Xiaomi & Aqara Devices - Pairing & Keeping them connected

I have aqara xiaomi temp/humidity sensor and both original and aqara motion sensors and once I routed them correctly I have not had any issues.

Just a note about boost mode...

It's fine to use that in the US.

For anyone who is in the U.K. Or EU, though, that will transmit above the power level allowed by law for unlicensed devices. So just something to be aware of.

I wish I saw this thread last week instead of pulling out my hair trying to figure out how to stabalize my xiaomi devices.

I can convirm the Centralite (aka Iris) plugs are a problem. I had 3 of them installed and had nothing but endless problems with devices dropping off.

However I did install multiple Sylvania Smart Plugs (non A) and since then all 34 of my devices have been reporting in on the hour (some would be a little late but eventually hit within the next hour). They have been rock solid for the past two days.

For my WiFi I have an eero setup and I read that it uses channels 1 and 6. So I did a reset of my zigbee stick and I guess hubitat looks for a good channel at this point. It set it to 23 which is outside the eero range from the looks of it.

I'm going to watch it a bit more, do some uplugging and testing and see how it goes. But if all holds up I'm going to add one more plug to help with the mesh a bit more and hopefully never have to fight with these things again.

Now I have to scan through the thread to try and figure out what I need to see my mesh. I really want to dive into that and see it.

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I have 4 Aqara Temp/Humidity sensors and 2 "original" Xiaomi T/H sensors. I have not noticed any issues due to them being on my network. Since I changed to Channel 20 and added my first XBee (now there are two), I haven't any dropped connected except when I was doing electrical work and had to cut power in my home. So outside of that, there's been two months of stability for a majority of my devices and over a month for the remainder (from when I was doing testing with routing through my Peanut Plug and the XBee.

Good to know, and thanks for drawing from your wide range of knowledge as usual!

What you need is an XBee zigbee module, and as a bonus on top of being able to map your mesh network, it can serve as a dependable router (repeater) for Xiaomi devices, based on my and many others' experiences.

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which antenna are you using with xbee module?

thank you.

I am just using some old 2.4 wifi antennas I had laying around . One I bought 20 years ago is a 12 dBi and the others are just 5 dBi ones from old wifi routers. Then the fourth Xbee3 (XB3-24Z8PT) has just a built in pcb trace antenna.

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got it.

don't have any of the wifi antennas lying around. get a bit confused with antenna connectors. what connector should I look for if buying one of the ones with the antenna push in type on board from mouser?

thank you.

edit: one of them seem to have the good old screw in wifi antenna so that might solve that.

what are folks using to power the xbee?

thank you.

Sorry I do not have any U.FL antenna units but looks like for those you need an antenna with a U.FL connector or you can get an adapter to SMA.
My XB3-24Z8ST have an SMA connection which is what most wifi routers use for their wifi antennas.

For power I use my usb XBEE grove dev adaptor board that way I can just use a usb wall plug to power them or use a usb battery pack to make them portable.

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I finally got my XBee up and running to scan the network. I'm seeing this as well though. I can't see any end devices that are connected through the sylvania plugs. Were you able to get around this or is it just not going to work?

My end devices do appear under the sylvania plug but they just take awhile to show up for some reason. Try letting the Xbee scan for 30 minutes or more. Sometimes they show up fairly quickly sometimes they take a while. I have not looked into why the sylvania plug behaves this way. I think all the end devices on my sylvania plug are water sensors (both SmartThings and xiaomi) but I will have to double check to make sure not home right now. I do know it didn't matter if the end devices were xiaomi or another brand the end devices all behaved the same in the scan.
Does your sylvania plug turn on/off remotely from Hubitat correctly? I did have issues getting it to pair correctly but once I got it to turned on/off it worked correctly.
And are you sure you have devices routed through the sylvania plug ? If you unplug the sylvania plug do the end devices stop working?

I've left it running for a few hours. I see all the devices that are going through the xbee and the main hub. I see the plugs but its not showing any devices routing through it.

The plugs actually work great. Since I introduced them into the mix (4 of them) my xiaomi sensors have not dropped offline. I wrote a webcore piston to notifiy me if they go offline or don't report in for a few hours and they have been solid. Even if they haven't reported in for a few hours, I notice they still work. For example my garage sensor would not report it for 3 hours, but then I open the garage and it still works. So I'm happy in that regards.

Yup. I have close to 40 zigbee devices reporting in. Its only picking up about 29. I know I have some going through the plugs as they do go offline if I unplug them.

I wonder if there is a setting on the XBee that would resolve this. I've tried everything I could find is this thread but no luck. I have the XBP24C so couldn't import the configuration files in the thread. But was able to manually change the recommended settings and it was easily added to my hubitat.

that is strange and it is happening for all the sylvania plugs?
I only have one.
I will double check all my settings and post them this evening when I get home.
They should be showing up if they are on the network.

What is the full model number of your xbee?

Ya I found it strange. Its been running for almost 2hrs now and this it all it sees. It only shows 28 devices but I have 38 and they are all reporting in fine in hubitat.

This is the model I have (XBP24CZ7SIT-004).

https://www.mouser.ca/ProductDetail/digi-international/xbp24cz7sit-004/?qs=3VJ0tGt%252bi1yuX178R0ovzA==&countrycode=CA&currencycode=CAD

Also for XCTU settings I uncheck both "always clear" and "remove nodes" (or it will erase the devices after every scan if it does not see them on the next scan which is what happens with end devices that go through sylvania plugs they get detected every x amount of scans not every scan)

and for discovery mode I use "flood"

reading through the XCTU manual there is a troubleshooting section near the end as well.

can someone please help me with the difference between these? do both of these come with the shown antenna?

thank you.

edit: o yeah ... do either of the antennas require soldering? ... not very good at soldering :slight_smile:

the first one the xbp24CAWIT-001 is not zigbee it is 802.15.4 (I do not think you can flash them to zigbee)
the second one XBP24CZ7WIT-004 is zigbee
I do not have any wire antennas but I would think they come soldered already.

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how are you able to tell that? from the description i took both of them to be zigbee,

top of the page under description
Description RF TXRX MOD 802.15.4 WIRE ANT
I made the same mistake on a version S1 I bought.

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All 3 of my modules have the "whip" wire antenna, and they are already soldered to the board, and work just fine in my experience.

thank you. one last question ... i hope: :slight_smile:

on this one the antenna connector type is SMA. does that mean i will need an antenna with termination style SMA or RP-SMA?

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/888-XB3-24Z8ST

this is f'king confusing. dont want to be buying then returning stuff.