@Angus_M To keep the Xiaomi driver thread a bit cleaner I'm answering here. I have a mesh with IKEA repeaters and more than 65 Xiaomi/Aqara devices. I had everything 100% stable for months and last week moved all Zigbee devices to their own hub. When moving I added 4 IKEA Repeaters and I see better speeds and I now have 100% av all devices reporting in once per hour all the time. Previously I could have devices that I didn't get data from every hour, probably due to packet loss. They always reported in within 3 hours and I had no delays with motion so didn't bother to fix it.
With that said, it shouldn't get worse, unless they've not settled in to the mesh properly yet. Have you tried turning off the hub for more than 60 minutes and then starting it back up? That should get all your devices to try to re-route faster.
Thanks @markus for the note. Will try the hub switch off technique. Good idea and didn't do that for a while. I've been using Device Watchdog with a timeout of 3 hrs to check and different motion sensors would drop off. At first it was the ones nearest the new repeaters. Now it's ones that I'm not sure would be repeated via these instead of connecting directly to the hub (one is very close to the hub). I've been using a pin to reconnect them and some have then dropped off again. I'm wondering if putting in the repeaters has caused other devices to route via them instead of going direct or daisy chaining via other devices. I have gledopto lamps which didn't seem to be an issue before but now maybe are (but they are working fine). One option I have is to connect all the lamps to my Hue hub instead to get them off the mesh but then I have to resort to polling to keep the dashboard in line which is a pain. I have stacks of Iris v2 motion sensors that I basically gave up on before (kept dropping) and so progressed with the Xiaomi's which had very few issues. Introduced the 2 IKEA repeaters - mostly to see if they would help with speed of motion lighting response - but now have these various connectivity issues.
So....maybe sensible steps would be....
Try the hub off for a while to let them neconnect in panic mode (not sure if I should reconnect any dropped devices first manually?)
If necessary, move the lamps to Hue and try that approach
Maybe then can try introducing some of the Iris v2's again (I really like their sensitivity and response time - better than the Xiaomi's in my experience, if only they would have stayed connected).
Oh by the way, did you ever get the rf transmitter device, the one from China which I think you struggled to get hold of...
Physical closeness isn't necessarily not what determines a route. When I look at my mesh routing using an Xbee I really don't understand some of the routing choices, but there they are, and the mesh is stable.
Reconnect dropped ones first. When you do, reset them by holding the pin for more than 10 seconds and then pair them.
If 1 doesn't get it stable, then try this and repeat 1.
Once you have a stable mesh, you can start adding devices slowly, one at a time at first. I redid my mesh of more than 65 Xiaomi/Aqaras + 2 Xbees, 2 Sonoff Zigbee switches, 1 CC2530 and 4 IKEA Repeaters by first connecting all the repeaters and then waited just a few hours for them to settle in and then I paired in all of the Xiaomis in a matter of 2-3 hours. This should work an did work for me, but it might be easier to do it slowly. Routing devices are good to have sorted first though.
Yes, I got it last week actually, it doesn't work with the frequency I needed, but I did want to ask you, what is the name of the app you use to connect yours (mine is Safemate)? Just to be sure we have the same one.
It's within the stated range, but even so it doesn't work. Maybe once I start poking at the API I see a way of doing it, but so far no, it doesn't want to do 797MHz... I'll probably open it to see what hardware is in there and if it even CAN support the frequency. I did get it to work with 315MHz, 433MHz and 868Mhz...
I hope you get it working, I have 9 devices just as repeaters + some curtains, outlets and other things that also repeat though probably not well. What I don't have are repeating bulbs, in fact, I have 0 "smart" bulbs. All my lighting is done without that so far.
Just want to chime in here. This is sound advice. Something I've been preaching for a while now too.
Make sure you know exactly what repeaters you have on your network. I only have the Ikea outlest and repeaters and the Xbee (which seems to help a lot too) and everything runs fine. Also make sure you have enough repeaters and they are placed well I think it was a 1:6 ratio as each one only repeated 6 devices. But the hub will accept up to 32 direct connections and I think the Xbee accepts up to 32 as well (mine is currently doing 18) if you have one.
Once you put in monitoring you will see that they check in hourly with a random skip every now and then. I usually send a notification after the 3rd hour because I know at that point it is offline for sure and usually at that point its the battery. Don't rely on the battery reporting. Its been tuff trying to get that to report properly.
I just checked my Ikea repeaters through XCTU, the maximum I see one have is 14 devices, so might be that it can do 16. Maybe the Ikea Outlets can only do 6? I have no Ikea Outlets. My CC2530 repeater has 29 devices now and I know it had 32 before. None of my 2 Xbees have more than 14 devices connected, but that is probably not due to reaching maximum number of devices. My hub shows 11 devices directly connected right now, but yes, it can do 32.
I think there's another variable at play here. I have a zigbee only HE with all my Aqara/Mijia devices (~35), Sengled bulbs (8), and Yale zigbee door locks (2). The repeaters on this HE are 5 Ikea control outlets and 6 Ikea Signal repeaters.
Nothing dropped off the network until about a couple months ago when devices (and a couple repeaters) randomly dropped off. Coincident with this, my hub started slowing down (database gridlock diagnosed by @bobbyD).
I've made attempts to resolve the latter; my zigbee-only HE shows no slow-downs now. And, devices no longer randomly fall off. I know very little about the mechanics by which zigbee works, so this is speculation - perhaps the devices periodically send something like a heartbeat signal and if the hub doesn't respond (because it is slowed down), they drop off .....
Just ran a scan on my xbee of my network. I forgot I added a sylvania light strip.
For some reason the device love that strip, its routing 18 things through it. All of my ikea devices (plugs and repeaters) only route a max of 5 each. Even my xbee only has 5 devices on it.
I guess the good news is that I now know that the light strip works as a repeater for the xiaomi devices.
