If I am reading this correctly, the Ecosmart Bulbs that I bought at Home Depot mentioned in another thread for $4.88/each with remote work great as repeaters. Other devices, including a couple of Ikea Repeaters, choose to go 4 feet past my hub thru an interior wall to get to Bulb E before going back thru wall to hub. Front Door Plus is 15ft from hub but it's going additional 4 ft thru wall to get to Master Bath D. WEIRD! Could it make a difference that the bulbs are 8ft off ground and my hub is sitting on a desk?
Also Master Bath G goes thru itself so I am not sure how that works. As an FYI, Master Bath A-G are the Ecosmart Bulbs in my bathroom vanity. Everything seems to be working great; just weird.
I have always marveled at how my Zigbee devices route. They change as well. I have several devices that route through repeaters despite the fact the devices are in between the hub and the repeater. There is a hue dimmer that is about 4 feet line of sight to the hub and is literally in between the hub and the repeater which is on the baseboard, about 6 feet away, behind a book case surrounded by a power strip and numerous cords and that's how it consistently connects.
ZigBee is nutz… I see routes bouncing across the house instead of through devices in the room.. I would love to know how it's routing algorithms pick routes..
It all depends on the orientation of the antenna within the device and the composition of the obstructions between the hub and the device. For example, I have a couple devices that choose to go through repeaters on the other side of the house. That's because between them and the closest repeater is a giant air duct which makes a great RF shield. So, there is a rhyme and reason as to why it chooses the routes it does.
That said, this is a good reason why you should always pair your devices "in-place" where they will be used rather than close to the hub. That way it picks the best route right off the bat. Zigbee is a self-healing mesh, which means is there is a problem, it will re-route it's messages eventually. However, I have seen that in cases where a device is on the edge of communicating or not but never quite goes over the line to not working, it will stay in the bad route.
You can force the zigbee mesh to heal itself faster. If the Coordinator of your mesh is not present for 20 minutes, your zigbee devices will go into panic mode. When the coordinator comes back online, they will assume that the mesh has been relocated and will rediscover routes to the coordinator. That said, it is not recommended to do this often because it eats up a ton of battery power in your battery powered zigbee devices.
I definitely pair all of my devices in place. Two of the Zigbee Repeaters on the list were added in the last couple of days and I did do the zigbee mesh force heal. All of my devices, Zigbee and Z-Wave, are working great so I can't complain. I just thought the routing table was goofy.
The getChildAndRouteInfo link isn't the whole routing story and isn't meant to be. To get a better picture, you need something like an Xbee and specialized software.
I am using the Generic CT Zigbee Bulb (dev) but that is not the device type that was assigned when it paired to hub. That was the suggestion in this post:
I haven't noticed any issues with the reporting and they seem to working as repeaters. I am about to buy an Xbee to confirm.
I tried that device type but when I change the color temperature say from 2700 to 3300 it reports back a color temperature of 46 until I refresh the device.
Weird. I did notice when I change the bulb temperature using the device page, the page shows that the temperature always goes to 46 first then up to whatever value I entered.
I agree. The xbee will tell you a better story. I see my Zigbee mesh changes very often.
It's good practice to pair your device in place but not always possible. I usually get initialization failed if I paired the device a couple of repeaters away so I bring the device closer to the hub for pairing and just give the mesh enough time for healing after.
Also agree with Ryan about battery life during healing. I have 100+ Zigbee devices so mesh and battery are the 2 most troublesome on my list.
I have been fortunate in that other than the first time I paired one of my Eria dimmers, I have been able to pair devices in place and it makes perfect sense why we should do that.
I am getting an Xbee. I am just trying to decipher which one to buy and what other pieces that are required from the multiple posts about them on this forum.
We are discussing those Ecosmart Bulbs that were just on clearance at HD with the remote that you & I are waiting on Broderick to release the DTH for on ST.
model: Ecosmart-ZBT-A19-CCT-Bulb
manufacturer: The Home Depot
When the color temperature is updated to any value, the bulb updates correctly with the new CT but the Current State always shows 46/Sodium until it's refreshed at which point it displays the correct information.
