Coming over from SmartThings

Another quick question in preparation for running STT and HU together for a while, will there be any contention, conflicting channels etc? What is the best practise here

Each of the 52 SmartPlugs is theoretically supposed to function as Zigbee repeaters. I'm willing to accept the possibility that one or more of these may be bad. The antenna size and/or gain on the USB stick shouldn't be a factor since I've got 6 plugs in the same room as the hub, each under 15 feet distance. I'm starting to suspect that the Zigbee stack in HE isn't up to the task of large networks.

It's ironic, under SmartThings my zigbee network was rock solid while Z-Wave was always a bit fragile and subject to weird delays. I'm seeing exactly the opposite in HE. I've never had a more solid and responsive Z-Wave mesh. Zigbee is just plain terrible. I don't know a better way to put it.

Right now my HE experience is about as bad as ST ever was. Motion lighting randomly works, contact sensors will often miss events. ST presence sensors come and go constantly.

On New Years eve I powered down the hub for about an hour to force the mesh to rebuild. I also left the 2 Osram Lighify bulbs that I haven't replaced with Hue unplugged, a state they remain in now. That had no effect. On New Years day as an experiment I reset and re-paired 3 rooms worth of plugs that are all located closest to the hub. That had no effect.

As a last resort I changed the Zigbee channel down to 15, where SmartThings ran for years. That had no effect. These are all the exact same devices I ran under ST. I don't get it, and certainly don't relish the prospect of moving back to SmartThings, however I am giving that some serious consideration right now.

I did that New Years eve without any success.

Have you opened a Ticket with Support? support@hubitat.com or tag @bobbyD ?

Support will look at system logs and can potentially detect issues with the hub or USB Stick.

I have a couple tickets open on other things, but not this specific issue. Was hoping to find some suggestions from the community from others who may have gone down this road before.

Edit: A ticket has been opened.

Just ordered 3... We'll see how that goes.

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Are you actually controlling devices with all 52 smart outlets? Or just using them to strengthen your mesh? If the latter, have you considered reducing the number of smart outlets paired with the Hubitat Hub down to just one per room of your house, as a test?

I have about 5 Lowes Iris 3210-L outlets running in my house, with multiple motion and water sensors, as well as multiple Sengled Bulbs. My Zigbee network is very solid and fast performing. However, I do not anywhere near as many devices as you have.

Theyā€™re all controlling or monitoring devices. For instance, I have one on my sump pump so I can ensure that itā€™s cycling periodically, before water backs up to the point it triggers a leak sensor.

I have a plug on my tankless water heater so I know when hot water is being demanded, others for the washer, dryer, dishwasher, home servers, etc.

Yeah, I got carried away at some point.

406 devices, 52 of them Zigbee SmartPlugs... I don't think I've done the math on what else is Zigbee from the thread, but I think the clues are:

ZWave is OK for now. It's a Zigbee issue as reported.
There are plenty of reasonable repeaters,
There are multiple devices / repeaters in the same room as the Hub.
The problem devices are a 'random sample' of the total
Failures change as various cures are tried.

This is begging for a 'divide to conquor' technique. I'm hoping Support is able to glean more clues if an outright fix isn't in the cards. :slight_smile:

One of the xBees will be here Friday so my plan for the weekend is to get it included and try to map the network. Not sure if that will offer any usable information, but perhaps it will give me some insight as to any weak links.

in researching this issue, I've learned the Nortek (Hubitat) USB stick is not recommended. I'm not saying the Hubitat stick is on that list, but I do believe I've read that its a HUSBZB-1.

From OpenHab

Note that there are generally two versions of the Ember NCP firmware in use. One operates at a baud rate of 115200 with RTS/CTS flow control (i.e. hardware flow control), the other operates at a baud rate of 57600, and XON/XOFF flow control (i.e. software flow control). If you are programming your own stick (e.g. the CEL stick) then it should be advisable to use the hardware flow control version - many commercial sticks seem to use the lower speed and software flow control (e.g. Bitron and Nortek HUSBZB-1).

I certainly like a technical challenge, it's one of the facets of my career. Unfortunately, malfunctioning home automation affects others besides myself, so I'm having to tread lightly here.

I certainly understand what are you going through.
But also seems that you are too close to the matter and looking too much into the details.

I would suggest for you to build your network outwards and see where it fails.

It might be just the case that you simply have too much devices for a single mesh network...

Hope that support can help you figure it out.

Thats exactly what I did. I started with powered the plugs first as built the Zigbee & Z-Wave meshes, then went back and added battery power devices. I had no issues with just the SmartPlugs on the mesh.

You could be right, it could be too many devices for Hubitat's hardware. If thats the case, I'll have to go back to SmartThings which had no issues with Zigbee, or another platform altogether..

Maybe you want to move just Zigbee or a portion of Zigbee back. You said ZWave was better on HE and via Link to Hub app and/or OtherHub app, you can have dual hubs to distribute the load, while working with Support to get to the bottom of this. Zigbee is so much easier to move I believe.

I'm not sure if you have a larger Zigbee network than anyone else, or a larger ZWave network than anyone else, but I suspect you have the largest Zigbee + Zwave I've heard of so far, here on Hubitat.

A lot of people have a Hue bridge too that has the effect of reducing Hubitat's Zigbee mesh for bulbs.. which I don't think is a big option, If I remember your device mix correctly. Several people have large Lutron installations, again, that reduces the radio resource load on Hubitat.

I see some progress there.

You had no issues with just the plugs. So it comes to reason that your issues start when you starting add the other devices.

So I would do the following to narrow the cause....

Remove everything until I have a stable mesh.

Than would start adding things based on type and Mft.

For Example:
I would leave any Bulbs for last
I would starting adding:

  • Door/windows Sensors
    • Mft 1
      Test Mesh
  • Door/windows Sensors
    • Mft 2
      Test Mesh
  • etc

I know the thread is long, but I did mention that I have no bulbs. With over 150+ Zigbee devices I have neither the time, nor desire to remove everything and re-add them one at a time, followed by testing. It took almost 3 weeks to move 400+ devices as it is. Two of those weeks I was on vacation, and spent several hours per day transferring devices. Since the SmartPlugs are also part of the Z-Wave backbone, it would mean tearing down the entire system. The method you are suggesting would take 2-3 months and is completely impractical, although it is scientifically an appropriate way to test.

If that's what it is going to come down to, then I'll rebuild on another platform that can handle it. There are no problematic devices. They all worked in SmartThings for years, I would have stayed there, if not for the ongoing cloud issues.

I understan.but something that worked before does not mean it can work again. For your sake I hope so if you go down that route. I seriously doubt that the issue is with the radio stack. But hey... Have seen wierd things before

Good luck matešŸ˜Ž!

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A tale of 2 (closet) doors... This just gets stranger...

In the room the hub is in I have a double closet door, with an Iris contact sensor on each door. I use them to turn on the lights in the closet. Both sensors are about 9 feet from the hub, direct line of sight, 4 feet from each other. Everything in the same room, including the hub. No other electronics are in the room, except for a 5GHz cordless phone.

The right door always registers the contact event and triggers the lighting rule. The left door contact sensor almost always misses the first few events, thus failing to trigger the automation. Here's where it gets weird... If I open and close the right door first, the sensor on the left door will respond immediately when that door is opened and closed. That means I cannot even attribute the issue to the contact sensor being "alseep".

It's looking more and more like it's routing or routing stack issue.

We are getting somewhere, and it's not anything I've ever seen before.

I had an Iris motion sensor drop off again for about the 150th time.. (Ok not really that much). Usually I can pull the battery and it reconnects. Tonight it did not. So I reset the sensor and put it back into pairing mode. HE recogized the motion sensor however upon discovery the device reset itself and went back into pairing mode. The hub then recognized the device, and upon discovery, the device reset itself and went into pairing mode. It was an endless loop. I tried resetting the motion sensor a few times but the same looping cycle occurred.

I fired up SmartThings and it connected right away. I turned off ST, and resdet the motion sensor again. Same viscious pair and reboot cycle on the motion sensor. So I deleted it completely from Hubitat and reset the sensor. Guess what, it connected right away. Better yet, 15 minutes later the sensor is still responsive.

I tried to reset the closet door sensor from my earlier post. It too went into the same endless cycle of pairing then resetting. This continued until I deleted the device from Hubitat and connected it as a new device.

Certainly looks like a routing table corruption, or database issue somewhere. I've updated the support ticket.

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Interesting, keep us posted

Ummmm interest in did.

I wonder if you have a corrupted DB... Would explain those issues, if the devices were not properly being added to the DB.

You really need to get hold off support.