this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
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I recently setup my ZigBee network in Home Assistant, using a Conbee III with deConz on my Synology NAS.

I purchased a few Aqara Temperature sensors and a couple of Mini Switches.

I was able to get them to pair just fine, but they won't remain online for more than a couple days. They then drop off and I can't even reconnect them easily. I need to try to pair them again like 10 times before they come back online.

At this point I don't know if the problem is my network, the Conbee III, deConz, or the Aqara devices.

I don't know much about ZigBee, but a couple things that I tried so far were:

  1. Use a USB extender instead of connecting the Conbee III directly to my NAS.
  2. Bring the devices as close a possible to the gateway. I don't have a big home, so I don't think distance is a factor here, but still, I put of the sensors right next to the gateway, and it would still drop after a while.

Do you have any hints on things to try to get this fixed, or at least identify the problem?

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[–] mhzawadi@lemmy.horwood.cloud 9 points 1 month ago (13 children)

Having moved my home assistant from the middle of my house to a garden shed/office, check your WiFi network is not on channel 1. As that will most likely be the same part of the spectrum as your ZigBee network, if you have your ZigBee on channel 11.

[–] JelleWho@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (6 children)

On another note. A zigbee network is a mesh network set up at pairing. Moving your host around will not re-generate the routes in the network and make your devices drop.

Pair your devices (and hub) in there position they will be in when installed.

[–] nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de 2 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Well, this explains a whole lot. I've recently paired a few devices in front of the receiver and then moved them into position and wondered why some of them kept dropping off.

[–] unixorn@hachyderm.io 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@nekusoul @JelleWho

I wrote a blog post about it, but the TL;DR for a strong #zigbee mesh is

  1. Pick a zigbee channel that isn't getting stepped on by 2.4GHz wifi (which can be hard if you're in an apartment building or densely packed housing). Your best choices are using wifi channels 1 or 6 with zigbee channel 24, wifi 6 or 11 with zigbee channel 11, or wifi 1 or 11 with zigbee channel 18.

  2. Add powered devices to your mesh first. Start with the closest ones to your zigbee coordinator and work your way outward.

  3. Don't add battery powered devices until you've added all your router devices.

  4. Add new devices to your mesh where you’re actually going to use them so they connect through the nearest router node.

The post is at https://unixorn.github.io/post/zigbee-and-zwave-setup-tip/

@zigbee @homeassistant

[–] steve@mastodon.nexusuk.org 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

@unixorn @nekusoul @JelleWho @zigbee @homeassistant how well do battery devices re-find the "correct" router after a power outage (all tge routers disappeared for a few hours)? The "stickyness" of devices to stay with their current parent instead of finding a new, better, one every so often seems a problem.

[–] unixorn@hachyderm.io 1 points 5 days ago
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