Zigbee issues

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123

Folks,

I address this to the extremely helpful, non-judgemental members of this community; if you're thinking of attacking me, please don't.

As you know if you've been following this thread, I have been having problems maintaining the same, large Zigbee mesh that the HE platform had been able to maintain, this despite replacing many devices and adding others, as per the advice I've received, here.

Now, My Z-Wave mesh, after behaving well, is starting to become erratic and, most oddly, in the same way. Most of my Z-Wave devices, and all that I've migrated to HE, are motion sensors, a few each of Jasco and Dome models. They all worked fine until a few days ago, when the one in the kitchen stopped working reliably. Unlike the chronically orphaned Zigbee devices, these come and go, often in pairs. For example, once I excluded, reset and re-included the kitchen sensor, it started working again until this morning, when it and the one in my lav stopped responding. I climbed up on a precarious perch and simply hit the button on the back of the Kitchen sensor, and it started responding again. Only one of my many sensors (the same model as the ones in the kitchen and lav) has remained reliable after these dropouts began some days ago.

So, I had a thought. What do the reasonable among you think of the idea of doing another configuration back-up, factory resetting the HE C-5, and restoring the backup? There are many ways that a configuration could be backed-up and, depending upon which type of backup (full image or coded configuration elements, etc.), this might help. Do you think this is a worthwhile exercise?

Thanks again for all of your help,
Jeff

124

Get support involved. Do not do a factory reset,

125

Thanks. Support is involved and is already working with me, but I haven't asked them this question yet. Can you tell my why you believe this is a bad idea? Jeff

126

Hi Jeff,

So I went through some of what you're going through 6 months ago when I switched from Wink to Hubitat. I'm going to stick with my zigbee experience here. With Wink, I had the following zigbee devices:

  • Several GE Links
  • Three Cree bulbs
  • Six Osram Lightify
  • One GE in-wall dimmer
  • Three Quirky outlinks
  • One LeakSmart main water valve

With Wink, GE Links would drop offline randomly and occasionally (say once every 2 months, a couple bulbs would be offline). The LeakSmart water valve would drop off every week. Everything else was fine. Wrong - the Outlinks used to fall off regularly as well.

Before I moved to HE, I had identified the Outlinks as problem devices that didn't work well as routers. So I took them out of the equation entirely by discarding them. I replaced the Outlinks with three Securifi Peanuts and 2 Samsung SmarThings plugs.

I had issues with the GE Links and Crees still falling off. The LeakSmart (which was super problematic with Wink) was more stable with HE. So I replaced all the Links with dimmable Philips bulbs and Caseta dimmers. And the Crees with Sengleds.

A week later, I added a couple more Securifi Peanuts. My zigbee network has been rock solid since May. Nothing has fallen off and devices remain super-responsive. This is what my zigbee network looks like now:

  • 5 Securifi Peanuts
  • 2 SmartThings Outlets
  • 1 GE in-wall dimmer
  • 1 Centralite outlet
  • 3 Sengleds
  • 6 Osram Lightify
  • 1 LeakSmart valve

The Lightifys are RGBW and I'm planning to replace them with Crees as they die - but for now they're working just fine.

I have a second, separate HE with 5 Tradfri Control Outlets, 3 Tradfri repeaters, and a menagerie of Aqara sensors. That's newer, but so far has remained stable as well.

Hope this helps.

Ashok

127

What Zarthan said. With the internal radio in the C5, you're not going to get a Z-Wave backup unless you go through lots of hoops, so you'd have to repair all of those rather than "restore" (Zigbee is a bit better since with a database restore there's a chance you won't need to do anything, and the worst would just be re-pairing devices it will already know about and assign to their existing objects).

A soft restore avoids this by not clearing the radio database (different from the hub database that you can back up and restore; Z-Wave stores some things on the radio side). However, given that it doesn't, it may not solve your issues if there is truly a problem there. If you don't want to risk having to re-pair everything and redo all of your automations, I'd see if Support offers any other ideas first.

128

Robert,

Thanks! That might still be OK as I only have seven or eight Z-Wave devices so far migrated to HE, so excluding, resetting and re-discovering those motion sensors and adding them back to my rules wouldn't be a great hardship. In any case, I just asked support about that as well, so I'll wait for their advice.

