Aqara Door and Window Sensors Go Offline Despite Proximity to ZigBee Repeater

[black-paladin]

@JDRoberts

The Zigbee profile being used says that devices should check in once an hour, but some of the devices will do it at the start of the 60th minute and that can throw off the smartthings algorithm. So there is definitely a difference between different models.

That’s interesting and got me digging around some more and I found a post from @veeceeoh who had written a DTH for Aqara/Xiaomi devices:

@veeceeoh

The origin of the problem in this case is that most ZigBee repeater devices have a check-in timeout period of time that is shorter than the 50-60 minute regular check-in time of Xiaomi / Aqara devices, and when those devices finally do try to check in and the repeater asks them to follow the normal ZigBee protocol of leaving and rejoining the network, Xiaomi / Aqara devices never rejoin.

@veeceeoh

There is no way to reprogram the Xiaomi / Aqara devices, and there is no way to easily affect whether end devices choose to connect to a particular repeater device except to remove that repeater device from the network completely.

A handful of repeater devices have been confirmed to work with Xiaomi / Aqara devices: XBee Zigbee modules (see here for more info), IKEA Tradfri Outlet…

Based on this, my ST branded outlet repeaters might actually be part of the problem rather than the solution. I’ve ordered a Tradfri outlet from Ikea to see if that helps, though delivery is 6 days away, time enough to see if the ZigBee mesh heals itself somehow.