[BETA v0515] Hampton Bay Zigbee Ceiling Fan/Light Controller

[JDRoberts]

I’m tired tonight, so I’m not going to going to go into details, but I assume someone has already walked you through potential Wi-Fi interference issues? Wi-Fi interference is one of those things that commonly peaks and ebbs because of changes in usage as household members come and go. For example, I’ve told the story of the zigbee device at my house that kept dropping off every afternoon around 330. I’m pretty sure one of my neighbors has boosted Wi-Fi and a kid that got home from school around then.

Here’s the FAQ:

FAQ: What WiFi Channel is least likely to interfere with SmartThings?

Z wave and wifi don’t interfere with each other, so you don’t have to worry about that. But WiFi can drown out nearby zigbee, particularly boosted Wi-Fi. At my house, we have a Wi-Fi booster. If we plug it in on the north wall in one room, all the smartthings – controlled zigbee devices to the west of it drop off-line. If we just move the Wi-Fi booster to the east wall, all the zigbee devices work fine. So the first step is to make sure that your SmartThings hub is at least 3 m away from your Wi-Fi router or any access point. But sometimes the problem is bigger than that, and your Wi-Fi router is broadcasting on a channel which is just drowning out your zigbee devices. You do have the option to change your Wi-Fi router, typically between channels 1, 6, and 11, so what’s the best Wi-F…

Obviously, what we’re doing here is just differential diagnosis. Maybe it’s A. Nope, doesn’t look like that. What about B? And so on. Sometimes that’s the only way to troubleshoot these intermittent problems.