Have warranty replacements solved your C8/C8 Pro Zigbee problems?

I pose this question for those who have had unusable Zigbee on their hubs--officially "a small minority," but I'm not so sure from reading the forum.

My C8 Pro has had Zigbee devices repeatedly drop off and become unresponsive, with the radio going offline dozens of times a day and resulting in the need to repeatedly re-pair devices to get them working again--briefly. Some devices have refused to pair at all, even though they had worked fine with my C7. I've tried of all the interference-related suggestions (changed wifi to channels 1 and 5, changed Zigbee channel to 25, reduced power). I finally gave up and moved the Zigbee devices to my C7 in a hub mesh, as the C7 has always been smooth sailing on the Zigbee front.

So, do I keep things as is, or get the C8 Pro replaced? I envision going through the bother of setting up a replacement--probably including having to purchase Hub Protect to make the switch--and not having it make any difference.

What have others' experiences been in this situation? Was it worthwhile pursuing a C8 [Pro] replacement?

I can provide feedback from our side's perspective. First, we have not issued any C-8 Pro replacements related to Zigbee issues. As for those C-8s that we replaced, the problem was resolved. But to put it into perspective, only about 10% of warranty cases related to Zigbee malfunction result in a replacement hub, while 90% of the cases have been resolved by isolating misbehaving devices and/or performing basic mesh network maintenance, like changing channels and limiting Wi-Fi interference.

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Thanks, that's helpful.

I've done the wifi interference things, and I'm in a sparsely populated area so I don't think there's outside interference. About 11 of my 18 Zigbee devices are repeaters, so I think my mesh is OK.

Are there any particular devices that are known to misbehave? Or how does one isolate such offenders?

I wish Hubitat made a C7 Pro--the speed of the C8 Pro with the stability of the C7 Zigbee radio!

The C-8 Pro is the hardware progression from C7. It has a more capable radio, so in the long run, it should give you a better experience. Now finding the issue with your current experience may take some effort. Please send me a private message along with your hub id so we can look for clues in the engineering log that might explain the poor experience you've had thus far.

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People that have an unremarkable experience with their new hub are generally much less likely to take to the forums than those that need help troubleshooting.

So it’s not necessarily a representative sample of all newly purchased hubs.

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Hi. as a long time hubitat fan and user (i think) i should of requested this long ago but sometimes life gets in the way. In any case i really think my c8 pro hub is possibly faulty. I am sorry i got rid of my c7. Since i bought this hub i still to date havent been able to get all my devices paired. I have horrenduous pairing and disconnect issues with this hub. i have hard reset this hub a bunch of times. I have reset radios, rollbacks ect and my devices go offline or i cant get them paired even. again last nite all my lights have gone offline. a couple of weeks ago all my lights went offline for about a week then one day the magically started working. my contacts have done the same. how do i go about getting a replacement hub? i use

sengled bulbs
ikea repeaters (3)
xioma/aquar sensors

First of all, I am sorry to hear about your struggle.

To create a warranty case visit the following page: Warranty – Hubitat Support

If you are a Hub Protect subscriber visit this page: Subscriptions – Hubitat Support

Now, with answer to your question out of the way, let me ask you a few questions because a new hub might not resolve the problem.

  1. are you having issues with Zigbee devices only?
  2. What channel is your Zigbee radio set to (go to Zigbee details page from Settings)
  3. Are you running the latest platform version?
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yes zigbee only because i havent gotten far enough in pairing my zigbee devices to get to my zwave devices. i only have a few zwave devices anyways. i had the c5 hub also not c7. my channel is 20 power on 8. i tried changing this around also many many times. my old c5 worked fine on 20. i update on a regular basis and on the latest platform. this last update seemed to kick most of my devices offline. the last update also seemed to do the same then magically they came back after about a week. now i am in the same boat again. i ordered this from hubitat around may of this year so looks like i am stuck with it. I dont know what else to do but i definitely didnt have this much of a headache with my old c5.

Correction Update:

it appears mostly my sengled bulbs are offline, my contacts and repeaters are mainly online. it seems as if its a sengled issue...

Switch to 25. power 12. C8 and C8 pro seem to be weird on 20.

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i will try that even though i tried other channels before and i dont recall what exactly i changed it to.

You are not "stuck" with it, we will not let you out in the cold if your issues are related to a hardware malfunction. Please send me a private message, I will see what I can do. Maybe the engineering log gives us clues what might be wrong.

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i replied to you a day after but my email client didnt send it. I advised i was going to try the channel and power change which i did but after a few days of testing it i see my lights (which i reset and repaired) take 3 times to turn off. i reset and repaired my 3 aquara motions which the hub found them after some time but, they never registered. It is like they are offline but not showing they are. no active or inactive on the motions. What logs do i need to send to you? I work as an IT systems admin professionally and i feel something is off with the database or the radios or similar. I have hard/soft reset the DB many times previously but in the IT world, when the errors make no sense to pinpoint to a cause, its usually faulty hardware/software or a virus related (omitting setting or compatibility issues). This to me seems to fall in one of these categories (minus the virus option).

Update:

I noticed my 3 ikea repeaters went offline (they showed online this whole time). I am going to do more testing as i hard reset and repaired them along with some other contacts that went offline. I had a couple of bulbs also go offline again and have done the same. These all went offline (which were previously online after i changed the power and level to 25/12 as suggested. So this happened after this change but no where near as bad as on channel 20/8.

I am sending you a private message so we can further investigate.

Thank you.