I am aware of the the Child and Route info URL built into HE. But is there any place that holds more data where I can dig deeper into the serious communications problems? I just spent over $3k putting in all new GE Enbrighten Zigbee switches and dimmers and I am having constant communications problems. I have Zwave, but I am about to rip it all out, take the loss and just start up. I have spent months troubleshooting this and my back and forth with Support has been extremely slow and fruitless. What other troubleshooting options do I have?
I have so far:
Shutdown and unplugged HE
Removed and readded devices
Centralized the hub into the exact center of my house and 40 ft away from my wifi router
Made sure that ALL Wifi interference is gone. I have Zigbee on channel 20 and Wifi on Channel 1. So there is a zero overlap. I live in a rural area and my nearest neighbor is a couple hundred feet away.
I have added Sonoff and Hue zigbee devices to see if it was brand specific
I have added FOUR dedicated Zigbee repeaters even though I have over 65 switches
Made sure all devices are using the proper drivers and not just generic versions
Removed all Alexa and other integrations in an act of desperation to see if an app was screwing things up.
I have no idea where to go from here and an exhausted from this all. Any help that works will get ya a case of good beer or the wine/bourbon of your choice!
I started off with zwave only and only started to add zigbee devices about a year ago so I am no expert. But I am only aware of the route table that you referred to and don't know of any deeper debug information.
I now have 50-60 zigbee devices and have had hiccups early on. I do not have any in-wall zigbee devices but I don't think that really matters.
I started off on zigbee channel 20 as well and i was having devices drop off. i am closer to my neighbors but my closest is on wifi channel 1 and i even turned mine off. I was still having issues. I have two sets of SteeleSeries Arctis 7 Headsets that do use some frequency in the 2.4 wifi range. I am not certain if these were causing my issues or not, I'm just stating this as an example that other devices in your home may be causing interference that will not show up on a wifi analyzer app. Microwaves are another noisy beast but the ON time is so little this should not be the cause of your issues.
Sorry I am rambling - what i am suggesting is to try another zigbee channel to see if it makes things better or worse. I switched to channel 15 (no better) and then to channel 25 and the results were magical. (note: stay away from channel 26 as I read it operates at half power).
In my case i have my HE hub at the top in my entrance closet, about 1.5 feet from my Netgear X8 8500 router. I have my wifi back on channel 9 with ALL my IoT on 2.4g (16 tasmota sp10s, 6-7 echos, nest thermostat, nest outdoor cam, konnected alarm, a couple magichome rgb's, +++) so it is a busy network. I have not experienced any issues having the two hubs in close proximity. I only have a 1650 sq ft two story house, so not as large as yours but my zigbee is functional to the furnace room downstairs and out to the garage without issues.
I too was in your position, but right now zigbee is good. there was a few months back a desire to rip it all out. Hundreds of hours of troubleshooting, and not sure what the issue was, although I suspect certain devices, like aqara, general "chinese magic plug", tuya, sonoff etc. don't always follow the zigbee standard, and will wreak havoc on the hub mesh.
If you have 3k of GE zigbee switches, I would try with just those switches, no apps at all for troubleshooting purposes. If an app or some issue overloads the hub, the first thing to go is the zigbee. And do try channel 25, it's worked great for me over the last 2.5 years.
Please post your child & route info.
PS- the iris 3210-L plugs are incredible repeaters. There big & fugly , but the signal is insane. Travels very far and picks up many devices and routes back to the hub like nothing else I've seen.
Thanks for the support. I spent the last several hours doing a soft reset and rebuild from scratch with an approach very close to what you suggested. I am doing all only the GE switches first. No other devices. I got to the 35th switch and I hit a massive CPU utilization spike. No apps or custom drivers. Just simply adding basic switches and no functions. Something us seriously wrong. I retired my C5 and replaced it with a new C7. Just in the hopes that fresh hardware would help. No such luck. I really wish I had more visibilty to troubleshoot Zigbee.
But I have suggestion. Why not put half your zigbee switches on your C-5 and the rest on your C-7? They have exactly the same zigbee radio. Put them on two different channels (eg. 15 and 20). HubMesh makes it so simple to share devices between hubs.
That's a good idea, but there are users who have even more devices without issues. Your solution is a good workaround, but I feel like we're missing something, maybe to do with 32 device limit? Although I'd think with routers the 32 device limit wouldn't apply.
Very odd
Last week I just returned a GE zigbee outlet. I got it for the repeater function, but the signal was weak and it didn't establish as many connections as my cheap iris 3210,nor were they as good in LQI as the Iris.
