Resetting Zigbee network, best practice

Questions & Help
, ,
1

With the new Homey Pro 2023 about to be shipped, I am thinking about resetting my Zigbee network and improving it a little bit.

Currently I have 66 Zigbee devices, from Aqara, IKEA and Philips Hue. Next to that I have over 40 light bulbs connected to my Philips Hue bridge.
Of these 66 devices, I just have 7 routers, the rest are end devices.

The point is that I want to add as much routers at first as possible, however I just have 7 of them currently, which does not sound enough to me to handle all the 66 devices. Next to that, 3 of them are Aqara smart power plugs, and I read somewhere that Aqara devices are not that good at being routers in a Zigbee network. Can someone confirm if this is true?

I am willing to improve my Zigbee network by buying new devices which can act as routers. As I mentioned Aqara might not be the best solution, so I am looking for other brands that can do the job. Does anyone have some recommendations for devices (preferably Dutch webshops)? Or is it a good idea to move some of my Philips Hue lightbulbs from the Hue bridge to Homey?

1 Like
2

Add routers first - all of them, without exception.

Well, it is still fine but each chip may differ on how many routes / end nodes it can handle. Original Homey Pro 2019 is capable of 15 end devices, not sure about others. In my case other best performing routers (based on Developer interface indication, which is just reporting partial mesh) are :
_TZ3000_8nkb7mof TS0121
_TZ3000_vzopcetz TS011F
_TZ3000_wamqdr3f TS011F

Also I know IKEA of Sweden TRADFRI control outlet are kind of OKay, but looking on my mesh, currently devices are not visibly picking them up compared to Chinese TUYA devices.

Well, if they are constantly powered, there isn’t any problem with them - you will also decrease potential interferences of the Zigbee itself, as they will all communicate on the same frequency within same mesh.
But from routing perspective, then are currently preferred/choosen by devices with same frequency as IKEA.

Yes and I have 74 devices. Recently changed some socket (Zigbee routers) placement, had to perform re-pair and now re-pairing many non-communication devices :wink: I do hope that new Homey will be performing way way way much better.