I restored a C7 hub when the IRIS V1 Zigbee pairing was removed from the C8 settings. I have 26 devices on the C7 at this time (all Zigbee, but not all Iris V1). Out of these devices, 9 are repeaters.
Seemingly at random, A decent number of devices will fall off the network. Both IRIS V1 and IRIS V2, AND my Segled Classic bulbs, all are non-repeating devices. It seems there is no way to get these devices back on the network short of removing, resetting, and repairing as a brand-new device. Trying to rejoin an existing device looks like it is working, but the device remains unresponsive. Restarting the hub does nothing. Shutting down, pulling power, and restarting the hub does nothing. I have tried about 5 different Zigbee Channels, which hasn't helped. Going to the device page to configure the device does nothing. It is very frustrating.
So, I have been taking the time to remove, reset, and re-pair the devices (about 6 times for some). The devices seem to work for between 2 days and 2 weeks before they just seem to go offline. All the tinkering I can think of does nothing. Only a remove, reset, and re-pair seems to bring them back, but only for a while. I do not know what causes them to drop, I have not noticed any power outages or anything that would create a pattern for this behavior.
Make sure your wifi is on 1-6 withing the 20mhz range, and that your zigbee is on 20 and above. Be sure though it's NOT the same channel as your c8 and that your c8 is only at around 8 or 12 on the power scale.
My mesh Wi-Fi consists of 3 access points. They claim to optimize themselves based on local interferences scans. My 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi is on Channel 8 and my 5GHz Wi-Fi is on channel 48. My C7 Zigbee is on channel 20 (this is the one giving me trouble). There are no Z-wave devices on the C7 hub.
My C8 Zigbee is on channel 15 with power level of 12. Things are fairly solid here, but when IRIS v1 devices started to drop with no way of re-pairing them, I branched out to my second, C7 hub to keep things working.
Any suggestions to change these settings would be appreciated. I have also been looking for the best Zigbee channel to run for IRIS V1 devices. I have read that they are limited in channels they can use.
I started this journey by wanting to put all IRIS v1 devices back on my C-7. Other Zigbee devices ended up there as well, but it has been a hassle the entire time (espectially with the Sengled Bulbs). Getting this straightened out so I can continue reconfiguring my Hubitat would really be nice.
I had this issue in the begining as there was a conflict between Zigbee and Wi-Fi Band.
I changed my Wi-Fi channel to 11 in my Mesh Wi-Fi and Hubitat Zigbee channel to 15. Post these changes, my Zigbee mesh is very reliable and sensors have no dropout.
I always recommend wifi on 1-6 and zigbee on 20 and up. That seems to be always solid. Sengled's can be hit or miss. I had problems with them in general, others have none. I simply switched to Lifx bulbs which have superior color and brightness and have been happy ever since. (I use bulbs for table lamps)
Mine has been going offline at random lately and when it does I lose a few devices. If this happens something is going on with your hub to cause the radio to go offline so it’s important to looks at your logs for errors and the stats for devices and apps to see what could be causing it.
Apparently, TP Link has removed the ability for the user to set the WiFi channel because they have had many users mess up their system changing it (not sure why this matters).
I'm stuck with channel 8 for now on my 2.4Ghz mesh, even though my network analyzer says channel 4 is completely clear in my area. I'm not sure why the auto channel configuration available in the Deco app would choose channel 8 when channel 4 seems totally clear. . .
I'm already on channel 20 for zigbee on my C7. I kept it lower in the range to hopefully help the IRIS V1 devices. I still have not found any solid documentation concerning the best config for IRIS V1 devices. All I have found is that they are able to use limited channels, but not what those channels actually are.
Hope not to further rain on your parade, but just an FYI that some users have had issues with Innr bulbs lately (thread up from Mike's latest response here). It's been a while since I tried including the couple of Innr bulbs I have, but I had no issues adding them to my C8 (I'm not currently using them due other reasons).
I had maddening zigbee gremlins when I moved from C7 to C8... 2 things helped me -- 1.) shifting my radio from ch 15 to 25 (my Hue is on 20, and my eeros use low 2.4 channels) and dropping my radio power to 4 (I have plenty of repeaters). 2.) And this is what really helped -- I removed my 2 Halo smoke detectors.
My (totally unsubstantiated!) conclusion is that my zigbee mesh best works when the repeaters do all the heavy lifting, and those repeaetrs all need to be zigbee 3.0... The Halos were my last remaining zigbee 1.2 repeaters, and my mesh's stability improvement after removing them was instantaneous.
I realize my silver bullets won't work for everyone else too, but hopefully it helps somehow.
They don't take up any bandwidth and are 100% local. Hell even @bcopeland one of the main Hubitat Dev's replaced every single bulb in his house with them (60+ )
Thanks a ton for that. Are you using any battery powered IRIS v1 devices? I seem to lose those and my Sengled bulbs the most often.
I've gotta try new bulbs. I have big plans for the HE system in general but the gremlins are quickly putting the whole thing on the too-hard pile. Who has time to deal with continual gremlins?
The Sengled Bulbs do not repeat (I got them back when repeating bulbs were giving me fits on my SystronicsRF system). I believe INNR bulbs are 3.0 repeaters. The places I have them in should never get turned off at the switch, so there's little chance of them upsetting the mesh. . . Repeating bulbs might actually help now.
All of my Zigbee was solid when I was running my C7 hub previously, it was the Z-Wave that was giving me fits. I upgraded to the C8 hub and Z-wave strengthened, but zigbee went to hell. My system hasn't been the same since (wish I hadn't upgraded).
I'd really like to put ALL Zigbee back on the C7 and just use the C8 for Z-Wave, but not if I cant get rid of these gremlins.
Do they require their own IP address? if so, I'm out for now. I have a new system that I still have not gotten formatted how it needs to be. Throwing a bunch of new devices on the system will have to wait
I don't have any Iris stuff at all, but based on posts since the C8 came out, Iris stuff sounds problematic.
But yeah, at a high level, our experiences are the same -- completely bulletproff ZB but fragile ZW on the C7, then rock-star ZW but uber-finicky ZB on the C8.
FWIW, once I made the above changes to my C8's zigbee setup a couple months ago, it's been 100% reliable -- not one single issue or hiccup since then. So while there is hope, it unfortunately seems to require replacing & upgrading some devices in most cases. Hang in there!
Thanks. I did make those changes to my C8 Zigbee, I'll re-pair the offending items today and also try the INNR bulbs as well. Hopefully this makes the difference. I'll let you know.
Just to follow up on this issue a little. I did these things; adjusted my Zigbee channels and dropped my C8 zigbee radio power to 4. Things have been running much better ever since.
I also replaced two of my most troublesome Sengled LED bulbs with INNR RGB bulbs. I re-paired my faulty Zigbee items one at a time so I could see if any particular items would give me trouble (like the IRIS v1 stuff), but everything seems to be working after a few weeks.
