I recently upgraded my hub from C-7 to C-8 Pro following the posted instructions precisely. Prior to the migration my ZigBee devices communication has been rock solid with Z-Wave being slightly less reliable but not significantly. Since the migration everything transferred over well including my programs and my Z-wave network. Zigbee however is another story. My previously bulletproof Zigbee experience has fallen into chaos.
I have about 50 ZigBee devices. Most are Smartthings (multi-sensors/motion sensors/buttons/water sensors) and Ikea Tradfri outlets. I have a handful of other misc. devices but Smartthings and Ikea accounts for 80%+. After 2 full days of waiting most of my Zigbee devices still aren't transmitting events. Under Settings -> ZigBee details, my hub has seen a message from nearly every device however this has not translated into communication to most of the devices. I am unable to control many of them, most all my battery operated devices will not communicate at all (they used to send temperature updates at least every couple hours, now nearly all stopped transmitting temp updates). Mains powered devices sometimes work, sometimes don't. I generally don't understand how the ZigBee details page can report messages from ZigBee devices but don't actually transmit any useful events or control.
I am close to tossing this C-8 Pro out and going back to the C-7. Does anyone have any thoughts on what would be causing this erratic behavior and how to resolve it?
Welcome to the community here!
Many of us here (incl me) had a heckuva time with ZB when we moved up to a C8/8P... 3 things ended up really helping me -- I can't promise some or all of these will help you too, but perhaps worth considering...
I should note first that I had a robust mesh with plenty of well-positioned repeaters that was all smooth and faultless on the C7.
My first win was reducing the radio power so that the transmission workload shifted to my mesh -- I dropped my power all the way down to 4. Although some users have had no issues at higher settings, I would not recommend going above 8.
My second win was more channel deconfliction... On my C7, I was happily on Ch 15, and my Hue's forever been on Ch 20. My 2.4 wifi reliably hangs out at lower channels. So I moved my ZB to channel 25, and that was a big help.
My third win was removing any older (i.e. ZHA 1.2) repeaters in my mesh, and making sure all of my repeaters were ZB3.0 from reputable companies. I was fortunate that almost all of my repeaters were already in that boat, but I had a couple older Halo smoke detectors... As it turns out, they were really problematic to my C8's mesh -- as soon as I removed them, things improved immensely.
Good luck!
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Would you expand upon which repeaters worked will for you?
Sloppy wording on my part -- I should've just said "mains-powered devices" instead, since those act as repeaters.
I do have a few Aeotec Zi repeaters sprinkled around, but those are primarily placed to just step in if I take other nearby mains-powered devices offline for some reason.
