Zigbee/Tuya+Home Assistant

[ashen ginkgo]

I have a Raspberry Pi 5 with a Sonoff Zigbee dongle. For the past couple of days, I've been trying to bump up the signal distribution in my house. I've installed 'Zigbee Smart Plug' units (Z2M/HA flagged them as Tuya) across the property, and they don't seem to want to connect to my Sonoff Water Valves. They just connect to each-other. The closest plug to my Pi is sitting at 150 LQI, and 30 feet away is (among other things) one of the Sonoff water valves. I've tried rebooting the Pi, I've tried moving the plugs around after a couple of hours, nothing seems to work.

Does line-of-sight through one wall really kill the signal that much?

[dry wedge]

I have several walls and that's not the case. The width of the walls may vary with yours. Anyway, I just looked at my Zigbee2MQTT map and the Ikea ZigBee smartplugs have a much better performance than their Chinese counterparts. Try one if you can

I have 28 devices right now, with a Smlight SLZB-06 as ZigBee concentrator, via ethernet. Works like a charm

[stray hatch]

I have 100 devices in my ZHA network. Controller is a combee 2. Organically grown, not in any way designed. But I have probably a 50/50 mix of routers (mostly lights with a few plugs) and battery powered devices. Been steady as a rock now for 2 years, though a year ago I’d guess I was at 80 devices. I’d share a pic of the visualisation but it’s utterly useless.

[ashen ginkgo]

Unfortunately, I don't have an Ikea in my area.

The Pi I'm using is my smart home hub, period. I've had it in my office ever since I started building my smart home. I moved it to a different room in an attempt to boost the reception of devices on the other side of the property.

I have one plug in the main house, one in the garage, and one in the guest house, basically.

I was about to have an Ikea, but due to.. well.. reasons.. they chose to pass on my area.

My area was also set to have an Amazon hub, buuuut.. same thing.

The Zigbee dongle I'm using is plugged directly into the Pi 5. Not sure what difference that makes, if any, either way.

[ashen ginkgo]

How do I know whether my Zigbee smart plugs are Chinese vs not?

[dry wedge]

Well, almost all are Chinese made. The difference is the construction quality that the brand gives. Ikea smartplugs are reliable as they don't want one of them catching fire or having bad reviews. Chinese "brands" does not care about "marketing" or safety in some cases

[ashen ginkgo]

Wanted to give an update on things.. I sent back the Tuya plugs, got some HA-recognized-ThirdReality plugs. Two of four plugs have been recognized so far. The other two have been giving me nothing but grief.

Grief as in "not joining network, period."

They all came in the same box. Four ThirdReality plugs.

[dry wedge]

The plugs are ZigBee?

[stray hatch]

It’s the prob the ones referenced here. It’s a shame you can’t get them in the UK as they sound good! https://community.home-assistant.io/t/thirdreality-zigbee-smart-plug-with-real-time-energy-monitoring/846457

I’m always after good, reasonably priced Zigbee plugs. The Ikea ones are good, but I’ve had one with the relay go bad. Still buying them though as they are as cheap as the WiFi yuck out there and generally pretty good.

[ashen ginkgo]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BPY5D1KC Here's the exact URL I used to order.

[fleet latch]

I love these plugs

My only complaint is the power LED is microscopic so you can’t easily tell whether it’s on or not without walking right up to it

Also if you really want reliable power measurements you should calibrate it with a Kill-a-Watt

[ashen ginkgo]

I'm starting to wonder if I've permanently screwed myself out of building a proper mesh network, with the way things have been going. Everything keeps wanting to connect directly to my coordinator, instead of closer things.. and then throwing fits when it can't connect to anything.

[dry wedge]

In my brief experience, ZigBee networks are somehow dynamic and of slow configuration. In my case, some devices connect to a near device in the first try, just to change to a far one maybe one day later. But AFAIK my network is working fine. I have at least 10 devices (mostly Ikea plugs) that works as repeaters

[ashen ginkgo]

I still can't get things organized properly. Only one plug seems to be working as a router. I have five Sonoff valves. One (according to the Z2M map) s connected through a ThirdReality plug. The rest are connected directly to the router. The odd thing is, I have four total 3R plugs. Two are plugged in and connected to my Z2M network, two are plugged in and don't seem to register at all.

[stray crater]

some zigbee end devices seem to bind to a router when joining the mesh and stay there. maybe reset one of those valves and rejoin it? even enabling only the router you want it to bind to for the pairing session?

also - your usb stick should be on a 0.5m extension cable to get it away from the radios inside the pi. and also away from usb cables for other equipment. my zigbee stick had lots of weird problems when close to the usb to sata cable for my boot ssd

[ashen ginkgo]

I have the dongle plugged right into the Pi running my HomeAssistant.

[half valley]

Then at least plug it in usb2 port not usb3

[stray crater]

you should really get a usb a male to female extension cable. at least 0.5m long. there is a reason the dongle from nabu casa comes with that cable

[half valley]

And don't use usb3 ports

[stray hatch]

Yup. I noticed this right away with my combee, and my PC doesn’t even have WiFi built in. An extension lead definitely helps.

