My Zigbee Experiment-Ongoing

velvetfoot · May 23, 2023, 1:11pm

Not happy with all the zigbee radio reboots with attendant ST Arrival sensors mis-operations and 3 of my Centralite 4200C repeaters going off line, I thought I'd do an experiment. The experiment has just begun.

I unplugged all 9 of my mains-powered Centralite 4200C plugs, which are the only repeaters I have. These are the only mains-powered zigbee devices I have.

Maybe 4 had a lamp plugged into them, and the rest for Christmas lights, but nothing that ZEN04 plugs couldn't replace.

I have 16 battery-powered zigbee devices:

9 Indoor Hue Motions
1 Outdoor Hue Motion
3 Xfinity Contact Sensors
1 Third Reality Temp/Humidity Sensor
2 SmartThings Arrival Sensors, V4

Z-wave includes plenty of mains powered switches, some motions, garage/gate relays, and some plugs.

I walked around the place and, so far, everything seems to work!

I thought it was cool at how quickly it recovered. Much more resilient than z-wave would have been, I believe, but alas, not so much lately.

The Child/Route table show all 16 of the battery powered zigbee devices accounted for.
The Neighbor table shows outCosts of 0 for the 9 mains-powered repeaters, which makes sense since they are all unplugged.

Zigbee radio power is set at 20.

We'll see how the zigbee radio reboot thing goes now.

32 is the max number of devices without a repeater, correct?

Tony · May 23, 2023, 1:50pm

32 child devices per hub is the number that we've seen quoted before.

bobbyD · May 23, 2023, 1:52pm

Did you just unplug them, or removed them from your devices, then unplugged? If you simply unplugged without actually removing them, it won't be long before your devices will stop working.

That is correct, but on paper. In reality, the rule of thumb is to have no more than 6 battery powered devices/repeater in order to achieve a strong mesh that is resilient to potential interference from other devices on the 2.4GHz band.

Tony · May 23, 2023, 1:53pm

Why should that be? The devices should join their new parent without any issues.

velvetfoot · May 23, 2023, 1:57pm

Yes. I initially just unplugged them.

Then, I went back and plugged them back in and deleted them.
I still have a couple in the route table though.

Tony · May 23, 2023, 2:01pm

With the configuration you have now (all devices C-8 children) you can get a good idea of their RSSI whenever they transmit via the Zigbee logging page ( the last hop RSSI is guaranteed to be from the device itself, rather than a repeater). How do the RSSI's look?

velvetfoot · May 23, 2023, 2:02pm

I just cranked it up. Get back to you a little later.

Tony · May 23, 2023, 2:04pm

You'll want to keep an eye on the devices since you can't directly affect their transmit power (they'll just do more retries that would impact battery life). Anything more negative than -80's will be on the fringe, signal strength wise and bears keeping an eye on... that said, you might be pleasantly surprised. I've got an Iris V2 contact sensor in my mailbox about 80' from the parent repeater it picked in the middle of my living room), going through aluminum siding as well. No issues with battery life; never misses a beat winter or summer in the NE.

velvetfoot · May 23, 2023, 2:05pm

I guess they'll all bear watching, lol.

Tony · May 23, 2023, 2:06pm

Those all could be OK except for dev 325....

velvetfoot · May 23, 2023, 2:06pm

Not a complete list.
May try restarting hub to get rid of neighbor nulls.
Plus have to do some brake work on the car. I'm procrastinating here, lol.

velvetfoot · May 23, 2023, 2:09pm

Oh, the higher negative number the worse. I get it now. Hadn't looked at this log for a while.

That device is a contact sensor in the package bin at the end of the driveway. Reception is by definition at the fringe, but it's been pretty reliable even so.

Tony · May 23, 2023, 2:09pm

Doubt you'll see any functional impact from those.

velvetfoot · May 23, 2023, 2:10pm

It's not a good look, lol.

Tony · May 23, 2023, 2:11pm

Well this will be an interesting experiment. Keep us informed.

velvetfoot · May 23, 2023, 2:57pm

I did a shutdown/power cycle/zigbee rebuild. Cleaned up the neighbor table.

It took a little while for an outlying sensor or two to report in, but they all have, save for my wife's car's arrival sensor, which is not here.

I moved the 3R temp/humidity sensor in the basement a bit, and that seemed to get it going again. But, it continues to be its chatty self now in its original position, so who knows.

Thankfully, I did not have to go through any extraordinary measures, like setting the hub on wifi (untried by me so far), powering with a battery, and dragging it out to the end of the driveway, so I wouldn't have to dismount a sensor or two.

velvetfoot · May 23, 2023, 3:02pm

Oh, and there's this:

Tony · May 23, 2023, 4:36pm

Neat. The only rationale I can think of for beefing up the hub's Zigbee radio (as was done with the C-8) is to permit exactly that... allow removal of unnecessary repeaters. If you don't need them for their end device capacity (or range extension, still a TBD in your experiment) they just add link status traffic not to mention route discovery broadcasts throughout the mesh...

velvetfoot · May 23, 2023, 5:56pm

So far, so good.

velvetfoot · May 24, 2023, 11:30pm

Hey, check it out. I'm one of the cool guys now.

edit: I updated to 2.3.5.141