Hi Guys,
I have a problem with Ikea tradfri outlets. I initially got about 20 of them as well as two repeaters to help fix my Aqara sensor problem, but it has not worked over the last year or so. Essentially, I had 1 outlet in each room within 5-10 feet of any Aqara sensor. The problem was that the outlets themselves kept falling off of my zigbee network and taking the sensors with them.
Then I got 3 XBEEs to expand the network and also test. The sensors routed through the outlets and XBEEs fine, and some outlets through XBEEs, but regardless of their routing, the outlets kept falling off within days.
Next, I got a new C5 hub and turned off the zigbee and z-wave radios of my original hub and used the new hub for all zigbee and zwave. I moved the problem devices to the dusty ST hub (samsung outlets and Sylvania light strips). I built the zigbee network with the three original XBEEs and added two new XBEE pros, then added the ikea outlets. I added them all in order of proximity to the hub at their final location. Turned off the hub for 40 min and then I added my samsung sensors, sengled bulbs and finally aqara sensors. I noticed that the aqara sensors kept falling off and so did the Ikea outlets. I even put new batteries after testing them in every sensor. Sensors and outlets have fallen off daily and I have reset and repaired them multiple times. I deleted all the ikea outlets except 3 and re-paired the aqara sensors with no improvement. I stopped touching them for a week and today, there is only one Ikea outlet showing up in my zigbee logs and XBEE testing and the rest have gone unresponsive. Interestingly, all the samsung sensors and buttons are working beautifully and have not dropped with any of the changes I made. On the other hand, all the Aqara sensors have fallen off.
My wifi channel (orbi mesh) is 1 and C5's zigbee channel is 20. Both channels are low traffic. ST hub is on 24.
The things that are currently connected to my C5 hub are:
18 x samsung motion sensors (versions 1-3)
3 x Hue motion sensors
7 x samsung buttons
5 x samsung multi sensors
Zooz S2 multi-siren
10 x Sengled bulbs
1 x ikea tradfri outlet
The things that have fallen off of my C5 hub are:
10 x aqara leak sensors
4 x aqara wireless dual switch
7 x aqara motion sensors
4 x xiaomi buttons
12 x aqara contact sensors
3 x aqara humidity-temp sensors
22 x ikea tradfri outlets
2 x ikea repeaters
The C4 hub has all the dashboards and LAN devices (Hue lights, wemo plugs, Lutron Pro bridge, chromecast, samsung wifi, Bond, google home, NST manager and TP link integrations.
ST Hub has the Samsung outlet and sylvania strips.
It seems as though the C5 hub is a bit worse compared to my C4, but I'm not sure if this is just me being tired of re-pairing devices for an hour at the end of each day. I finally was able to make the house work again with tonesto7's homebridge plug in, but the aqara hub (channel 24) with homekit is not as snappy and humidity does not come through. The range is an issue in my house, and to make everything work again, I need two more aqara hubs, and I really don't want to do that, but in a moment of weakness, I did order them and they are pending shipment.
What am I doing wrong? My house is about 3500 sq ft in three levels and is a new build. I would appreciate any insights.
Wow, you went full in on the TRĆ DFRI/Xiaomi combo. Most Xiaomi sensors eventually fell off my network too. What seemed like a sure thing in the beginning turned out to be a royal PIA for me too. I know some owners like @gavincampbell had good success in the beginning, but I have not read anything about how itās going for him now.
The TRĆ DFRI falling off hasnāt happened, but I only run two outlets and one TRĆ DFRI repeater, so thatās hardly a comparison. I have an Xbee, but I only plug it in when I need to check routing.
I ended up moving all but three of my Xiaomi sensors to an Aqara HomeKit Gateway and I sync them to HE virtual switches via Homebridge. I just learned about Mi Connector from @Royski, but it requires the original non-HomeKit version of the Mijia Gateway.
The Aqara HomeKit gateway works fine for me. I live in an old house, less than half the size of yours though. The Xiaomi devices are all end device to controller. Iāve heard that they do route through Xiaomi outlets, but it sounds like youāve paid your dues in outlets.
If you wanted to throw another $60 or so at the issue with a Mijia Gateway and Mi Connector, that doesnāt seem unreasonable given your investment in Xiaomi to this pointsee edit below, but Iād caution you about throwing much more than that at the problem. Once they are on their own Gateway, the Xiaomi devices are very reliable and donāt drop, but thatās my experience in a small home. That needs to be kept in mind when discussing the viability of this.
