It often even shows battery devices as a repeater with a blue dot!
It's a well-intentioned tool and it would be really great if it worked as hoped, but unfortunately, it doesn't...
It's a very long and complicated story as to why that it (numerous threads about it here on the community), but the bottom-line is that it's simply best to ignore these charts as a troubleshooting tool.
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In my other hub looks like the chart it's fine, is more like how I can make the repeaters actually repeat?, the door contact I have dropping the network is because of this problem, it has a repeater right there and not using it.
If you have multiple hubs you may have to try joining the troublesome device to your other hub and see if it plays nicer on that one. There isn't wany way to force devices to use repeaters, you could try joining it far from the hub w/repeaters in between it and the hub.
The Zigbee chart as has been noted is not necessarily accurate/up-to-date and can't be assumed to be completely accurate.
Unless you have newer Aqara devices that are Zigbee certified, they are non-standard devices. They tend to be very fussy about repeating devices. The Ikea repeaters should work, although I have heard some negative reports on their capabilities.
Do you have any other line powered Zigbee devices such as smart plugs. I had some older Smartthings and Centralite plugs that prevented Aqara devices from working. Once I got rid of them and added Zigbee 3.0 certified repeaters, they worked just fine.
The C4 hub is getting long in the tooth, but if it continues to do what you want it to do, you can continue to use it until the hardware dies. The newer C8 hub does offer significant upgrade potential such as support for Zigbee 3.0, Z-wave 800 and Matter. If you have no plans to use devices other than contact sensors and repeaters, then upgrading is not necessary.
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I purchased a c7 like a year ago, still waiting to get some time to install it. I have two c4 with 2 zigbee networks, one is to separate those older aqara devices from the other non aqara devices, both hubs are working fine, just asking if I could fix those aqara to use the repeaters, or if the repeaters are doing nothing I could delete them. I don't have any other devices in this hub than ikea repeaters/plugs and aqara door contacts, maybe one flood round sensor under the washer machine but I don't know if it is connected.
I don't want to talk about the c8 and matter exclusive which I think is somehow unfair to c7 users, but been with HE since the early time I understand they need to make money to survive.
Anyway, I also installed Lutron, so I'm replacing some Zwave devices with Lutron right now.
At the risk of derailing this topic (but you brought it up 
), from the limited info that staff have shared publicly, I believe the assumption that matter compatibility on the C8 only was a decision made exclusively (or even primarily, with other concerns being secondary) to extract more money from customers to be a fallacy.
I won’t keep straying off topic, but if you would like to know more, it’s possible to read more about what apparently drove that decision-making process in other threads devoted to the new Matter compatibility.
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If you're OK trying some new repeaters that seem to play well with Aqara you could try:
-
the tiny Tuya USB repeaters (easy to hide)
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The SonOff USB Dongle P repeaters [(have to be flashed)] (How to: Flash SonOff USB Dongle to be a Zigbee Repeater/Router & Set Transmit Power)
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Thanks, so should I remove the ikeas?
I think I will try this first, $30+ for a repeater having 4 repeaters installed is not what I was looking to do. Thanks for the suggestions.
I'll google more to see if there is a way to force the aqara to use a repeater, I have some zigbee repeaters that we used for chart at the early days, I don't remember their names, but I have 2 of them not used, I bet looking my old posts I will find about how to use them, lol.
Edit: I found them: xbee
Those could work well...I'm not really familiar w/them but the general "rep" I have on them is good, IIRC. 
How's that for vague... 
AFAIK there is no way to force a connection in Zigbee, the devices choose based on reported signal strength of available repeaters, and I don't think there is a way to either fake that reporting, or force a particular connection. Adding @Tony for some real info...
I found the thread where we tested the xbee, and true, the HE chart is really bad...
I found with the xbee chart that those repeaters are working, they have some devices connected to them and also they are connected between them.
I marked this as solved, I'll try to re pair the problem sensor going further so the repeater will be closer than the hub, this is the only problem I have.
I can say those aqara door sensors are awesome, I have them nearly 5 years now, never replaced the battery on any of them. I have other sensors like humidity or flood, they are good also but battery life is shorter in the humidity sensors.
Thank you
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Same w/the Aqara sensors once I got them to reliable - battery life is great, and their small size is perfect for WAF. Glad you sorted it out!
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If you want to know what your repeaters are doing (the chart is not useful) you can use my Zigbee Monitor Driver from here. [RELEASE] Zigbee Monitor Driver - Like XRAY Vision for Zigbee Repeaters and simple Switches
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Thank you! I'll try.
$140 for the xbee? Wow, I have 3 with adapters sitting in a drawer. 2 xbee3 and 1 xbee pro s2, I have them just for testing the network and I forgot I had them. I also have a zwave box that does a chart. Anyway, I have a box with new stuff I never installed, maybe I should start selling some stuff
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If you have an Xbee you don’t need the monitor driver. Same information but on a repeater by repeater basis.
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Thanks for the reminder - totally forgot about that!!
I orginally had a SmartThings hub. When they decided to shut down support (now supported by Aeotec), I decided to purchase a C7 hub. It worked well, but when the C8 hub was introduced, I purchased one and migrated everything from the C7 to the C8. I do not use Matter and have no immediate plans to do so. However, the C8 antennas and upgrades to both Zigbee (3.0) and Z-wave (800 series) were nice improvements which I believe made the purchase worthwhile. The Matter issue does not really matter, at least not yet.
AFAIK that's true. But if you know which Xiaomi/Aqara "friendly" router you want an end device to connect to (and if it's practical to do so) you can coax it to join via that router by keeping it in very close proximity (say within a foot or so, as long as incompatible routers are further away or temporarily unplugged) when the device is reset and hub is in 'add device' mode. Only the parent needs to be compatible (to handle the unique check in intervals of the Xiaomi end device); other non-parent routers won't cause issues.
If the mesh is stable, it will stay joined won't cause any issues. But partial power failures might require intervention should the parent router go offline while an incompatible router is within range-- it will try to rejoin via one of those and then drop if it gets aged out of the router's child table.
In practice, this hasn't been as troublesome as it sounds. I have a half dozen of the old Xiaomi round buttons (and a cube) which only stay connected via routers that can handle their extra long check-in intervals. My mesh consists of a few dozen Xiaomi-incompatible plugs and only two compatible routers (the C-3 is also compatible as a parent). So far in 5 years of using them I've had to rejoin them fewer than a dozen times, as a result of power outages (or has happened recently, when one of the two compatible routers was accidentally unplugged).
Rejoining is a snap; I used to take pains to unplug incompatible routers nearby but now just use proximity during the rejoin to get the device reconnected how I want it.
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I can confirm Tony's experience for the old generation of Xiaomi/Aqara battery-powered sensors - they work most reliably when paired extremely close to a friendly router/repeater:
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