Difficulty Pairing New Devices / Network seems fragile in general

[young fox]

I've been tearing my hair out over my Zigbee network. I've never really had it to a point I would refer to as "Stable", and I can't figure out why. I use a Sonoff v2 dongle as my coordinator (on a 6ft USB 3.0 extension so it's far away from the computer), and I have 2 Tradfri plugs as routers near my devices. The furthest away a device is from either a router or coordinator is 15ft max, with most being in the 10ft range. Using ZHA

I am constantly running into issues with devices just not updating their states while somehow also not being marked unavailable, as well as devices becoming unavailable for unknown reasons. When I try to pair new devices, especially Aqara Motion sensors for some reason, I usually have to try like 10+ times before it actually shows up.

What am I doing wrong here? The rest of my HA setup is rock solid but I just cannot get Zigbee to fall in line. Do I need even more routers? Are Aqara devices just shit?

[prisma shoal]

Your coordinator should not be plugged into a USB3 port. Even if the dongle supports USB3, there’s been many reported instances of issues when using them with a USB3 port.

As for the Aqara P1 motion sensors… they are notoriously painful to pair sometimes, especially depending on what they are trying to pair to. They are Zigbee1.2 devices and they are picky about what they connect to. I would try pairing directly to one of your Ikea plugs directly (in ZHA, you’d select the device, and then “Pair via this device” (I think that’s the wording for it). When you put the motion sensor into pairing mode, click the button on the back once every couple of seconds to keep the sensor awake. It will be frustrating and annoying, but eventually it should work.

[alpine goblet]

There's usually no issue using a USB 3.0 extension, you just need to keep the device away from 3.0 controllers, which are almost always right next to 3.0 ports.

This doesn't discount the possibility of other sources of RF interference. Can you download diagnostics for the ZHA integration and attach the JSON file here?

[bleak elk]

Hi @young fox,
Here is a whole library of things to try for your Zigbee Network located in the Community Cookbook in the Community Forums:
https://community.home-assistant.io/t/the-home-assistant-cookbook-index/707144#zigbee-17

[young fox]

Thanks! I've tried a lot here but there's definitely some extra stuff to try looks like. I'm guessing I just don't have enough density, but the pairing issues are still weird since it even happens right at the coordinator