Zigbee switches not responding to commands

anthonyou · August 3, 2023, 10:59pm

I've been using a C-7 hub in my motorhome for years without issue. Couple of days ago I started having a problem where my zigbee switches are no longer responding to commands. I can see the devices and their state is being reported correctly, but when I send an off/on command they do not work. I can manually toggle the devices by hitting the physical switch on the device and the state updates in Hubitat instantly. But Hubitat is simply not sending commands to the device so none of my rules are working or dashboards function. When I press a button on the dashboard it simply says sending but never changes. I have also tried restarting the hub and powering down the hub for 30 mins then turning it back on to "heal", but no changes. You can see from the logs the devices are communicating but commands just aren't going out. I haven't made any changes to my setup recently.

Platform Version 2.3.5.152

kkossev · August 4, 2023, 3:08am

Please make a screenshot of the Device Details,’Data section.

aaiyar · August 4, 2023, 3:34am

Have you tried resetting the switch(es) and re-pairing them to Hubitat? For zigbee devices, you can do this without deleting the device on Hubitat.

anthonyou · August 4, 2023, 5:20am

kkossev · August 4, 2023, 5:33am

All looks fine, there are a lot of folks that use these Third Reality plugs… Try pairing again to the hub, as proposed by aaiyar in the post above.

If re-pairing does not help, you can try changing the Zigbee channel. This strange one-way communication problem may be due to WiFi interference from a new wireless router nearby.

P.S. you didn’t mention whether the plugs control works or not from the device web page on/off buttons. so I assumed the problem is not in the dashboard.

anthonyou · August 4, 2023, 6:15am

I just tried repairing this one device and no change. Every single one of my zigbee devices is affected and there are several different manufacturers. Most of the other ones are buried behind cabinets and other hard to reach places so repairing them all will be a nightmare.

This third reality is the only new device I've added and that was done early last week. It has been working fine up until 2-3 days ago. I only noticed because I have a rule that turns it off at night and back on during the day when my solar is charging and I found it still turned on during the previous night, I switched it off manually then it never came back on during the day. At first I thought it was just that one rule broken until I started to notice none of my other devices would respond to the Alexa skill or even when I toggled manually in the dashboard. Nothing happens when I send the commands from the device page either.

I'm in a motorhome pretty far off grid, no other wifi networks anywhere around besides my own. I changed routers about 4 weeks ago when I got a Starlink dish on my roof. But the wifi antenna is on the roof not near the Hubitat. Starlink dish is also on the roof pretty far away as well and mostly turned off since it is just a backup service so is no interference from that as well.

kkossev · August 4, 2023, 6:23am

If you unplug it from the mains, are the rest of the devices working?

anthonyou · August 4, 2023, 12:56pm

No. Even if i unplug the third reality plugs, all the other devices are still not working.

velvetfoot · August 4, 2023, 2:12pm

Just speaking from experience and not knowledge here, but that is similar to the experience I had with my C-8. I had a bunch of Centralite plugs. They'd act up and I tried everything to get them back on line, but the only thing that worked was cycling power.

I blamed Centralite and went to all Z-Wave except for battery Zigbee devices, but that's not for everyone.

Anyway, I would suggest cycling the main power breaker.

anthonyou · August 4, 2023, 5:57pm

As I said in my OP, I already tried unplugging the hub for 30 mins to put it in panic mode to heal the network. I've manually unplugged and replugged in a few of the outlets, which made no difference. Plus my plugged in devices get power cycled daily cause my motorhome AC power is turned off for a few hours late at night to perserve power. Hubitat and my router stay on because they are powered directly by DC through a big 12v lithium battery.

velvetfoot · August 4, 2023, 6:19pm

I guess I mis-read your OP.
For me, toggling the outlet's switch got it working again. I figured toggling power would do it as well.
For you, toggling the device gets it to report, but it still doesn't respond.

user1257 · March 7, 2024, 12:58pm

Hi there,

I'm experiencing a similar issue with my Hubitat network. Here's what I've tried so far:

I've repaired my Zigbee device, and initially, I can control it using commands. However, after about 10 minutes, although I see the current state update in the Hubitat app, I'm unable to execute commands.
I've rebooted the system.
I've shut down the system and left it for 30 minutes.
I've switched off the entire house power.
I've removed the integration with Alexa.
I've changed the Zigbee channel.
I've disabled and re-enabled Zigbee.

Additionally, I've noticed that three devices are shown as "unknown" in the Zigbee graph, but I can't see them in the tabular form on the "Devices" page. Clicking on these "unknown" devices doesn't allow me to view their details.

If anyone has encountered a similar issue or has any suggestions for troubleshooting, I'd greatly appreciate your input.

Thanks!

duane.and · January 17, 2025, 8:13pm

I am experiencing symptoms very similar to the post that started this thread. All of my Zigbee devices have been mostly un-commandable for the last 10 days. I am running a C8-pro (Ver 2.4.0.146) with about 35 Zigbee devices (Iris 3320s, Centralite 3210s, ThirdReality smart plugs gen1, Sonoff temp sensors, Sonoff 01MINIZBs, Sinope thermostat, Zemismart blind motors, Centralite 3400G keypad, Tuya TS0044 switch).

My zigbee network has been solid and unchanged for the past few months … up until a nasty series of brief power outages on 6-Jan. Side note: Besides killing Zigbee, my router’s configuration was corrupted during the outages and it lost all static IP assignments.

Since the issues started, I have tried as many remedies as I could get my hands on: network rebuild, radio reboot, hub power down for hours, taking all devices offline (unplugging/removing batteries), bringing devices back in increments, resetting/re-pairing (re-pairing failed), shutting down devices that were a bit chatty, changing channels, changing power-levels. Throughout, the sensor devices have been able to send temperature measurements, albeit sluggishly.

I was able to get the network back one time, for a couple of hours, after I did the steps of: zigbee disable - hub shutdown - hub unplug - hub replug - zigbee enable. However, it took 5-10 seconds for commands to work, and after two hours the network degraded as devices gradually dropped off and ended up back at square one. I have repeated these same steps multiple times since, but have not been able to get the net back.

My Wifi 2.4Ghz is on channel 1, and my Zigbee is on channel 25. Neighboring wifi is distant and very weak. It sure feels like something is broken within the Hubitat. I can’t even get a new device to pair, when the device is right next to the hub, and all other devices are powered down. I have not tried to restore the hub from a backup.

The following screenshots were done when I had two routing devices, and eight battery devices (rollers) powered on. That 7 of the rollers are not showing up in the logs at present is typical of the symptoms.

GRAPH

Any advice is welcome!

user5989 · January 21, 2025, 6:58pm

Did you get your issue resolved? I have 40 Inovelli blue Zigbee switches and a few temp sensors as well as a few other devices and NONE of them will show up on my Zigbee network or take any commands. I had changed routers and things were working fine until they decided to drop. I'm currently not a fan of Hubitat for this issue since Zwave and my SmartThings never had an issue in my old house for 8 years.

duane.and · January 21, 2025, 7:43pm

Update: After two weeks of this outage, most of the ZB net resumed operating two days ago. This sudden recovery coincided precisely with powering down my WiFi. I was doing some unrelated maintenance and had turned off the circuit breaker for the router. Within a few minutes I noticed my eight window blinds closing right on cue ... triggered by a rule that runs at dusk!

I restarted the WiFi, and then began powering up zigbee devices that I had powered down in the process of trouble-shooting. One temperature sensor and one Iris door contact has not yet come back, and one Iris door contact came back for a day, but is AWOL today. When I look at the ZB map (I use the user-built app Zigbee Map), I see that most of connections are red/violet (bad/poor). This situation remains concerning, though at present not urgent.

As my Wifi is on 2.4Ghz channel 1, and my ZB is on channel 25, I presume that there should be negligible interference from Wifi. But it's hard to discount the possible cause-effect of shutting down wifi to give the ZB net a recovery boost. I wish I had a real RF sniffer to help figure this out.

I contacted Hubitat support a day before the ZB net started up, but have not yet heard back. I'd feel better if someone took a quick look at my hub's engineering logs.

duane.and · February 18, 2025, 6:12pm

Update #2: Immediately after my last post, Support graciously checked my hub's logs, and found nothing that suggests a Zigbee issue with the hub.

However, my zigbee net has become oh so solid over the past 3 weeks, which coincided with making these changes:

Retired all pre-existing mains-powered devices, with the exception of the Sinope thermostat. The types of the ~20 devices that I removed: Centralite 3210 plug, Sonoff plug, ThirdReality plug gen1, Sonoff 01MINIZB.
Installed two Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB Dongles (Type P), following these instructions for flashing. I have each of these on a mini-UPS (as is the Hubitat).
I did NOT remove non-repeating devices.

My net improved immediately after the changes. Now, the network neighbor map is consistent and makes sense (ie not chaotic like it was). Since I was in a hurry to get the zigbee net restored, I did not have a chance to make incremental changes that might isolate the root cause.

My map after the changes:

DrRomca · February 23, 2025, 6:39pm

Hello all!
After fiddling with my Zigbee network for days now of looking at every possible culprit as a cause I'm now inclied to say that the issue lies with the platform 2.4.0.151.

Maybe it isn't an issue with Zigbee directly, but rather zigbee hangling on the back-end?

I have two hubs at home (C8-Pro as a main hub, C-8 as a second hub and the not-updated C-8 does not have any zigbee related issues, C-8 Pro which is updated to 2.4.0.151
does.

So far I've tried these steps:

I've changed multiple batteries in zigbee devices
I've re-paired all of my zigbee buttons, I use 6 of them, 5 of them directly connected without repeater...
I've disabled and unplugged all zigbee repeaters
I've re-paired buttons one more time
I've changed the channel and waited 24 hours
I've re-built the network and waited another 24 hours

The issue seems to be intermittent, sometimes there's no response from the button, sometimes it works...
I use SonOff SNZB-01 buttons that can be pressed, held and double-tapped.
On one occasion the single tap worked normally multiple times, but the hold and the double tap did not no matter how many times I tried...

EDIT: I'm now trying to revert the old platform to confirm.

Thanks anyone

DrRomca · February 25, 2025, 7:18pm

So, after much more fiddling, I'm exactly where I was..

No change. So I upgraded to the latest version and still no change.

I now think that the issue is with allHandlerX or Internal SonOff Button Driver...

duane.and · March 13, 2025, 6:04pm

Refer to this post regarding the antennas on the C8, which really helped with my zigbee issues.