Does Hue smart plug work as Zigbee repeater?

I got 3 Philips Hue smart plugs connected directly to ST (not to my Hue hub), does these work as repeaters and is there any way to see my Zigbee route in ST?

They do work as Zigbee repeaters.

At present there is no way to see the Zigbee routes for a smartthings account except by adding a third party mapping utility, and that’s a fairly complex technical task. :disappointed_relieved:

The following FAQ is almost 10 years old so some of the details may be different, but the basic approach would be the same.

FAQ: Mapping your ZigBee network with Digi's XCTU

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OK, thanks for confirming. Have I understood correctly that Hue (or any other zigbee) bulb also works as repeater but it might take some time, even few days that either one of these activate as an repeater?
Intention would be to install contact sensor for my mailbox but my hubs zigbee network doesn´t quite reach there :slightly_smiling_face:

No, there’s no difference in how long a zigbee bulb takes to act as a repeater vs any other device class. It should happen right away.

That said, there are two separate issues.

First, most Zigbee bulbs, including hue, just don’t make very good repeaters on a smartthings Zigbee network. They run into what is essentially a buffer overflow type condition where they will drop messages they are supposed to be repeating, causing those messages to be lost, or have to be sent again.

Ikea brand bulbs are an exception— for whatever reason, they seem to work fine as repeaters.

This Issue has been confirmed by smartthings engineering staff, and is covered in the following FAQ:

FAQ: Are Smart Bulbs Repeaters? (Updated 2019: the new answer is yes, but may be inconsistent)

Second, to get the mailbox sensor to use one of your other repeaters, it has to be added to your network last. Otherwise, it may not realize the repeaters exist. The alternative to this is to force a Zigbee heal. Leave all of your Zigbee devices, including the sensor, on power except the hub. Unplug the hub, and if it has batteries, take those out. Leave the hub off power for about 20 minutes. this will cause the other devices to go into “panic mode“ because they cannot reach the hub. Then when the hub is back on power, all the other devices will check their neighbors and choose the best routing. That’s how you get them to start using new repeaters.

That process may be the one you were thinking about: it can take a while for all the tables to get rebuilt, so you may not see the results until the next day. But it’s nothing specific to bulbs: it would apply to any Zigbee Device.

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Thanks for clarifying answer, that made things pretty clear :+1:

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