Have you added any 2g wifi devices recently?
No, and there in lies the frustration. I’m a technical guy and been around tech for decades and its crazy to me that things just simply stop working. In the past, the first place you look is “What’s changed”? In the case of ST (and Hue for that matter), sometimes things DO change that we’re unaware of, such as auto updates. For my particular situation, I know that it appears many have had great luck with IRIS products but in my case, they are the only products in my smart home (100+ devices). I turned my hub off for about 2 hrs yesterday and this AM, everything was working great. Fingers crossed.
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In my experience, it kills things.
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In my experience, its lets me know when my crappy Xiaomi water sensors randomly fall offline.
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Or the sensors are fine, and the Device Health is the actual problem.
Here’s how I’ve heard it described:
Device Health reports problems when devices miss their normal check ins. Many devices don’t report check ins within the intervals Device Health is expecting, so even though the device is healthy and checking in as it should, Device Health flags it as unavailable and makes it unusable.
As a test, next time your “crappy Xiaomi” or Iris devices report unavailable, turn off Device Health and watch them immediately come back to life.
nope, they really are offline. this is a custom handler i made with the checkInterval in device health I set because i know they are supposed to check in every 50 minutes. They really are offline. I’ve never had an issue with device health.
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Xiaomi sensors are in a separate category. The original model is not certified to the same zigbee home automation standard that smartthings uses. It doesn’t check in in the same way. It doesn’t work very well with repeaters from other brands, either. But these are very cheap and actually pretty well-made. But it’s a slightly incompatible device, so there are some quirks. And one of those is that they can, indeed, disconnect from the network. Particularly if they try to route through a repeater.
A lot of people are using them just because they are so cheap. (Commonly under $10 per sensor) but there are risks because of the lack of certification.
At least once, and I think twice, all the Xiaomi sensors stopped working after a smartthings platform update.
I wouldn’t call them crappy, because I think they work with their own gateway quite well, and they don’t promise compatibility with anything else.
But at the same time, if you want to use them, you have to do a lot more network planning than you do with ZHA certified devices.
And none of this has anything to do with “device health.” You run into the same issues with the Xioamis whether you have that turned on or off.
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The Iris Motion, SmartPlugs, and Door & Window sensors are some of the best quality devices of their kind. I have over 150 Iris-branded devices on my system and can say the battery life puts the SmartThings-branded devices to complete and utter shame. My oldest V2 Door & Window sensors from October 2015 are still using their original batteries, while none of my newer ST devices are. You need devices cable of acting as repeaters. The Hue bulbs are ZLL which is incompatible with ST, plus they are connected only to the Hue bridge. They do not act as repeaters for SmartThings.
My advice, and your best bet… Go down to Lowe’s and buy a couple of their SmartPlugs (NOT the GE branded plugs, nor the Iris WiFi plug) and place them in strategic places throughout your house. I’m sure you can find uses for the controlled outlet too as a bonus.
I can almost guarantee your issues will be fixed. Plus you’ll get better battery life out of your sensors as they should be able to transmit at a lower power level to boot.
Good luck!
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Agree 100%. In my experience (dozens of them), if they’re paired properly, they don’t fall off ever. Going on 11 months of stability with mine.
Device Health has a track record of falsely reporting perfectly working devices as unavailable, whether it’s ST branded sensors, Iris or Xiaomi ones. It doesn’t hurt to try disabling it if you have devices reporting unavailable, and seeing if they come back online.
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I could give a long technical explanation about why “ZLL is not compatible with smartthings” doesn’t quite describe the situation, but I’m not sure anybody in this particular thread would be interested. 
If anybody is interested in what happens technically when you join a ZLL device to smartthings, see the following thread:
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Thanks Steve - I’ll do that. Can you please provide the exact link to what I need so I don’t but the wrong thing?
Currently 15% off
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Iris-120-Volt-White-Smart-Plug/999925330
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@Automated_House beat me to it. That’s what you need. Without knowing your environment it’s hard to say how many you need. You might be able to make do with just 1 or 2, it really depends on how far the hub is from the devices what are dropping, and of course how many in total you have on the system.
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The good Iris motion sensors are also 15% off, going to pick up one this morning to fill a gap I have. 
I guess I’ll buy 1 for each floor and see how that works. Thanks everyone.
BTW I did turn off Device Health and Ive been without a prob since Sunday afternoon. We’ll see…
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have you verified that devices are still reporting open/close or motion events?
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Yes, I did verify this. I guess I don’t really understand why but as of this writing, all of my IRIS devices are showing active (meaning, there is not a red dot that says “unavailable”). Motion and open/closed seem to be working fine. I’m still going to buy the smart plug just to be 100% safe though.
You won’t get a red dot, even if they fall offline, with Device Health turned off.
Ah ok, so maybe some are in fact not working. I guess I’ll know if I cause an event with each device and see if its working. That will take some time. Hummm…
That.s exactly what you have to do. Open the device in the app. Trigger it (open a door, cause motion, etc) and then see if the status changes in the app. Repeat for the other devices.
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