Expandable Zigbee Repeater Solution (With Temperature, Humidity, Pressure and Light sensors)

Thanks. I’ll try re-pair a few devices in that room and see if the child count goes up.
Thanks

I’m actually using Smatthings humidity DHT.
Because it runs locally.
Runs great, of course I’m not getting pressure and light sensors reading.
It still acting as repeater.

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@plantucha, that is cool. It did not even come across my mind to test it using ST DTH.

thanks for the tip. Switched DH to SmartSense Moisture Sensor

Now i need to get a Zigbee stick to map my network…

@BatraD and @plantucha, I am curious in term of what the value of light sensor for you guys. I like to have some feedback about its value. It seems that being able to run locally is compelling enough for you to ignore the light sensor value. If this is true for majority of member here, I would consider making a variance without light sensor. There is a little cost saving in this case.

Of course, I would welcome input from anyone in this regard.

in my case sensor is in a dark place so I do not use it.
however my plan is to deploy later some light sensors outside on the porch, unfortunately, it will require some waterproof/transparent enclosure.

Hi Mike, nail polish would help to coat the module. Just avoid the sensor. They should be on without coating. The rest of the components should be coated.

A case would complicate things. Under the sun, temperature inside a case would be much higher than surrounding air temperature. Keep that in mind. Unless you do not really care about the Environment Sensor for outdoor.

I have it deployed behind a door in the bedroom and in the garage near cabinets /junk piled in front. No use for the sensor in that location. Thanks

What values are people using for the sensor adjustments?
It seems to me that the humidity and luminance are both reporting quite low compared to what I expect and what is reported by other devices I have.

The spec for BME280 relative humidity is +/- 3%.

I personally do not adjust the illuminance value. It give enough range for me to determine sunrise and sunset. ST smart light app strangely look for integer value from zigbee attribute. That number unfortunately is not an Lux.

For both devices, the rh seems to be reporting 10-12% low in my tests so far (comparing to nest and zooz 4 in 1).

I test mine against nest in about the same room. They are around ± 3%. BME280 is one of the most accurate sensor out there. We are also do not have cover on the sensor. It is as exposed to ambient as it can be. Other sensor may have different type of measuring humidity which can have significant differences in result. I could believe if you really want to be on spot, further calibration by adding some offset to the measured value should be done. I personally have not done calibration to a gold reference. The way I use humidity is more of looking at the delta. I can easily detect when someone take shower in the bathroom or breathing in front of the sensor by looking at the jump in value read.

Having said that, the sensor may need time to reconditioned itself. I read on datasheet. The simplest one is roughly run in on 70 degree F (room temperature should be fine) and humidity above 40% for about 5 days or more. What I do is to run it in my bathroom for a few days. This will help speed up the reconditioning process. There are other recondition steps that is faster. However, they are not practical in unless you put them in a controlled room.

I was able to add ~26 quirky trippers to my network, taking the zigbee mesh upto 65 devices (8 GE switches/dimmers, 3 Osram bulbs, 3 OSRAM LED strips, 3 KOF Fans, 2 Repeaters, 2 Keen Repeaters, 14 Keen Vents, 2 ST Multi sensors, 2 ST Presence sensors and 26 Quirky Trippers). All seem to be communicating well

Switched back to the original DH, and it still does not show any child devices routing to it.

Have another 20 sensors to add to doors (Quirky) and leak (Xiaomi) locations. Will try adding them tomorrow after the ST code update which is scheduled for later in the day…

FYI, router to router devices (devices that typically DC powered), would not count as children. Zigbee is complicated protocol.

For sure, sleepy end device (battery operated) will count as child when it associate itself to the module. An end device when it pair to the network will pick the parent. An end device experiencing issue sending a packet will look for new parent.

This router as a parent would not look for child and ask for them to associate themself to it. The sensor also may already participate in your zigbee network as sibling to the other routers and help in delivering(repeating packet). To see this, you may need sniffer. Things could get expensive when you want to dig this deep.

As I mentioned, for testing, you do want to force end device to associate to a particular parent. In production, if a child decide to associate to a parent and not experiencing any issue, why one would want to force it to associate to specific parent?

With your ZigBee router, can you send a readAttribute to view the short address of each child and neighbor?

@iharyadi Is there a way to get the list of neighbor devices? I have been having some strange issues with lost events and want to see if they correlate to one of these routers.

The short answer is no. The sensor Zigbee stack have that information. However, there is no upper level cluster to deliver the information.

When you say “events”, do you mean event in the scope of DTH? In DTH, a device typically parse incoming message from sensor. It, then, typically package it into an event or events. If this is the case, you can launch your log. You should verify whether the sensor do sent zigbee messages. If they do, the issue is somewhere else.

My ST hub is not receiving some open/close messages from sensors.
I also noticed one of these repeaters that I put on the extreme other side of my house from the hub shows 10 children (over half of my zigbee devices).
Probably not related to the issues (I plan to check and replace batteries this week to rule out the obvious), bit it is curious.

Do you still have some of extended range Zigbee Radio with PCB antenna?
I would need 4x.

Hi Mike,

I will let you know next week. I am in the process of testing having the module assembled by a manufacturer. If the yield is good, I will let you know.

Thanks
Iman

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