (very light) use. Moving all of these outlets over to that would be a fairly arduous task. Let me ask you this- if I had a spare C8 (from work), would a backup and restore from my existing C8 to one of those work (so we could rule that out)?
I am in a single family home. Wood framing with drywall. There are a few WiFi networks flying around, primarily on CH1. I use CH6 and my Zigbee is on CH 23 Power Level 8. WiFi CH11 is the least congested here so I figure the upper bands are best for Zigbee.
Yes, I have run into the bulb issue in the past as well. Replaced them all with Sengled bulbs (so they do not attempt to act as repeaters). I only have 4 bulbs in total. I do not have power/energy enabled, as far as I know. They all use the "Generic Zigbee Outlet" driver, which does have a "Power" state that shows, but it never changes from 0. So I think that is a no? Correct me if I'm wrong.
How would I find any chatty devices? Just watch the live log to see what yaps the most? Or is there a better way? As far as Zigbee goes, I have the Centralite outlets that we're talking about, 3 Third Reality Temp/Humidity Sensors, some Samsung Multisensors (mix of V4 and V5), Samsung buttons (3 of those), XHS2-UE Door Sensors, and a Lutron Aurora Dimmer (that talks to 2 of the Sengled bulbs). The other 2 Sengled bulbs are on the C7.
Again, appreciate your detailed reply. Hopefully there is something above that is useful or provides a clue.
If you have a Hub Protect subscription, then you could take a Cloud Backup of the existing C8 hub. Then, restore that Cloud Backup to another C8 hub. Only a Cloud Backup contains a full backup of the hub + a backup of the hubâs Zigbee and Z-Wave radios.
If you used a local backup, you would have to factory reset every single Zigbee device and re-pair them with the new hub after restoring the local backup. Each Zigbee device would then pop right back into place. Z-wave devices are a little more complicated.
I would explicitly open each outletâs Device details web page on the HE hub, and set the power reporting user setting to Disabled and then click Save. This should configure the outlets to not send power data for sure.
I would open the Settings->Ziggbee page. Then open the Zigbee logs and monitor them to see if any decice(s) are overwhelmingly chatty.
I do. Do you think it's worth trying?
I don't actually see that setting anywhere, using the "Generic Zigbee Outlet" driver. But there is a property for Power under the "Current States".
Will do. How would you define chatty? Just lots of events? Right now I'm looking at those logs and all I see are "profileId, clusterId, sourceEndpoint, destinationEndpoint, groupId, lastHopLqi, lastHopRssi" entries (maybe 5-10 a minute). How long should I monitor (would it be readily apparent)?
Not sure. If you suspect a hardware failure, then it âmightâ be a good idea. Tagging @bobbyD from Hubitat support to get his opinionâŚ
I am using the same driver on an older Centralite outlet.
Look here
Yes, usually a device, or specific model of device that is producing a bunch of traffic, often multiple events per second for an extended period of time.
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Please create a subscription case if you suspect a hardware issue. I see that you have several hubs. Having a case on file for your particular hub would allow us to further investigate the problem that might be specific to your individual hub: Subscriptions â Hubitat Support
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@bobbyD - I created a case but never heard anything on it. The Zigbee radio crashes stopped shortly after I created it but theyâve started back again. What else do I need to do on this?
I have had a few of these fail in this way. recommend just replace just them.
You mean you never heard anything after the case was escalated to be evaluated for potential hardware failure? That appears to be the case. We typically donât follow up on escalated cases unless additional information is needed regarding the incident, or if our engineers determine that the issue is related to a hardware malfunction.
That said, we recognize that this approach may not be ideal, and thereâs definitely room for improvement. Feedback like yours is helpful, and we'll take it into account as we look to improve our communication process going forward.
Meanwhile, if the issue has reoccurred, please feel free to create a new case so we can take another look and reassess the possibility of faulty hardware.
Please also be aware that intermittent radio issues are often caused by misbehaving devices within the network. If that turns out to be the case, our engineers may have limited ability to assist directly. In such situations, following best practices for building a strong and stable mesh network is typically the only effective resolution.
10-4. Will do.
How do I know which devices are misbehaving? Things went almost flawlessly for a solid month and now are back to the way they were. Nothing different as far as I know.
Still having problems. How do I determine what devices are causing the issue, if it is indeed a device issue? I have got to get this figured out. A half-functional Zigbee network is of no use to anyone.
On the Zigbee Details page in Settings, look for devices that have a disproportionately high message count - that can indicate a misbehaving device that's spamming the mesh.
If you have any energy-monitoring zigbee devices, ensure those reporting parameters are set to just what's necessary -- excessive energy reporting can also easily over-spam the mesh.
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So my top 3 are temperature sensors in our bedrooms. They have about 2x as much as other devices.
Below that start the Centralite plugs. Theyâre grouped pretty well together (182-262). Below those are my other battery powered Zigbee sensors (door sensors mostly).
These counts are since yesterday at 440pm when I updated the hub.
Anything jump out at you?
"Problem is getting worse" indicates to me that you have a device that's degrading over time. Recently, a single Sonoff zigbee outlet took my entire network down. It was a primary router for the west side of the house and I identified it with the Zigbee Map app. We also noticed that zigbee performance on that side of the house was becoming unreliable, then my zigbee radio started going offline too. So I think you should load up zigbee map, do a Zigbee Neighbors Map and see if you have a device that's failing to interview or has a lot of poor LQI connections. In my case, the offending module showed up with an unknown name and all of its neighbor connections were poor. The app itself is a really good troubleshooting tool for a zigbee mesh.
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Do you mean the built in Zigbee Network Graph on the Settings page? I just loaded it up and let it build until all 36 devices were showing. I donât see any bad neighbors. And oddly enough, while I had it up, I had Zigbee device trouble.
Some of my symptoms are similar to yours and some arenât. My radio does go offline (not for long periods, very quick recovery), but I donât notice it with any one device or any one particular side of the house either. Itâs completely random. Itâll go for very long periods with no issue and then rear its head. Sometimes itâs terrible and sometimes itâs just one device for only one short period. I canât find a pattern at all.
Maybe Iâm not looking correctly but for now, I donât see any issues with the devices themselves. Not ruling that out but still canât figure out which one or ones it is.
I'm guessing that Kevin is perhaps talking about this community app - it's a more robust than the native zigbee map.
