Who has a HIGHLY RELIABLE Zigbee network and what repeaters are you using?

Eventually I will find you... :wink:

It was spring 2020 and I was looking for Iris v2 contact sensors... after many Google searches I stumbled upon teamequip selling bulk packaged Iris v2 contacts and motion sensors, and retail packaged 3210-L smart plugs, but in units of 100! I posted on the ST community to see if I could get a group buy going.

But then I contacted the seller and suggested they sell units of 10, and they responded they would. Shortly after I posted an update over at the ST community about it, @ogiewon started this thread over here (Lowes Iris Zigbee Devices Available).

I bought a whole bunch. And so did everyone else -- they were all gone in a matter of weeks. But the seller at teamequip was so happy I helped them clear out all their inventory so quick (after suggesting units of 10) that they sent me extra stuff. :hugs:

But I could have bought 2000 each of the motion and contacts... and made a killing selling them for 3 or 4x on ebay.

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No updates, used straight out the box. Most of them are used as repeaters only, nothing plugged in to them.

Remove any Aqara garbage that you have on your mesh. Seems like half the problems with Zigbee involve Aqara devices.

My mesh is rock solid now and I use a mix of Sonoff, Third Reality, generic peanut plugs, and a few Tuya power strips. All my bulbs are Sengled which do not act as repeaters.

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3000 sq ft house, plus detached garage 100ft away here.

48 Zigbee devices here. No zwave. Had issues with 1 aqara motion sensor device, which was solved by adding a few IKEA tradfri in the mix.

I first built my network in order to save on utility bill, so the backbone of my mesh is all of my thermostats (10 of them) are Zigbee, as well as some light switches, and all of the big power utility (water heater, garage heater, pool heater, pool pump, EV charger).

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Never had any Aqara, saw too many issues in others posts. I had 6 x Sonoff S31 Lite and the versions I had were terrible, see my long post on this from last year.

That is exactly the same as my scenario but they would be non responsive after a few weeks but I wouldn't know it until my automations would fail to run. I'm guessing we have different firmware.

On the plus side - window and motion sensors are smaller than other makes, inexpensive (well, maybe not as much these days) and best of all insane battery life (18 months - 2 years).

Each his own but many of us run them very well once you understand the hardware limitations and are prepared to work around them.

Price is great. Would only let me order 2 for some reason but it will be enough to test with and I'll be able to see how they perform with my Xbee. If they pan out I'll get a few more and hopefully I can put two hubs back into one if the Zigbee mesh is reliable.

Thanks for the recommendation. I ordered a couple tonight to test with.

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I've been using a single outlet in each room - sure I have repeaters that came after the fact but no troubles!
Seedan, CMars, DoGain - all are based on the same chips - show up as eWeLink- zig 3.0 and solid as stone. I turned off Zwave a long time ago - don't use BT or Wifi either. Helps that I modded the driver from markus to my needs :slight_smile:

My Zig3.0 :slight_smile:

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Thanks for sharing. What kind of square footage are you covering? If it's a typical house you must have a couple in every room and a very dense mesh?

When you have two of the eWeLink devices in the same room what kind of link quality numbers are you getting on the connection between the two.

Here is mine including nodes at the moment but looking to improve the mesh.

Hey! This isnā€™t really on the same topic, but I am looking for a Zigbee or Z-Wave power strip that doesnā€™t cost $70 like Zooz. Which power strip did you end up going with and which driver do you use it with?

Anyone reading this thread obviously has questions\concerns about their Zigbee network and will likely find this link helpful as it lets you get the same information you get from using an XBEE, but on a per repeater basis.

For example:


The above data is formatted with TIle Builder Advanced but is also available within the driver.

I will be very curious to see if someone with a Sonoff S31 tries this out and reports back what their LQI values are. The Sonoff S31's poor performance were the whole reason I opened this thread in the first place.

I'm using the 2nd post in the above thread to keep compatibility information so hopefully people will submit info from the most common devices.

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I should add that I did eventually add 4 x Tuya USB mini-repeaters along with my 2 x Sylvania and 1 x XBee and went back to all my Zigbee devices on one hub and is has been very stable.

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Not many zigbee devices, but they are all battery powered, so no repeaters. All paired direct to hub. I hit reliability issues when I add repeaters (plugs), so everything line powered is Z-Wave for me.

I think there are a lot of crap plugs out there. For a while I was doing what you are, except I added a second hub for extra coverage.

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Thing is, most all line powered devices are repeaters. So, if you want to do stuff, like switch electrical loads, you'll be adding repeaters.

Indeed. Ironically, adding repeaters should strengthen the mesh and make it more resilient. But if they are low quality devices, the exact opposite happens. That is partly why I went with the dedicated Mini USB repeaters.

Hopefully with this new driver we can gather some information on the relative strengths of different plugs and all make more informed choices.

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Probably white noise at this point, but Iā€™ll share my experience.

I have three rules:

  1. No lightbulbs on a network with other end devices. Sengled are the only exception, but I donā€™t have any in use anymore. My smart bulbs are all Hue on their own Zigbee network running off of a Hue Bridge.

  2. I always test a repeater and see how it works out. I donā€™t just throw them in. If I experience reliability problems I try moving them, but if that doesnā€™t work theyā€™re gone.

  3. I donā€™t connect Xiaomi and IKEA devices on anything but my ConBee2 controller running on HA. I get it, some people have success with them on Hubitat. I didnā€™t, and Iā€™ve tried many times over the years when someone came along and said Iā€™ve now written the perfect driver and itā€™s all going to work great now. It never has for me, and itā€™s a lot of stress for me and the family when things are not functioning properly. The way I have it now works perfect, so Iā€™ve no desire to change it.

Here are my two network maps for Hubitat and HA with the ConBee 2. All of the repeating on Hubitat youā€™ll notice Is via my Sinope thermostats. Thatā€™s just a nice side effect of a choice I made for my electrically heated home. One thing to note is that one of the devices on the Hubitat network map named Air Handler is an IKEA outlet and nothing on my Hubitat Zigbee network wants to use it as a repeater. Whereas the ConBee2 on HA is using one of them to repeat. The point being that you just donā€™t know exactly whatā€™s going to work until you try, move things around if theyā€™re not working well, and switch them out to get the best combination. Iā€™m very glad that the Sinope have turned out to be such good repeaters for Hubitat.


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