Xiaomi & Aqara Devices - Pairing & Keeping them connected

Who said anything about replacing them ALL ??
Yeah man, if the others are working for you - just replace the one that is NOT !
Then see how you go. :slight_smile:

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Distance is not the only factor. RF waves have polarity. There is an electric field and a magnetic field. Often rotating either the sensor or the receiver can have a huge impact.
Also any metallic object in the way can disrupt the fields creating chaotic degradation of the fields and resulting in sub-harmonics.
Unfortunately, the plug router orientation is predetermined by the location of the power outlet. Thus I would try moving the sensor if possible. Otherwise you're probably out of luck.
I also find that each sensor should be able to 'see' at least two routers or they drop off for sure.
Also you may have luck with changing the zigbee channel.

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This is probably mentioned somewhere above, but when I pair these direct to the hub, they are pretty stable. If I pair with repeaters in the system, they drop off constantly, often within a day. I also found that I shouldn't do a Zigbee "repair" by turning off the hub as the Xiaomi/Aquara then pair back to a repeater.Rebooting is OK, but after a few minutes with the hub off, the Aqara again go into discovery and pair to a repeater.

It is a pain as I have to unplug all my line powered Zigbee devices, pair the Aquara, then plug everything back in. But once I did this method, I haven't had any drop off the network.

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This is discussed a lot. The devices don't like a lot of the repeaters. You have to find repeaters that work well with them and get rind of anything else that could be repeating. I highly recommend the ikea repeaters. They really work well.

And if you get repeaters, make sure you get enough. I think the ratio is 6 devices to a repeater or something like that. There is a limit.

Directly connected gives no issues but there is also a limit to the number of devices that are directly connected (I think its 32 or around that) and your hub would also need to be within range of them all.

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I don't have that many Aqara devices, so I haven't hit that 32 device cap so far. My house is not that large so I haven't had any range issues with direct connection to the hub.

I have the Iris combo Zigbee/Zwave outlet, and they apparently aren't good repeaters for Aqara. I also had the Peanut Plugs, and they seemed to cause more problems than they solved in general.

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I'm not going to pretend to have any technical knowledge about what Shenzhen Green Rice Lianchuang Technology Co., Ltd did to make this work, but we can speculate about RF all day long, and I don't think it's much of anything to do with it. It's something to do with the way they have implemented Zigbee. When I pair Aqara or Mijia devices to the Aqara HomeKit Gateway, they DO NOT DROP. The guys that have the Mijia Gateways and MiConnector have the same experience.

I was looking into grabbing one of these to play with and then read that one hub can support up to 32 devices. Of course I'm probably the extreme case with the number of my devices, but I'm guessing I would have to go with multiple hubs (maybe 3 at this point) if I wanted to go this route.

That being said, I wonder if the good reliability with this hub is because it is using no repeaters (also would explain the limit). Repeaters were one of the main causes of issues. It might also have a stronger radio than HE as well so it probably covers the house better.

I can certainly vouch for that.

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I mean, based on it's small size, I don't think it's antenna size difference. I'm not going to know how many end devices are actually supported until I get the Mijia Mult-Mode gateway (and maybe not even then because I don't have that many Xiaomi devices) if the limit is 32 or 64. The currently missing in action Aqara M2 gateway is supposed to support 100 end devices.

Yeah, I think that's a fair guess on the repeaters. I know that I read somewhere that the relays (which I have two of) act as repeaters (on HE anyway) and someone wrote that the Xiaomi outlets (apparently now available for NA sockets, but no idea where to get one) will also repeat. How you confirm that on a Xiaomi hub, I have no idea.

If you think about the typical Chinese home (a small apartment), then no repeaters and as many end devices as possible, makes total sense.

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I did have 33 working at one point.
One was a neutral single button light switch. (I toasted that unfortunately). :grinning:
Then I took a couple of motion sensors off and put them on HE as I was having issues and wanted to try and prove what was happening. I think I have diagnosed to my router.
Somehow it had switched channels to 2+6.
Switched it back to 1 and things have settled again.
I may put the 2 motion sensors on HE back but I tend to leave things alone while they are working OK.

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Hmmm... looks like there are multiple devices so the limit may only be on the one I was looking at. Only able to go by the amazon listing. But looks like they may expand the limits with the other models.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07Y4SDXMJ/ref=twister_B082SNSNG8

Well that's unexpected. I'm pretty sure that Mijia Gateway you have is only supposed to be able to support 32 end devices. Maybe that's a stable number?

Thinking about it, it was probably 32 as one of the devices was actually the Mijia hub!!!!!!

That's the one I have, but with the Chinese plug and an adapter they included with it. Yes, that is 32 end devices.

This is the one that's supposed to be here, but is overdue

The report on HomeKit News says 100 end devices. Originally I read 90. They also say 30 end devices on the current Aqara HomeKit gateway, which most of the info out there say 32. So I'm not 100% positive about any of it. :roll_eyes:

This is the new Mijia Multi-Mode Gateway that supports Bluetooth Mesh and Zigbee 3.0 (Like the Aqara M2 Gateway will), but everything I can find except that one report (from HomeKit News, so take it with a grain of salt) says 32. It's also one of the first Xiaomi products I've seen that specifically supports IKEA Trådfri bulbs. So that solidifies the early reports of a partnership between Xiaomi and IKEA.

This is the older gateway that @Royski and @bobbles have. It's the one explicitly needed for the MiConnector app. But I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, I can use the New Mijia Multimode gateway with it. I didn't buy it for that reason, and I think in reality my chances of that are slim, but it would be a nice bonus. You have to be able to enter a dev mode and I'm not confident that's available on all of the Mijia gateways. In fact I think @Royski said it wasn't, but the one he listed was the one that works with MiConnector.

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One of the frustrations of the DIY HA market. Information is never straight forward. Even working on these zwave drivers, the zwave documentation is different than the documentation on the web site which is different to information you get in the forums.

Its never that easy.

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Yep. "Miles to go before I sleep"

After several stable months, in the last month, I've had a few Xiaomi sensors fall off. Every time this has happened, it has turned out that the Tradfri signal repeater that the sensor or sensors have been repeating through has fallen off.

Unpowering/re-powering the Tradfri signal repeater is sufficient to get it back online and along with it, any sensors that repeat through it.

I have now been able to verify that although the signal repeater power supply is supposed to put out 1A at 5V, USB draws through the signal repeater that are under 1A can knock the signal repeater off-line. So I would recommend:

  1. If your Aqara sensors fall offline, first make sure that all your zigbee repeaters are online
  2. Not using the passthrough USB in the signal repeater to power anything

Its happened to me too. A scan of the network showed that particular repeater to have a fairly low LQI so I will eventually move it from that spot.

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How low?

50-60 if i recall correctly but its been a few weeks since i ran the scan.