You would need to leave the hub powered on since the devices need a coordinator (the hub) and some end devices (motion/water/temp sensors and such) may or may not automatically reroute depends on the manufacture of the device. For example Xiaomi devices do not like to automatically rejoin through a different router.
I have found the Hub zigbee stick to be not as strong as other devices like the Xbee3 which have a very strong signal and the network join time (NJ setting) maybe longer than the Hubs zigbee stick.
Are we talking line of sight devices? Or do some of the closer devices have walls, furnishings etc between them and the closer hub?
If that parses to an understandable question that is!
If you want devices to reroute you would have to pull power just from the router device they are routing through and you could try waiting for the end devices to rejoin (I do not have patience for that) or put the hub in discovery mode and press the pairing button on each end device (while the power is off the original router).
Completely....and in fact, some devices are going through 3 EXTRA walls to get to repeater rather than use one that is only through 1 wall or the hub which is only through one wall. In fact, one of my kitchen motion sensors is going to a repeater that is 10 feet away through 5 walls when the hub is 5 feet away through one floor. And one of the rooms it's choosing to go through is my HVAC room, so i know there's a ton of ducts in there. It's really quite odd.
I wasn't aware of that. But what if that is the best router for them to go through? I thought Zigbee was supposed to find the best route to go through, just not any old one. So, how am I supposed to figure that out?
unfortunately trial and error
mostly it does not matter
but for devices like the Xiaomi which initially will route through any router but if they route through iris plugs or GE switches for example they will eventually drop off.
So using the Xbee to scan your network you can see how a device is routed and if it falls off the network then you will have to try and force it to a different router device.
If your devices are not falling off the network I would not really worry about it.
If you want a device to go through a specific router you will have to briefly power down all other router devices then with the hub in discovery mode press the pairing button on the end device this may take several attempts.
Of course also keep in mind a device falling off the network could be just a faulty end device (even low battery) and nothing to do with the router or network.
Interesting. The truth is, nobody understands near field RF, and it could be some odd trick of the materials or antenna orientation on the hub that makes that 5 wall device prefer the loss through five walls over the loss through that one floor. There could also be some combination of multipathing that is causing destructive interference on the shortest path.
Weird stuff. I'm with you, I'd expect that HVAC room to play merry heck with the signals.
Wish I could offer some help!
Oh no...nothing to help with. All my devices are responding fine. It's just really freaking odd, that's all.
Depending on the distro you are you using on the RPi, at a high level you would:
- install ser2net (if debian based then something like "apt-get install ser2net")
- configure ser2net with something like "3001:raw:0:/dev/ttyUSB1:115200 8DATABITS NONE 1STOPBIT tr=tr1 timestamp" replacing the serial port appropriately
Then for a Linux client you would do something like:
- install socat (again if debian based then probably "apt-get install socat"
- run a socat command like "socat pty,link=/tmp/ttyUSB30,raw,echo=0 tcp:192.168.0.116:2000" replacing the IP address with the IP for your RPi
Point XCTU at /tmp/ttyUSB30 for the serial port connection and it should find the XBEE.
For a Window$ machine you'd have to get a virtual serial driver, I've had success in the past with TruePort Downloads - Serial to Ethernet Drivers and Manuals-Perle - this is designed to be used with Perle hardware but it should work with anything that presents serial over IP.
I've been using the XBEE as repeaters for my Xioami devices but recently I noticed that the Xbee drops off the network and doesn't reconnect. Is there a setting I need to set to allow the xbee to reconnect to hubitat in teh event of a power outage etc...
What are your settings?
CE = 0 (join network )
NJ = FF
JV = 1 (I changed to 0 after pairing to the hub to keep the Xbee on the same channel after power cycling I have never seen it change but just to be safe) Try it both ways to see if it helps
PL=4 (power level)
Silly question, but can an XBee be used as a router at the same time as mapping out the network? I’ve just started to read over this thread and am very interest but there’s an awful lot of posts to go over 
If so, is it just a case of plugging the XBee in to a Pc/MAC, programming the board/add to HE, unplug from pc, plug the board into mains socket, leaves for a few hours and then plug back into pc to see the network results? And then going forward plug into pc to check on network (which uses the 20 minute before al zigbee devices panic and try to reroute) when wanting an up to date network map?
Short answer is yes. However the Xbee doesn't store anything, so you have to leave it connected to the computer to see the routing.
In regard to the TLDR comment, a trick to quickly find if a particular thread has the information you're looking for is, Go to the Edit menu and chose Find, then enter your keyword, such as router in this case. That works for any webpage by using the shortcut keys ctrl+F or command+F on a Mac. However, with Discourse, that gives you the forum search and that's not what you want. So when on a site like the HE or ST forum that uses Discourse, you have to go to the Edit menu and select Find.
Has anyone tried moving an Xbee from one hub (coordinator) to another? I just bought a C5 hub and am trying to pair mine to it (moving from my C3), but it doesn't seem to be discovered. I've removed it from the old hub, pressed the "reset" button on the Xbee's dev board, but that didn't work. Wanting to try more, I also tried writing the default settings in XCTU, then re-doing the settings I think I used before, writing them, pressing "reset," and trying to pair again, but still no luck. When use the mapping feature in XCTU, it still shows me routers from my old network, but I'm not sure if it's still really "seeing" those or just has a cache somewhere. I've even tried disabling the radio on my old hub when trying to pair it to my new one.
Maybe I have the "wrong" settings applied, though I've tried a few different ones (mostly similar) that I've seen here and on the ST forums. I'm open to ideas or tricks. Maybe I also need to do some "full reset" on the Xbee, but I've also re-applied the latest firmware, which also claims to erase settings, and I'm not sure what more I could try.
Power down the old hub while you're attempting to pair with the C5? I've heard of ST grabbing devices back when trying to pair with HE. Wouldn't surprise me if you're experiencing the same issue.
Wouldn't disabling the Zigbee radio (which I have done) effectively accomplish the same thing? Maybe I should power down all my routers, too? I should also mention that I have the parameter set to check for a coordinator on the channel before joining.
Here's a shot in the dark- try putting in the extended PAN ID(from hubitat zigbee info) into the xbee settings, write it, then power cycle. My xbee doesn't show as joined but it routes and scans the network. Which it didn't before I put the extended PAN ID
If that doesn't work, add the xbee manually using both the 16 & 64 bit addresses, it will use the generic "device" driver, f you must have it show in hubitat, I don't think anyone has built a driver for xbee yet...
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