[fleet latch]

Yeah I learned quick those are not just casual suggestions

[ashen ginkgo]

So.. apparently none of the stores in my area carry USB 2.0. Everything is 3.0.

[fleet latch]

For cables? I don't think that would matter if you're using a 2.0 port

[half valley]

Cable can be any kind usb3 cables have more shielding.

[half valley]

Buy Ikea ones by far the best, I have a lot of plugs from différents brands and at 8€ the choice is quickly made.

[stray hatch]

It’s more about the radio in the device being as far from the computer as possible I think. Not sure if the cable quality is going to matter that much.

[ashen ginkgo]

I wish there was an Ikea anywhere within driving distance. One was going to break ground here recently, but The Great Deciderers took too long decidering.

[dry wedge]

Can't you buy it online in Ikea where you live?

[half valley]

Ikea will stop Zigbee, hurry to buy a stock!

[stray hatch]

Yup major mistake there. At least the replacement is Thread, but still it’s a crazy decision. I already bought a fair few spare bulbs, plugs and dimmers.

[half valley]

They are moving to Matter (Ikea). Thread is working nicely, did a test with nRF53 and matter over thread. Lacks the Z2M polishing and there are almost no product ready.

[stray hatch]

It is matter over thread. It’s not Wi-Fi. So it is not as crazy as it could be, but still a silly decision. Luckily Zigbee has many years left in it from other manufacturers. I have at least 50 ikea zigbee products so am well invested and was disappointed in there decision but what can we do?

[half valley]

There are plenty of ZB devices on Aliexpress that work nicely. Do prefer the ikea outlet for the price, except mine don't hve power measurement 🙁

Using Moes 1-2-3-4 wall switches much more design than Ikea ones. And work out of the box. CR2450 so battery life is correct.

[dry wedge]

😭

I'm going to buy as much stock as I can. Bad news

[half valley]

It seems they have outlet with power measurement someone can confirm?

[stray hatch]

are you talking about ikea? If so then yes, though they are never available on the Ikea app where I am (southern England).

[stray hatch]

I need to look there. If it’s not Ikea I tend to stick with a handful of brands: sonoff or aqara. Occasionally I try others but Ikea, sonoff and aqara is probs 90% of the 100 Zigbee devices I own. Been stung too many times after picking some random manufacturer. Not that those 3 are perfect, but they are, in my experience, ten times better than picking a random. Sonoff in particular makes some awsome products, just a little pricier than equivalent IKEA.

The one big strength in ikea stuff is the bulbs. They are faultless in my experience. I have about 40, including 20 GU10s and I’ve never had a problem from them in 2.5 years. Can’t say the same about any of the “randoms”.

I don’t normally visit the physical Ikea shops. Very crowded noisy places. But one time I walked in and they had a special offer on 3 x GU10s and a Styrbar for £6. Couldn’t bloody believe it. Obviously I walked out with about 8 boxes. I have many spare Styrbars that I’ll probably never find a use for.

[dry wedge]

I know that feeling...😅

I'm convincing my wife to make an online purchase, Ikea is not near where I live 😅

[potent sorrel]

It's not just line of sight, but the orientation of the signal / antenna that can affect signal. When the signal goes through the wall it may not be going through perfectly horizontally and hence the thickness of the wall would actually be larger.

There is also the construction of the wall (ie. the materials that make it up).

A good example of this is the fact that when building a WiFi Mesh with typical consumer units to cover several floors, you shouldn't be placing them directly above each other. Instead you offset them where you can due to the way they transmit the radio waves.

One last tip, in a household environment, try to position devices above 5 feet, since it is typical to have more objects that cause interference below this (ie. tv cabinet, bed etc).

[ashen ginkgo]

My house is full of all kinds of 1950s-era tech. Not kidding when I say "I live in a barn." 😄

I mean, yes, it is a house, but I'm still on 2.4+5G. In terms of internet, I started out with dialup, then moved to DSL, and now I'm on wireless. Oh, it was FUN dealing with the DSL ISP.

I'm talking Dwarf Fortress FUN(tm).

"But hrjw89, why do you continue to live with outdated tech? Can you simply not.. buy new things? Tear out the walls, rip out the bad juju, put in not-suck tech?" ... That's an excellent question! Why would I not do that? Hang on, let me check my wallet. opens wallet tumbleweed rolls out

I'm mostly-kidding about the 1950s tech. Basically.. what I want to do, and what I can do (given my circumstances) are an anti-Venn diagram.

[potent sorrel]

I think you need to map things out, looking at what you want to do. Prioritize this list and then map it to what would be required for each item on the list. You then look at how best to implement the core and allow for updates when the wallet isn't just full of tumbleweeds.

[ashen ginkgo]

A lot of what I've already done, I might end up having to undo, especially with the way things are going in terms of walled gardens..

I bought a lot of things pre-Home Assistant, because they were the first things that popped up when I researched things.

[dry wedge]

Yes, my friends and family are very happy with the Tuya stuff I don't want to use anymore and gave away to them 😂