Thanks again for all of your help,
Jeff

129

Motion Sensors (battery powered) devices are not repeaters, and being that you state that is "all that I've migrated" means you are solely relying on the hub to communicate with each device.

Zwave and Zigbee networks are specifically designed to operate as a mesh network, meaning generally each end (battery) device rarely communicates directly to the hub, instead the communication is routed through repeating devices. They are not intended to operate as how a Wifi router does were every communication is direct to the hub. If you experience devices dropping off, it's a very telling indicator that you lack sufficient repeating devices to strengthen the mesh.

130

Yes, I understand that they don't repeat, and I might well purchase a couple of mains-powered, repeating Z-Wave devices, but keep in mind that all worked perfectly til a few days ago, and the couple which haven't been affected by this secondary issue are the furthest from the HE C-5.

Jeff

131

Because something "temporarily" worked outside of the way it is designed for, is at best irrelevant.

According to your video the ones you claim to be "furthest away" appear to have the least amount of building material restrictions (walls, wiring, etc) between them and the hub and seem almost within direct line of sight of hub even though they maybe farther away distance. Radio frequencies are greatly hindered by obstructions of building materials especially anything metal, these low powered mesh devices. So the more walls you put in between the devices and the hub the greater the need for repeating devices and a strong mesh build.

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132

Design? This is not temporary, and it's not anecdotal. I first installed HE in early October and the Z-Wave sensors functioned perfectly until a few days ago and, for that matter, since I purchased them in 2016 (when I started with HA, my set-up was schedule-driven and I only added motion sensing after a couple of years).

133

You are really make this a lot more complicated than it needs to be.

Here are the facts:

  1. The devices you are using are designed to operate within a mesh, you are currently NOT using the devices the way in which they are designed to operate.
  2. The devices you are using worked until they didn't
  3. You wanted to know why they aren't working
  4. It's pointed out that you do not have repeating devices to sufficiently allow your devices to operate as they are intended to.
  5. You don't accept that answer because you were able to TEMPORAILY get them to work until they didn't, and somehow think that it is the hubs fault because of your way of using the devices outside of how they are designed to be used.

I'm done.

134

Did you lose your 5" disks?

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135

I definitely didn’t mean to direct that towards you. I was simply pointing out to @bobbles that he is not the only person in the forum that has been using PCs since the early days. I sincerely apologize for offending you and I should not have posted without knowing the other content.

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136

Although I haven't done it, one of the things I've read on the community is powering off the Hubitat for 20 minutes is a quick way to force a rebuild your mesh. Maybe the rebuild is exposing an issue that the mesh had previously worked around over time? Is your Hubitat on a USP or did the power outage on Halloween have it off for 20 minutes?

137

Good.

138

Kids! Where is your paper tape and punch cards? :wink:

139

you have mentioned this a few times, please confirm something for me. are you excluding the device or are you deleting it from hubitat and when it tells you then excluding the device?

try to not let this lead you down the garden path, wireless is a strange beast and lots of things affect it. just because it "worked before" doesn't mean it was working efficiently, it could have been perfect or it could have been teetering over the edge. I think z-wave repeaters are definitely going to help with this one BUT i will wait until you have answering my comment above as that might be the main reason.

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140

Right next to my wire recorder.

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141

Following the directions, I exclude them as the first step and, when successful (occasionally I have to reboot the hub to even exclude one of these non-plus Z-Wave devices, after bringing it within about 30 feet of the hub), HE tells me that the device has been excluded and removed. I then re-discover it and edit the appropriate rule(s). If one attempts to delete it without excluding it, one gets a warning from HE. Incidentally, I'm reasonably certain that this is not a signal strength issue as a couple of them have line-of-sight to the hub and the most stable are the furthest away, on another floor of the house. Meanwhile, I've identified a promising Z-Wave repeater, sold in pairs for about $55 shipped, The Aeotec range extender 6, and will probably order a set of those, one for each floor. Considering that, with the longer antenna, my Wink hub had no trouble with any of them for three years, I expect all I need is a bit of a boost, assuming that signal strength is an issue despite my hunch. Incidentally, I've ordered a Zigbee sniffer and might order a Z-Wave sniffer as well, so I can walk around the house with each plugged into a laptop to check actual signal strength.

Thanks,
Jeff

142

I've lost track in the thread - have you tried changing the Zigbee channel?

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