I am hoping for some help troubleshooting a 2 wire setup for a Centralite Pearl Thermostat (controlling a gas fireplace). It pairs fine and simply drops off the network after about 4 hours. I paired using a dedicated repeater about 4 feet away (powered outlet) so the Zigbee routing is close (removing the mesh being the limiting factor). When I pull out the battery and put it back it immediately reconnects.
I had the exact same behaviour with my Zen thermostat, so I went and swapped it out for the Centralite and now seeing the same behaviour. For the Zen, I went and purchased a 24V power adapter to see if keeping it powered would help and it did not (but I did like having the display always on), I ended up returning the power adapter.
The driver is the generic zigbee thermostat and it paired flawlessly (and reconnects when I disconnect/reconnect the battery).
Ugh...I hope that is not the case...that would make it very unusable as a smart thermostat...Would sending a command from the Hub (maybe a refresh) every couple of hours solve this problem?
I had the same theory with the Zen and powered it with a C wire but it still dropped off the network.
I can't answer that question. I just recall reading that when I was researching thermostats. It makes sense though. Anything running off of battery will need to go into sleep mode or it will suck batteries.
Hi. I have recently installed one of these for my garage heater. I wanted something that could control a two stage heater. I think I have had it installed for about three weeks.
I can confirm that mine stays connected all the time. I do have power run to mine and the batteries installed.
For power I am using 12vdc. I know the internet says 24vac is required but the heater I got uses 12vdc relays inside, so to avoid doing an inline voltage conversion I confirmed first the pearl is quite happy running on it as well.
At first I did think that it was going offline bc it was not responding to Alexa commands. But that was user error - I had one HE in Celsius and the other with the Alexa connection in Fahrenheit. Things no workie when you do that.
I can not confirm if power is a requirement or not. I guess I could just unplug mine from the wall for a few hours to test. Let me know if you want me to do this.
Did you join it after you attached it to power or after? I remember some aeotec devices changed their behavior depending how they are powered when they are joined.
It may not be relevant but just throwing it out there. I would think that if it was continuously powered it should stay connected.
I have never had that issue with my pearl and it's been running over three years at two different houses using battery only power. I would say yours is defective but it's not so likely for two thermostats to fail in the same way.
This is a stupid suggestion, but try creating a rule to turn your fireplace on with the frequency shorter then what you have observed it disconnecting. See if you can keep it connected, that might tell you if it's some sort of sleep happening.
I also have a centralite pearl running on batteries and have never had issues with it falling off the zigbee mesh (or otherwise becoming unresponsive).
I am using a Sonoff S31 Lite Smart outlet as a repeater and when I joined the thermostat I forced it to use the outlet for the routing. Maybe that is my issue...since both thermostats have failed in the same way...I have researched this outlet and it should act as a repeater...but I am seeing some posts that is not very reliable.
I did setup a rule to run every 3 hours yesterday issuing a refresh command and it seemed to stay online until about midnight...then my rule stopped running (I need to see how Periodic Time rules are set to run continously...). That would be longer than usual for it to stay online.
I will setup a rule to run every few hours today to see if I can keep it online all day, that way I can at least figure out if it is just sleepy.
Interesting...I think I simply powered it and and did not do a re-join with my original Zen thermostat...wonder if that was the issue. I have since returned the 24V power adapter so I can't try that again.
I have a pretty small zigbee mesh, the 3 repeaters are powered outlets (all Sonoff S31 Lite). The Fireplace Thermostat is about 20 metres from my Hub on a different floor, but the Sonoff (Christmas Tree in the diagram below) is about 1 metre away.
