Unstable connection between router and Homey

Hi!

I purchased a new Homey in the beginning of 2020 and although I like it a lot, I have two problems; one annoying and one peculiar. I will start with the annoying problem, because that is more…annoying.

Although I have not noticed it, until being told by the Athom support, I seem to have had a very unstable connection between the Homey and my router. This got apparent when I recently purchased a Philips Hue Bridge (reason for this was the unstable direct connection to the Hue lamps) and now got slow reconnection and hence noticed the loss in form of error screens with “Unknown error” or “Homey cannot be reached”, as well as flows not starting when due. I have tried several things, that have been proposed on the forum, trying to solve this issue, summarized below.

  • Using static IP for Homey in router and increasing lease time to 7 days.
  • Changed name on the 2.4GHz wifi.
  • Using bandsteering and disconnecting 5GHz wifi
  • Connecting the Homey to 2.4GHz extender wifi.
  • Changing the wifi channel as well as the Hue Zigbee channel, aiming for non-overlapping channels.
  • Changing adapter to 2.1A, 5V, as well as trying a second original 2.0A, 5V adapter provided by Athom.
  • Moving the Homey, router, and Hue bridge to different positions in my rather small apartment, with the Homey and router always having direct visual contact.
  • Restarting Homey (with a 15 min pause), router, and Hue bridge in any conceivable order.
  • Removing all unused applications.
  • Removing some used applications…
  • Checking for RAM-leakage -> No problem.
  • NEW: Reset Zigbee in Homey as well as changing Zigbee channel.

I have, as has the Athom support, now no more ideas how to sort this and I would be super happy if someone had an idea what to test next! I have hesitated to make a factory reset but if I can’t get the Homey to work soon I will try that.

Thanks in advance!

//Alex

What brand/model of router do you have? Does it also handle WiFi, or do you have a separate WiFi-setup (if so, what brand/model)?

Unstable connections with Homey aren’t uncommon.

Thanks for the reply! I have a router from my internet provider, a Com Hem WiFi Hub L1. No separate wifi setup although I have tried a netgear WN3000RPv3 wifi extender without success.

Have you tried changing the WiFi channel?

If the WIFI connection got lost, please try a new power plug for Homey with minimum 2A. That was the reason for my Trouble with Homey WIFI.

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They already tried that.

Yes. And I have also tried changing the channels, both in the hue, and for the wifi, focusing on non-overlapping channels.

Sadly, there’s not much we can do at it sounds like you tried pretty much everything. Too bad Athom had made Homey such a black box that it’s impossible to debug these issues as a regular user, because I’m sure (read: “I hope”) that Athom hasn’t been able to reproduce these issues (which have existed for close to two years now) themselves.

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I just wanted to add some update with a temporary solution if someone else ends up with the same problem. My working hypothesis was that it was the Zigbee network on the Hue that interfered with the wifi connection between the Homey and router. I realized however that if I had the Hue system up and running parallel to the Homey system, without connecting them using the Hue application in Homey, I didn’t get the noticeable loss of network connection. With this setup I have at least all my lamps and tools working, although in two separate systems. This ofc have some drawbacks in terms of no easy way to control the Hue in Homey (and hence loosing a lot of the idea with the Homey) but the increase in stability makes it worth it. My current solution is controlling everything using the Google assistant and/or using IFTTT as an intermediate. I will let you know if/when I find a better solution! //Alex

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I hope it is solved already, but nonetheless please note, maybe you know already, but the channel numbers of Wifi and Zigbee don’t correspond. You"ll have to check the frequencies used.


Interference check:
http://ostgardh.se/wifi_zigbee/index.html
Explanation:

More hints:
http://wifimetrix.com/channels-1-6-11-only
Hope this is of any use.

Yeah I ve seen this already, but thanks! Sadly the issue is not solved. The “temporary” ifttt-solution works, however with increasing number of lamps and flows I am now running out of applets. Have to find another solution soon.

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In this topic someone discovered the Hue bridge sends/receives quite some amounts of data.
Is it possibly choking your router in some way?
Just a brainfart

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Oh! I do not appear to have the possibilities to check my data trafic on my router but it might be the reason for my issues. I will try to find a way to change the polling and see if it improves anything! Thanks!

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