TL,DR; - One HBFC worked great, so I installed 2 more, and now all 3 are unreliable & stop responding intermittently, even with upgraded antenna & a repeater nearby. Advice?
A few weeks ago, I bought one of the Hampton Bay zigbee ceiling fan controllers from Home Depot and installed it in my bedroom ceiling fan. It worked beautifully, and seemed like the perfect fit for my house (we have ceiling fans as the primary light fixture in every room except the bathroom, always wired to a single wall switch, and sometimes without neutral wires in the box), so I ordered one for each room.
I installed the next one in the Kitchen fan. It worked at first, but stopped responding after a while. The first couple of times, turning it off and back on would get it working again, but then it wouldn't come back even for that. I tried resetting the module and re-pairing it, but couldn't get it to connect. Having read the thread about other people's issues with this unit and the recommendation to replace the antenna, I ordered a set of each of the 2 antenna types discussed in that thread. I hadn't needed to do that for the bedroom, the module there worked great with the stock antenna, but maybe the kitchen needed the extra boost. After installing the new antenna, I still had trouble pairing the controller back to HE. It took rebooting the HE to get it to discover the controller, so it's very possible that the controller would have re-paired without the new antenna if I had just tried rebooting the hub, but I don't know for sure. I also went ahead and replaced the antenna on another controller and installed it in the living room the same day.
Ever since then, all 3 of these units have lost connectivity intermittently. (even the bedroom fan, which had previously been very reliable.) They still respond to the Hampton Bay remote controls, but don't react to zigbee at all. Generally, if I turn the light switch off (cutting power to the controller module) and back on, that restores connectivity and the controller starts responding to commands from the hub again. It might keep working for a few minutes or a few hours at that point, but eventually it stops again. (The kitchen fan seems to be the worst. The bedroom and living room only act up maybe once a day or every other day.)
I've also installed a zigbee outlet (IRIS IL03_1) in the utility room next to the kitchen (~10' from the fan, with an interior wall between), at a height roughly the same as or just slightly lower than that of the fan blades, but that doesn't seem to help.
This HE is configured for zigbee channel 20. I have another HE on zigbee channel 22, with my zigbee bulbs connected to that. My 2.4ghz wifi network is configured for channel 1, to stay as far from the zigbee networks as possible.
I'm not sure where to go next in troubleshooting this. Would a zigbee sniffer help? What else can I do to figure out what's causing this issue and fix it?
Adding the zigbee repeater (zigbee outlet) was the best thing you could do in my experience. However, adding the outlet does not mean that the fan will automaically route through it. You would still need to do a zigbee mesh heal.
shut down your HE hub for at least 20 minutes. This will cause you zigbee devices to go into "panic" mode and start searching for new routes back to your hub
important...after the 20 minutes, power off your fan (via wall switch or breaker)
turns your HE power back on and wait a few minutes for your zigbee devices to start reconnecting
then reconnect power to your fan
I used this process and all my 3 fans were solid (unless there was a power outage).
I did power off the zigbee radio for a couple of hours the other day, but I didn't cut power to the fan(s) before turning the radio back on. I will try again with that added step.
I have never tested the performance of iris units. I recently connected some peanut plugs that allowed my previously unpairable fans to pair to my HE. Havnt had an issue since. I also notched out the fan skirting at the ceiling and put the antenna outside said skirting. Everything is white so it's barely noticeable. I feel like moving the antenna outside the skirt made the biggest difference when I was using WINK.
Peanut plugs are widely regarded as a great repeater, from my reading anyway.
I actually had a Tradfri plug in the kitchen originally. It was about 4' off the ground, and 4 feet horizontally from the fan. I moved it to the garage when I put the IRIS outlet in the utility room in an attempt to address this.
I also had the antenna outside the fan shroud, even before I replaced the stock antenna.
I'm not sure whether the kitchen fan is using a repeater though even still. The zigbee child and route info page on my hub doesn't show the kitchen ceiling fan at all, although it does show the bedroom fan, as routing through a tradfri outlet in that room.
Okay, passing on a fantastic tip from @JDRoberts
Get a repeater ABOVE the fan blades. Once I did this, the signal is much much better. Either a room above the fan, or the attic. I am on zigbee channel 25 and wifi 1
I have seen that suggestion, but don't have any easy way to do it. It's a single story home, and the attic isn't easily accessible. I don't think there are any outlets up there, but if it comes down to it I can probably get up there and cut one in. It would be a last resort though I'm afraid.
I've been experiencing the same problems since I installed an HBFC. I've got 5 3210Ls including one right above the fan on the next floor and one about 13' feet from the fan. I've also moved one of the 3210Ls on an extension cord to be right next to the fan. I've also replaced the antenna and made sure the connection was solid.
@NeighborGeek - Wondering if you (or anyone else) has had better luck or discovered something, The only way I've found to get the HBFC back online is to change the Zigbee channel (I didn't try powering down the hub).
I've also been looking at the Zigbee Logs and I see a LastHopLQi:255 and LastHopRssi:-51 which I believe are fine.
I remember reading in another thread (but I can't find it and I don't know if it was on Hubitat Community or elsewhere) about a bug in the fan firmware that required some other zigbee device to perform some action before the fan controller can join. Unfortunately I don't remember the details
The only way I was able to get my HBFCs to change their routing was to remove them from the hub, reset them and then repair them to the hub.
Also, having a repeater in between the fan and the hub isn't always the best thing to help the fan communicate with the hub. Your repeater might have to be in a very odd place, depending on where the antenna is. I have one fan that uses a repeater further away from the hub on an upper floor.
Mine suddenly started working perfectly. The only thing I could think of that I changed at the time was to replace the smart outlet I had in the kitchen with an ikea tradfri repeater. I don't know if the repeater was just that much better, or if something else changed that I didn't consider, but it's been great for the past few months.
