Howdy, I have the Homey Pro 2023 and 4 zigbee plugs where 2 are placed in my greenhouse and 2 of them are placed in between the homey and the greenhouse to be able to extend the signal there since the greenhouse is kinda far away from the Homey Pro.
I do however get really crappy connection over at the greenhouse but perfect connection on the nodes in between.
I have a feeling that the plugs all reach the Homey Pro and instead of creating a more solid connection by daisy chaining the plugs, they all just connect straight to the Homey, creating unstable connections for those plugs in the distance.
Is there any way to check how the devices are connected to each other and/or change this?
Did you pair the two plugs in the greenhouse from the greenhouse, or did you pair them next to Homey and then moved them to the greenhouse? Usually you should use the first method, pair the device from where you want to use it.
Oh really? I thought zigbee was a self healing network so that the connections can move freely when things change, if I remove a router or add another one etc, maybe this is not the case?
But yes, I did plug all 4 of them in just next to the homey when I first added them, and then I moved them to their correct positions.
I’m gonna try removing them all and start over with the plugs in their current positions then.
Edit: I just realized, im using these plugs in some advanced flows, is there a way to just “reset” the connection without actually removing the device? I wasn’t super excited having to recreating those flows again…
You can re-pair them without first removing them. Perhaps you get an error that the device is already added, but that’s okay. Also, you shouldn’t have to recreate the entire flow again, just fix the card for the missing device.
Trying to readd them, didn’t work, the plug in the pump house was found and as you said, it responded with “Device already added”. The other 2 plugs in the greenhouse wasn’t seen by the homey app and homey just sat there waiting for a device to enter pairing mode (following my idea of they trying to connect to the homey instead of the pump house plug)
So I tried to remove them all from Homey and add them again, first adding the one in the pump house since its closest to the plug in the house and then add the plugs in the greenhouse (so they would connect to the pump house plug)
Impossible, homey didn’t understand that they were in pairing mode at all, just sat there waiting, this happened to all 3 of the plugs.
Took them back inside and added them while standing 1m from the homey again (which worked straight away), moved them back out and they just stopped working again…
Now I tried the “Repair device” thingy in maintenance settings In hope that it would somehow reconnect them to their closest router but this just made the plug appear missing in the homey app. (warning triangle that appear when you actually disconnect a device)
I gave up and just used a normal “dumb” plug with its own thermostat…since what I was trying to do was get a temperature reading and based on that temperature I would activate the plugs which controlled 1 heater each (one would go off first and if it still got colder, I would fire up the other one).
Homey, as Zigbee controller, has almost no influence on how Zigbee devices interact with each other in a mesh. Devices should be finding optimal routes automatically, and Homey cannot tell a device that it should take a particular route, or use a particular router.
You basically have two issues:
the devices in the greenhouse don’t pair through the device in the pump house
when the devices are paired near Homey and then moved, they don’t find a better route
Both issues suggest that this is an issue with the devices themselves, not with Homey.
Sometimes it may take a while (hours) before devices are “settled”, so what you could try it to remove all devices from Homey, then pair the pump house device, wait a while, then try to add one of the greenhouse devices from its final location.
If these are your only Zigbee devices, you may also want to perform a Zigbee network reset (from here) before adding any devices back to Homey.
I have 4 fire alarms using Zigbee, but i went and removed all 4 plugs just to be safe and then resetting the zigbee network from Homey Pro Developer Tools.
First I repaired the fire alarms (good to see that they remain in Homey after a reset but just need a new adress!)
Then I added the zigbee plug inside the house (worked fine)
Tried adding the plug in the pump house = no go, it just wont connect which I find strange, when I added it inside and then moved it there, I had no issues turning it on/off etc, but it’s just like it won’t reach during the adding phase. It is probably a bit of a stretch, i counted to roughly 15m from the plug inside the house to the plug in the pump house, and the house is a stone house so the signal should be severly reduced, but yeah, it works fine once it is added so who knows what is going on.
It could be that for some reason, the devices are using a lower power output during the pairing process (I think that one of my IKEA drivers also officially needs to be paired next to the controller, but I never did and it paired just fine anyway).
So what you could try is to pair the greenhouse plugs closed to the pump house plug and then move them back to the greenhouse.
Hmm yeah, but it didn’t reach even from the pump house during the paring process, so I would have to pair them inside the house and move them back out (as I did originally).
I seriously doubt that routers can be used during the pairing process though as I tried moving one of the greenhouse plugs directly in view of the pump house plug just a few meters away (free line of sight) and they still wouldn’t pair even though the pump house plug was active and paired, so I guess it is direct access to the Homey or it doesn’t work
It really would help with a visual representation of the zigbee mesh to figure out what is going on, is there really no 3rd party app or whatever that could do this?
How far away from Homey did you need to place the pump house plug before you were able to pair it? Also “a few meters”? Because if it’s true that the plugs run with limited output power during pairing, you may need to be really close (like 30cm at most) to the pump house plug if you want to pair a greenhouse plug.
In any case, pairing through routers is something that the Zigbee standard fully supports, and it’s not even something that can be turned off AFAIK, so this still points to an issue with your plugs.
No, the information required simply isn’t (made) available.
I only have power outlet in the pump house and then inside the house, nothing in between.
In the pump house it was no go, in the house i can pair it anywhere, doesn’t have to be right next to the homey, 5 meters away works just as well.
This post suggest Zigbee 3.0 reaches like 75-100m indoor and even further outdoors, I’m not sure if I believe this to be true anymore
### 4. What is the maximum distance for Zigbee 3.0?
Zigbee 3.0 can communicate up to 300 meters in the right environment.
The signal’s range will vary based on whether it's indoors or outside, the design and age of the antenna, power output, and external interference.
The base range of Zigbee 3.0 devices usually falls within 75 to 100 meters when used indoors.
The signal can travel farther when used outside.
you can pair the pump house plug from inside the house, then move it to the pump house, and that works fine
you then tried pairing the green house plug near to the pump house, and that didn’t work
you also tried pairing the green house plug in the house, which worked
you then moved it to the green house, and it stopped working
After moving the green house plug back to the green house, how long did you wait for it to pick up a new route?
It might work with directional antennas and absolute perfect circumstances, but assume that with consumer devices that don’t have an external antenna you might be able to reach 10m at most.
I don’t think you’ll ever get it working either. There’s either something with these plugs that is preventing them from working as expected, or the distances are just too large.
Yeah i am thinking the same, the weird part is that the pump house plug is working, and thats the long distance, the distance from the pump house to the green house is like half the distance, plus there are no thick walls to penetrate either
Which suggests (again) that there’s something with these plugs that is preventing them from routing through each other, and/or from finding better routes.
yeah, i gave up trying to use them like that, they now control some other stuff inside the house that were still dumb.
You have any recommendation for zigbee plugs that actually work properly with homey?
I mostly have wifi plugs around the house but they suffer from the same range issue.
Most of the routers I have in my mesh are from IKEA, both lights and plugs, and they work fine (I don’t use Homey for my home automation though). But apart from a single sensor, every one of my Zigbee devices is perhaps at most 5m away from the next one.
