This is the back part of our house which has its own hub. The large box is an office above a 2 car garage and measures 24' x 24.This is what the network looks like after a reset and repair of most of the devices.
There are 4 repeaters titled, XBEE+, Cam Plug, Cam Plug and a newly introduced one with a MAC address ending B087(below Thermo+, a + indicated 2nd floor) newly introduced for testing. The three non XBEE repeaters are all Sonoff S31 Lite.
If you look closely you will see that for all three of the Sonoff repeaters every connection they have is red (<65 LQI) whereas almost all of the end node devices are green meaning LQI of at least 195. The repeater with the MAC address ending B087 is about three feet from the Hub and 5 feet from the Xbee through a sheetrock wall.
Looking at one of these connections it shows a very asynchronous level of quality.
If I move one of the Sonoff's within 1 foot of the hub the signal improves but still only achieves an LQI of 119 so it seems poor under the best possible circumstances. Note that the outbound connection from the hub is LQI 255 but the return connection is 119.
So I have two questions. 1) Am I correct in my conclusion that the Sonoff S31 seem to be crap when it comes to repeating? 2) Is it possible to disable the repeating function of these plugs and use them as non-sleepy end nodes?
P.S. I have a Sylvania 72922 coming today to act as a comparison. I read elsewhere that this had good repeating function.
I have 2 of these and they don’t seem to be strong enough to repeat for anything, but haven’t caused any problems.
This would require a firmware change which I wouldn’t think possible.
These may be slightly stronger. I have a few that have been in use for about 4 years now and they haven’t caused any problems. I bought a bunch of the Samsung Zigbee 3.0 plugs before they stopped making them which are worlds better. You could try the Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 dongles if you are only looking for strong repeaters. I recently bought 5 of them that seem to be performing well, but I don’t have an Xbee to confirm their performance. Amazon sells them. If you buy them in pairs they are reasonably priced.
I also have a couple Hue outlets that are performing very well. I am using the Ikea Tradfri outlet driver with them and can see return lqi>100 from a floor above and a couple rooms over from where the hub is. I did update their firmware from my Hue bridge first.
Here’s the log from my Philips Hue outlet. FYI: the hub is one room closer than the Sonoff repeater.
This is my other Hue outlet. It’s also one floor up from the hub, but two rooms further away than the other outlet. The Sonoff repeater is still 20 feet and one wall further from this outlet than the hub.
This is the Sylvania plugged into the exact same socket as the Sonoff was in my earlier post (5 feet through a wall from the Hub). LQI 255 both ways with the Synvalia whereas the Sonoff was 119.
I noticed my Sonoff ZB-Mini had a very poor LQI. I think they are likely using cheap zigbee chipsets, which would explain how they can sell devices for dirt cheap
I do not have any experience with Sonoff devices. However, I have had good success with LUNTAK Zigbee smartplugs. They are based on EweLink Zigbee 3.0 technology. They are inexpensive ($17 for 2), The serve both as 10 amp switches and as repeaters. A number of my Zigbee sensors are connected through these plugs.
You can find your's using this tool and the first 6 digits of your MAC address. MAC address database. Network MAC addresses.
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