Zigbee non-functional, but shows Online

I have a C-8 on 2.3.6.146 (I was on a beta version prior to this issue, but rolled back to 2.3.6.146 to try and resolve it and didn't see a place in the beta forum to post for help)

Last week I started to notice my Zigbee devices were not responding promptly, and then eventually they all stopped working. I have ~45 in total and they were working fine before last week.

Zigbee status shows Online and I have tried rebuilding my network and waiting. I haven't added any new 2.4Ghz gear, and did move the hub in case it was unhappy in its current place. I have tried resetting two bulbs, one was in the same room as the hub and they do not ever get seen by the hub.

What is concerning is that while everything the hub reports seems ok, I get no log entries when i look into the Zigbee logs and if i do a channel scan i get no information returned.

I have also reset the zigbee radio but that doesn't clear out the devices list at the bottom of the page. Is that normal?

I'm at a loss for what else to try. Any advice?

--Ryan

Anything else to try? my zigbee devices are all dead in the water. Could the zigbee radio on a 9 month old hub go bad suddenly?

Things to try

  • Take a local backup, download, and then restore it right away, this will also do a soft reset as part of the restore.
  • Power down hub for around 30 seconds then plug in again, this will restart the zigbee radio.
  • After resetting the bulbs did you attempt to pair them to the hub again, otherwise there is 0 chance they will work again.

Ty for the reply!

I’ll try taking the backup locally and do a restore from the downloaded copy. I have done restores from the ui but never downloaded/uploaded them. The reset triggered with a restore is the same as factory resetting the device and restoring it. So there is nothing to be gained with the extra steps to factory reset it?

I tried the second with no change.

I have tried to readd the bulbs and they never showed in the hub with it in zigbee pairing mode. Reset the bulbs many times and they never showed back up. I tried two different bulbs before I reset the zigbee radio to see if that made a difference

Everything else on the hub is working as expected but it seems that zigbee is refusing to work.

Correct, and its not a "factory reset" per-se because it does not reset the radio data, only the hub database.

Is the Zigbee radio even showing it is online in the details page? Had another user recently where it would not go online and doing the backup/restore fixed it. That's the main reason I suggested that.

It shows as online, and if I reboot the radio it goes through the various statuses fine. I never get any data when i do a "Scan Channels" but i never did that before i started having troubles so i don't know if that would normally show anything. "network graph (beta)" shows 0/45 devices and will make a tenative connection to 0000 and nothing more. my logs show this about every 5 min

profileId:0x0, clusterId:0x8032, sourceEndpoint:0, destinationEndpoint:0 , groupId:0, lastHopLqi:255, lastHopRssi:0

If it weren't otherwise reporting fine, it seems like the hardware is having issues

There is nothing else anyone can really suggest until you try the backup / restore.

If it still fails after that maybe support can check the engineering logs, I would submit a warranty claim at support.hubitat.com , even if it is out of warranty a little.

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okie. I'll give that a go tonight

tyty

--Ryan

That sounds like the 'hub on a quiet Zigbee network sending itself a message to see if the radio is alive scenario' described here: Zigbee log showing device 0000(0) - :bellhop_bell: Get Help - Hubitat

Apparently the Zigbee radio in the hub thinks the mesh is silent... see the post by Chuck Schwer, former HE employee.

So i have about 45 zigbee devices and most are on right now. I should see something in this? or would this only show devices active in its own mesh?

You should at least see your own hub, but it is also known to randomly not work at all for some people (myself included). So being totally blank could just mean its not working at all for your hub.

I've seen that the output of the channel scan feature varies, depending on hub type.

Because of a quirk (manifested by C-7 and C-8, which evidently never display their own PAN ID/Extended PAN ID in the output of the channel scan) if you have a lone C-7 or C-8 (with no other active Zigbee PANs within range) seeing a completely blank channel scan may be "normal".

I've got 3 hubs; C-3 on 2.3.6.135, and C-7 and C-8 (those last two are on latest beta firmware). In addition to those PANs I also have a couple of non-HE Zigbee hubs which get detected by channel scans. What I've seen is that C-3, C-7 and C-8 each produce different output when doing a channel scan.

From my experience with these hubs (can't speak for C-4 or C-5) only the C-3 will display its own PAN ID and Extended PAN ID along with other detected PANs, though it displays all Extended PAN ID's in reversed byte order.

C-7 won't display its own PAN ID/Extended PAN ID ( it does display other PANs, but shows Extended PAN IDs with byte order reversed like C-3).

C-8 (at least with latest beta) won't display its own PAN ID/Extended PAN ID, but does display other detected PANs (and displays correct byte ordering of all Extended PAN IDs).

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Interestingly on my C8 (on latest beta) the channel scan displays both PAN ID and the Extended PAN ID correctly. My C7 (also on beta) shows correct PAN ID and "scrambled" extended PAN ID.

C8: Showing itself and the C7 correctly


C7: Showing only the PAN IDs correctly for the C8 and C7.


Lol... weird. There was one recent beta where my C-8's scan never showed anything; the next beta 'fixed' that (except for not showing itself). At least C-8 gets all the Extended ID's formatted correctly (when it decides to show them):

Here's the channel scans produced by my C-3, C-7 and C-8=; only the C-3 shows all three HE PANs

C-3 scan:

C-7's scan:

C-8's scan:

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Change is our only constant... :wink:

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I think this was overlooked in @jtp10181 ’s reply. AFAIK resetting the radio doesn’t delete the devices from your database, but does make it necessary to reset and rejoin all of them as they are no longer connected. If you have a cloud backup, you can restore the radio from that (C-8 only), otherwise the backup only restores the database, not the z radios.

This

You need the full quote

If the devices list on the Zigbee details was not cleared after this supposed reset, it was either not a full zigbee radio reset, or it failed to reset it. So the answer the original question, no that is not normal.

He also said later that he tried pairing some bulbs to the hub again after resetting the bulbs and they would not pair up.

So maybe what is needed is an actual full zigbee radio reset along with pairing all the device again.... if nothing else works that could be a last resort, if the reset will work.

When I reset the zigbee radio on my C-8 last week, the devices remained listed until I reset the database. I assumed that it was normal behavior. @gopher.ny or @bobbyD

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So i have tried multiple times to reset and the device list never clears. typing "reset" in the space provided and clicking the red reset button. The radio cycles through some status changes but then the page reloads and it looks the same

If i do a hard reset, then import a backup in would that achieve a radio reset? at this point I have work to get back to functional either way. I am just trying to get zigbee working agian otherwise i need to find a solution to getting those devices working again. I restored a downloaded backup today and will try and add a device again when i get home.