Iām getting good results, but growing more cautious about recommending anything thatās not on the compatible devices list.
Sorry to be that guy - Caveat Emptor
[Edit] Just re-read your post and saw that youāre using @tonesto7 ās version of Homebridge for HE. That would be the reason youāre not seeing very fast response from the Aqara Gateway. Iām getting almost instant response from mine using @dan.t ās MakerAPI version of the Homebridge app for HE. @tonesto7 is also recommending that HE users switch to Danās version. For Hubitat, it just works better.
I have 5 of the Tradfri control outlets. Have not had any fall off in the 5 months I have owned them. I do not use Xiaomi Devices. 4 of them are using the Tradfri Control Outlet built in driver. The 5th I realized I missed changing the driver and it is still running the built in Generic Zigbee Outlet driver. Not sure any of this is helpful, but thought I would throw this out as they have been stable for me.
Iāll second that. @dan.t ās makerapi and HubConnect versions are based on @tonesto7ās version and tonesto only has been updating the SmartThings version. Iāve used all 3 and would recommend the makerapi version as the most responsive with what seems like zero impact on the hub.
Maybe youād have better luck with 2 zigbee networks. One dedicated to the misbehaving devices on channel 25 perhaps. Iāve read that those devices so well up there in the spectrum, but no personal experience.
That makes sense. I just got a new pi, so I will try the @dan.t 's MakerAPI. I have way too many other things on the other pis and don't want to mess them up:)
Thanks
I had 2 tradfri plugs, both of which are back at the Ikea store. thank God for the 1 year return policy.
Mine kept falling off too. Others here report no issues. I hated them, no manual switch and calls from the wife "light is NOT on/off"
got the tradfri signal repeaters , they are solid. Not very strong but reliable
You donāt hear much from me because my system is working great. It did take me a while though to get my xiaomi devices to be this reliable.
I have 50+ devices. A mix of motion, contact, temp, water and tilt sensors. Some are as far as my garage door and even one is in my metal mailbox.
My hub sits in the bottom corner of my basement. I have a 3 story house about 2500 sq ft.
Iāve set the zigbee channel to 20 to avoid conflicts with my wifi router (eero).
The only routers I have are 5 ikea outlets and 2 ikea repeated and 1 xbee that I use to look at the network but seems to like to route a lot of things.
I also have an app set up to notify me if any of these devices stop reporting in (ikea and xiaomi) and Iāve only had one drop off last week which was because of a low battery. None have dropped off the network in many months. Even with a power outage they have found their way back online without issues after the restore.
There are so many variables that can be at play that I too canāt really recommend them to anybody. Itās too much of a hassle having to worry about compatibility with routers etc.
I feel like one of the few though that have had this much success.
Thank you. That was very helpful. I think not being a network engineer or having any computer science background, I have reached my limit of diagnostic work for now. I'm going to wait for the aqara hubs.
I've moved the basement to the aqara hub with @dan.t makerAPI. They're much more snappy and have not fallen off. I'll wait for the other 2 aqara hubs to arrive for the rest of the house. Thank you for your insights.
I'm having the same issue as yourself. Most of my Xiaomi contacts and motion sensors are now off, they routed through Ikea stuff, but then when the Ikea plugs dropped, so did Xiaomi. And despite having 3 Xbee 3's they never did re-route. Thankfully nearly all my end devices are now routing through the Xbees. But a few are still on the Ikea plugs, and I'm watching them like a hawk.
I have a DGNWG02LM version of the Xiaomi hub on its way, in the vain hope I can link to the Mi Connector and still use all Xiaomi devices through that. Fingers crossed.
I cant help but think something has changed somewhere though. I'd had these devices for well over a year (my Xiaomi's a lot longer) and its only fairly recently that my Zigbee network has started playing up.
Did anyone find a solution to their IKEA devices dropping off the mesh? Iāve got 5 repeaters and they keep going unresponsive. They still show up in the getChildandRoute page but when I go to the device page for them and click on either the get route table button or the get link quality button thereās nothing in the logs. After a restart of the device they are fine again for some time.
Is it possible to upgrade the firmware in them somehow?
I had that issue before and it went away after I upgraded the firmware on all of my Ikea Repeaters and Outlets. They would lock up and any devices repeating through them would stop communicating to HE.
I got me an Ikea Hub on eBay. I had to pair each device to the hub and let it update, then re-pair it back onto HE. But they have been rock solid now for months.
