Multipurpose sensors range

Devices & Integrations
29

Understood.

There are two likely possibilities. And both could also be true.

  1. The hub itself is defective. Speaking as a field technician, by far the easiest way to test this is just to buy another hub and see if that fixes the problems. Buy it from someplace with a good returns policy and you can return it if it doesn’t work.

  2. there is a local interference drowning out the Zigbee signals. This does happen. And it might very well affect your smartthings Zigbee network but not your Hue zigbee network if they are on different Zigbee channels. (Or the Hue system might be creating interference for the SmartThings system.)

What channel is your smartthings hub on? Many zigbee coordinators are smart enough to select a channel with low interference, or even have channel hopping capabilities, but the smartthings hub is not one of these. There’s no way to change its zigbee channel except by resetting the hub and then it just randomly picks a channel which could be the same one you just had. :scream:

Anyway, start by reading the following FAQ:

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

Also remember that the smart things hub is a single plastic box that has multiple radios inside, and even some of those can interfere with zigbee. (I know, it’s tricky.). The radios are Omni directional and the signal spreads as you move out away from the box.

It’s not at all uncommon that you get the strongest connection to an end device about 3 m away from where the hub is. A lot of people make the mistake of putting a device they are having trouble connecting right on top of the hub or right next to the hub, and that’s often less successful than moving it farther away. (Again, physics.)

And in particular, you want your Zigbee devices at least 3 m from any high power Wi-Fi transmitter, including your WiFi router and any access points.

I have previously posted about a situation we had at my house where when we put a Wi-Fi extender on one wall, all the zigbee devices to the east of it fell off the network. We moved it 90° to a different wall, and everything was fine. Physics. :sunglasses: