I'll just pull my knowitall out of my pocket so that none of you will help me as i learn ... just kidding. It's reassuring that I have so many people to bounce things off of.. I hope you know that I'm grateful for each and every one of you. (Ok .. I'm getting all misty here) .. sorry. I suspected that my issues were not entirely hub related, but mesh related. I can't wait to click resolved on this post. But ... who gets that credit?
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The community!
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You can use your ST Hub and HubConnect for your 'extra zigbee' experiment. If moving all of the bulbs to a 2nd hub, returns stability, (and the ST cloud delays don't drive you crazy during the experiment) then you can decide if a 2nd Huitat hub would be an answer. You've kept that ST hub around for a reason.. was this the reason? 
The majority of my sensors are Xiaomi/Aqara and I have no issues.
Mind you I have nothing repeating.
Because I can't morally give it away to anyone I know and no one i don't know wants to buy it.
(Long winded post; TL/DR: To keep your Xiaomi's working, get them to join directly as children of the hub, or make sure that when they join, all other incompatible repeaters are turned off. If you don't have Ikea Tradfri plugs, Xbee, or Environment sensor, getting them to join directly to the hub might be your only option).
One thing to remember about running Xiaomi sensors/buttons (or any battery powered or non-repeating Zigbee device) is that when they initially join the network they must find a parent repeater device and become a 'child' of that device. They are sort of 'bonded' to it, and that parent device is responsible for forwarding messages to it (and buffering packets received from it until the normally sleepy device wakes up and checks for them) for the duration of the parent/child bond. The parent is kind of a dedicated mailbox for its child, and even if other repeaters nearby are available within radio range, a battery operated device won't use them without a leave/rejoin process-- this could happen if the parent decides to 'evict' them because it thinks they are no longer present (children have to check in with their parent on a set schedule or the parent will free up the message buffer slots it has reserved for them in order to be able to accept other join requests), or if the child thinks it has become orphaned because of radio link problems and tries to scan the network and rejoin with the same or different parent.
This leave/rejoin process isn't something that you control; it should happen transparently (and ideally not often-- because when it does you would likely notice delays and dropped commands in the network). But it could happen when the radio links between devices aren't strong, or there is significant interference (or other reasons, like somebody turning off the wall switch that controls the power to a repeating bulb device-- stranding whatever child devices were joined to it).
There's an additional wrinkle that affects Xiaomi devices when run with HE-- unless they join directly as a child of the hub, or thru a compatible parent repeater, they will function for a while but (usually within hours) will drop off the network, because most Zigbee repeaters have different expectations on how often their children should 'check in'. Xiaomi devices don't check in within the timeframe that most Zigbee 'Home Automation profile' devices expect, and also don't try to automatically rejoin, since they don't realize they have been evicted-- hence they can get stranded.
So when you have Xiamoi devices in a network that includes a mix of potentially compatible and incompatible repeaters, you need to be aware of how they join and to which parent they are joined. There's an extensive thread on which Zigbee repeaters are compatible with Xiaomi. With a little practice you can usually cajole them into joining directly to the hub or to a compatible parent (you must have all incompatible repeaters within radio range turned off during the join process); things should be good unless something disrupts the network enough to cause the Xiaomi device to be orphaned-- like killing power to its parent repeater long enough for it to think it has been orphaned. Then you'll have to do the rejoin again.
In your case, I can see that from your routing info that the hub has no child devices joined to it. So your Xiaomi's have chosen another repeater as their parent. Unless you have an Ikea Tradfri plug, XBee, or one of Ihyaradi's Enviroment Sensors in your network you may not have a compatible repeater for them to join through. Maybe before your problems started they were joined directly as children of your hub?
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I have a good number of the Xiaomis, but it seems that they have been the first to fall off lately.
I couldn't get that lucky Tony. That's great information. Gives me a better understanding of why I may be experiencing what i am experiencing. I can easily power off my zigbee stuff and try rejoining my xiaomis to see how it plays. Can i just reset the xiaomi devices without removing each one keeping them in my rules?
Resetting them won't affect your rules; your hub will recognize them as a previously joined device and you will be good to go. If they join directly as children of your hub, you will see them as children in the route/child info.
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I will try this tonight when I get home. I hate to say it, but my kitchen/dining room and bedroom rely heavily on my lightifys, which I love the interaction that I've set up with them, so I do hope that I can get this fixed. I'd ditch the crees in a heartbeat but I'll cry over my lightify's. I must admit.
When you do join the Xiaomi's, keep an eye on them for the first hour or so to observe their checkin in event log. You should also see it hourly thereafter. If you don't , the device will soon go AWOL.
One problem you may run into with this approach (not having any other compatible repeaters) is that if the signal quality of their link to the hub is very low, they may still get stranded. In Zigbee settings, click on Zigbee logging and you'll see their RSSI. If it is very low (high negative 80's or worse) your Xiamoi's may still shop around for a better radio link and may try to rejoin to a closer incompatible repeater. Only choice then would be to get a Xiaomi-friendly repeater.
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Provided as another option-
I re-examined much of what I was using TTS for and realized I could avoid a lot of the potential slow-down problems by using @corerootedxb's great notification driver.
[RELEASE] Alexa Notifications Driver
The benefits are that there is not a constantly running service (Echo Speaks), no chance of me composing a malformed rule that repeats indefinitely or spawns multiple instances, and it provides a hard-to-ignore visual reminder (that spinning yellow LED), and on Show devices, it gives you the text of the notification. Using Alexa's built in routines , I can lower the volume at night if I so desire.
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Oh thanks! Since I'll be hubbin' it this weekend, I'll definitely look into this driver. It's nice to know what olthers are using too. Thanks for sharing!
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Exactly the same here. The only non-TTS feature of Echo Speaks that I used was turning on/off Alexa Guard Mode. Now I just play two short mp3s on a Sonos speaker to control Guard mode based on my location.
Careful...
I have found that turning off the Zigbee radio for 30-45 minutes CAUSES some devices to fall off the mesh. Perhaps just waiting 1-2 days for the mesh to self heal might be more advantageous.
I have about 60 xiaomi devices and a script monitoring them in case they drop off. None have dropped in a long time and have been very stable.
To get it to this point though I've been through a lot of trial and error. I know my wifi and zigbee channels don't over lap. The only repeaters I have covering my entire house are the ikea outlets and they work perfectly. I've tried a number of zigbee repeaters and there were some that worked well but still had a random drop. It wasn't until I got rid of them all and put in the ikea plugs that things got very stable with the xiaomi devices.
I'd like to suggest to @april.brandt to use the Device Watchdog app from @bptworld to check on the Xiaomi devices. Use "activity" trigger, with a time of 1 hour to see if the devices are still on the mesh.
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OK .. I'm home. I've pulled the plug on all cree bulbs and lightify strips and my peanut. The only thing left that are motion sensors. I'm going to see if I can get the xiaomis to connect directly to the hub. More to come.... I've read your posts @jtmpush18 @gavincampbell.
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I would keep the peanut. you need a repeater.
