How about an entirely different type of adapter?
Admittedly, this may be more for North America, as opposed to the EU (Yes, Virginia, Austria is in the EU).
I should finally get around to testing those Sonoff Zigbee plugs this weekend.
They do seem to work, but I’m not sure they’re Xiaomi friendly. I had one plugged in and joined to my main hub. A Xiaomi device I was working with wouldn’t join until I unplugged the Sonoff.
Yeah I understand. I was just noting that I believe it’s the whole zigbee ecosystem of devices, not just between Sonoff and Xiaomi/Aqara
I bought my two Aqara temp/humidity sensors first the two motions, but I haven’t taken the second motion out of the box yet. At first I just didn’t want to upset the network and then I got too busy with a bathroom reno. Or maybe just lazy. Soon.
If you can get it all stable, I applaud you. I'm using them all on a Conbee 2 and then bringing that back into HE for my automation.
Two weeks now and no drops. The Xiaomi will even change routes and choose the Trådfri outlets. They would never do that before. If they didn't join through them initially, they never would by themselves.
They seem to work well as a repeater.
However, until I get my XCTU up and running on my XBEE device, I can't really say anything about how "good" a receiver and transmitter it really is.
I was just on my http://myIP/hub/zigbee/getChildAndRouteInfo
Just noticed that the Ikea repeaters are fine and working but...
it's a repeater and nothing more... just 1 usb port. (I have 2 of them for charging phones).
I also have these... (see picture) from lidl. 3 outlets to control and 4 usb (no control of them).
I have also 2 ot those Lidl... I like them A LOT.
As ebay links can go stale, its from seller "sonoff_52". The shipping box appeared to come from Sonoff, although I don't see that Sonoff themselves ever made these. The product boxes just say "eSupport - works with everything" on them. Note that they have a WiFi version too.
They were $6.50/each shipped, although they had to come from China. Took about a month. I figured they were cheap enough to give them a try.
They paired quickly with ST, detected as "Zigbee Switch".
Details say:
manufacturer: eWeLink
model: SA-003-Zigbee
zigbeeNodeType: ROUTER
They're all still working and seem to work fine as repeaters with the few Zigbee sensors I've tested with.
I know that this is kind of "off topic" but one thing to consider with Hampton Bay Fan Controllers and other Zigbee devices that are having reception problems is radio interference..... All of these commercial devices fall under FCC part 15, which states that "the devices must not cause harmful interference to other radio services and must accept any interference caused by the legal operation of other radio services". This basically says that "it is the Wild West" and you have to deal with it yourself.
My Hampton Bay Fan Controllers worked fine until I changed my WiFi topology to a new Ubiquiti Unifi setup about 2 months ago. Then my Hampton controller in the bedroom would just lose connection. I reset it and repaired a few times and thought that the fan controller was on the fritz. Then it occurred to me that the timing of the issue began after changing around my WiFi. As you probably already know, WiFi (802.11 N,B, & G) and Zigbee all live in the 2.4Ghz ISM (UNI) band, as does microwave ovens, baby monitors, some cordless phones, bluetooth etc. The problem with that portion of the spectrum is that it has been overcrowded for some time. Using that spectrum has to be carefully managed. Zigbee is no exception. Attached is a diagram showing the ISM band WiFi and Zigbee channel overlaps. After relocating my Wifi access point further away from the Hampton Bay Controller and changing the Zigbee channel in Hubitat (may take a little while for all the Zigbee devices to re-home to new channel), my problems went away. Adding repeaters to Zigbee is one way to "fix" the problem if you have some devices on the fringe of the reach for the mesh but more likely radio interference is the issue and adjusting your mesh to "play well" together with other technologies in the same radio spectrum can give you a lot of relief and cost nothing. I currently like Zigbee channel 26 because it does not overlap with WiFi channels. I have found an older zigbee device that would not pair using that channel but it is rare.
One other consideration is the radio spectrum usage that you cannot "easily" see unless you have a spectrum analyzer. Bluetooth, some older cordless phones, baby monitors, microwave ovens, etc live in that spectrum as well. WiFi and Zigbee use a modulation technique called Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) that spreads the information across a chunk of the spectrum in a sequential "block". WiFi into 3 non-overlapping channels (1,6,11) and Zigbee into 26 non-overlapping smaller channels. DSSS stays somewhat contained in its block. Bluetooth, baby monitors, old cordless phones use a modulation technique called Frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS). They divide the spectrum into small chunks and it "hops" between them ALL using the entire spectrum at some point, bouncing around all over the place. Bluetooth uses 79 1Mhz channels and pops all over the place and WILL land smack in the middle of your WiFi and Zigbee DSSS channels randomly at some point. Luckily WiFi and Zigbee have error protection and most of the time recover, but not always. Also consider that "leaky microwave ovens" can cause havoc also as they transmit a lot of power and live in the 2.4Ghz spectrum also. The transmissions by the oven are supposed to be contained inside the oven in kind of a Farraday cage scenario. If you have that, then you have a health hazard also but it DOES happen (warped doors, bad seals, etc)
So take a look at your WiFi channels (and your neighbors). Remember that most access points are set to move channels to the least busy (but they don't necessarily look at other non-WiFi spectrum users to make that decision) so they can relocate to other channels unless you turn that "feature" off. Also your neighbors need to be considered as well. Then after assessing the spectrum utilization make a choice of Zigbee channel. Also the close proximity of your Zigbee devices and your WiFi access points matters also. With a little radio spectrum management, you can have a healthy, happy Zigbee (and WiFi) network.
There are power restrictions for Channel 26 (it is called a low power channel). Off course it matters less if you have a strong mesh. But it is an issue to be aware of when using channel 26. According to Digi.com, there is no WiFi interference with channel 25 as well; channel 25 is not a low-power channel.
I live in a WiFi congested area; my major zigbee network (80 devices, 14 routers) has been on 25 for ~6 months with no significant issues, and my secondary zigbee network is on channel 15.
Just a short note of warning here, from my own personal experience.
I have not had any issues with devices dropping off my zigbee mesh for quite some time. All of a sudden, last week, I had many battery operated sensors, fall off the mesh.
I've always had my zigbee channel at 20, without any issues.
My first thought was that one of my neighbours got a new wifi mesh, and it was interfering with my zigbee channel 20.
In order to test that out, I got out my smartphone with the wifi analyzer app. (There are many apps just like it.) As you can plainly see by some of the zigbee/wifi charts, channel 20 is right in the middle of the wifi channels ,around channel 6/11.
Lo and behold MY SSID was on channel 11. How did that happen?
I got into my router configuration, and found that I inadvertently, changed the wifi channel to AUTO (which looks for an used wifi channel when it boots up).
In conclusion, be careful when you change wifi channels not to blow out your zigbee mesh. A little careful thought, will save you a lot of headaches.
It is my understanding that Channel 25 is a "reduced" power Zigbee channel also according to FCC requirements. Nevertheless, the reduced interference far outweighs the minute difference in power drop for those two channels (25 & 26) most of the time. You just have to play with it to decide what channel works best in your environment.
I must also note that this is the scenario in the U.S.A. Other countries have different regulations and requirements. As you can see in the chart below, some of the higher WiFi channels in the 2.4Ghz band are different in other areas around the world and will affect the overlap of Zigbee Channels 25&26.
How do you find if your repeater is being used by devices? Is there a way to check repeater use in the mesh, without some additional hardware/tinkering?
