First, I'm not having problems :). I recently tested a bulb that some outside comments described as 'only works on channel 20' or 'only works on channel 15 or 20'.
I have a test device using XTCU so I can see my zigbee network. Unfortunately it seems documented that it only uses 'channels 0-15'. I changed my HE to channel 20, but the Zigbee test device continued to reflect the Zigbee network routing (4 hours after the change). So thats confusion to me and feel free to offer how that worked!
Next, In the Spectrum Analyzer I can choose channel 0-15.
How do I use Channel 8? (I am aware the recommended channel is 20 but wanting to try others for test purposes) Am I misunderstanding how this works or is there a mapping here?
I suspect those numbers are incorrect and actually correspond to zigbee channels 11-26.
Zigbee channel 0 is in the 868 MHz frequency band. And zigbee channels 1-10 are in the 915 MHz frequency band. Neither of which are commonly used for end-user devices. And neither of which are supported by Hubitat (or ST for that matter).
If your frequency analyzer is looking for channels 1-15, those are WiFi channels, not Zigbee channels. Zigbee channels start at 11 and go up to 26. However, they occupy the same frequency space.
The three non-overlapping WiFi channels are 1, 6, and 11. Zigbee channel 15 occupies the small space between WiFi channels 1 and 6. Zigbee channel 20 occupies the space between WiFi channels 6 and 11. Zigbee channel 25 and 26 are at the upper end of WiFI channel 11. Most WiFi networks use channels 1, 6, and 11, so Zigbee channels 15, 20 and 25 are the ones most often recommended.
WLAN channels at 2.4 GHz only go from 1-14. His scanner is looking for channels 0-15, which is 16 in total. Much like zigbee channels 11-16 are a total of 16 channels.
He's using the XCTU (not XTBC) tool from digi to scan his zigbee network. The scanned channel results are just in numeric order rather than the actual channel designations.
While true you can use any legitimate channel in HE provided you choose your wifi channel correctly. For example I use zigbee channel 13 and wifi channel 11 so cross interference is minimised. For devices such as hue bridges you are only limited to a few channels on the app's selector list.
@aaiyar thanks! MY poor hub. I've changed the channel like 5 times in the last 24 hrs. Some of my devices gotten sick. I'll leave the channel alone for 24 hrs then re-check all my devices one at a time.
