Need guidance regarding use of new features

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#1

Over the course of the last week or so the Hubitat Team has added a number of new features.

It's not clear to me when (or if) we should use those features. I would appreciate some guidance.

Specifically -

Zigbee Power Level - when should we consider changing this value and what should we use to guide our selection of a new power level?

Zigbee - Reboot radio - when should we consider using this? What should we use as indicators that this is needed? How does this impact the hub's operation?

Zigbee - Rebuild network - [Same questions as above]

Zigbee - Rebuild network on every reboot - [Same questions as above]

And if your best advice is to not mess with it unless we are working with the Hubitat Team - so be it.

Thanks,

Eric

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#2

Thanks for bringing this up again here -- I was thinking of posting this too...

I realize @mike.maxwell arguably has bigger fish to fry at the moment, but I also think that if we got some good answers to these questions, it could help us ALL more effectively troubleshoot together.

I wonder if we're all making things worse (or at least muddier) by impatiently messing around with these options all willy-nilly hoping to blindly stumble upon the magical "right" combination.

I have an additional question about the "Rebuild network on every reboot" option -- is "reboot" here referring to a hub reboot or a ZB radio reboot?

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#3

I know the team is busy - I just would like to make sure this ends up on someone's "to do" list.

Appreciate that additional question - I don't know the answer to that either!

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#4

I understand that this is with the hub reboot.

As for the other options, they are useful in situations where there are issues, so can be used as needed. They have no ill effect.

#5

This is a tricky one. The default on the c5/c7 was 8. Turning it all the way up (20) can cause bleed over into wifi and other stuff. If you find your zigbee mesh weak, only turn it up enough to stabilize it.

It doesn't impact it overall. This is simply like rebooting the hub without rebooting the hub. In only reboots the zigbee radio. This is helpful during diagnostics.

Basically it wipes all routes in the cache and rebuilds the database.

Same thing on every reboot.

This can be useful when you have some devices that aren't playing nice and I think is simply a stop gap measure until @gopher.ny can track down these issues.

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#6

Thank you!

Would this be determined by reviewing logs or by observing performance?
Is this where we would be looking for the lastHopLqi to be close to 200 and the lastHopRssi to be close to 0? When I watch the logs, these values seem to bounce around a good bit for any given device.

#7

Honestly I would base it on observered behavior. If everything performs well at 8 then leave it there. If you're having some probs with far flung devices, increase it a bit to stabilize.

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#8

@support_team
Thanks team!

I now see some new information at Zigbee Details | Hubitat Documentation

This is very helpful.

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