Sonoff S31 Lite (Zigbee) very chatty - is this a problem?

[calinatl]

I bought two of the Sonoff S31 LIte Zigbee plugs during the recent Amazon sale when they were $7.50. I bought one primarily as a repeater to a zigbee bulb, and the other to automate a light.
They mostly work ok.

About once a week one of the three automations associated with them, including the bulb for which one of these acts as a repeater, will fail its automation. I've determined that I have the automations written correctly, so now looking at the devices, and noticed that they are very "chatty." My logs indicate the thing reports back to the hub about every 5 minutes.

1. Is this normal behavior?
2. a. If yes, is it slowing down my hub or causing other problems?
3. b. If no, how do I resolve it?

HE: C-7, running 2.3.2.141
Device: Installed as Generic Zigbee Outlet per the direction in a thread about these

[garyjmilne]

You might want to read this thread before you buy anymore.

Zigbee Routing with Sonoff S31 Lite appears to be bad

This is the back part of our house which has its own hub. The large box is an office above a 2 car garage and measures 24' x 24.This is what the network looks like after a reset and repair of most of the devices. [image] There are 4 repeaters titled, XBEE+, Cam Plug, Cam Plug and a newly introduced one with a MAC address ending B087(below Thermo+, a + indicated 2nd floor) newly introduced for testing. The three non XBEE repeaters are all Sonoff S31 Lite. If you look closely you will see that…

[calinatl]

Thanks. I had not seen that. Based on the thread

SONOFF S40 Lite 15A Zigbee smart plug - Anyone use these?

I bought one as a test. It works fine as an outlet as stated by other comments. For the price, it sure would be nice to use it to monitor power. I think I'll buy more to support my Zigbee mesh.

I should probably have bought the S40Lite instead of the S31 Lite...the S40's were $0.50 less expensive than the S31's at the time I bought them, but I thought the S31 indicator light might be useful. Turns out the indicator light is a pain and I taped over it...and I'm out of my return window.

However still wondering if how "chatty" they are is a problem, and if so is there a way to quiet them down?

[silverton38]

I personally find that the non repeating Zigbee bulbs cause a lot of traffic on the repeaters. I switched my bulbs to the INNR Zigbee repeating bulbs and everything got happy fast.

[kkossev]

@calinatl

However still wondering if how "chatty" they are is a problem, and if so is there a way to quiet them down?

Nothing to worry about, I wouldn't classify this device as a 'chatty'. 5 minutes is a very long time period for a Zigbee network. I have two mmWave radars which are sending the distance to the detected human every single second when activated and this extraordinary frequent traffic (every 500 milliseconds!) has practically zero effect on my Zigbee network, I can't notice any delays when activating other Zigbee switches or plugs or sirens. I have 7 light automations (Room Lighting app) triggered by Zigbee PIR and radar sensors which turn on the lights instantly despite the heavy traffic. I have a total of more than 30 devices in my Zigbee network, the bandwidth and the responsivity are much better than I expected.