SmartThings Community

New Hub and Still Horrible Problems

(John Hernandez) #1

Hi All,

I bought a ST hub last year and setup some devices. Everything worked fairly well for a while and then all the sudden none of my zwave devices would respond to commands. Zigbee lights worked fine for a while and even then they stopped responding. In the app it thinks commands are successful. I’ll turn zwave outlet switch on, nothing happens, app thinks switch is on. Zwave switch will respond if I put it RIGHT up to my hub. I put my hub right up to my zwave lock though and it will not get an exclude or pair response. I have the v2 hub now with the same exact problem. There’s no way I could have that much interference in my house. Could my zigbee and zwave networks become out of wack? Please someone help. Is there anything I can check in the logs? I feel like I spent all this money for nothing. Here is some of my hub stats:

zigbeePowerLevel: -2
• zwaveControllerStatus: 3D
• zwaveNodeID: 01
• zwavePowerLevel: 0
• zwaveRegion: 1
• zwaveSerialVersion: 0
• zwaveSucID: 00
• zwaveVersion: 0000

(sidjohn1) #2

There are several things that can cause what you’re experiencing and yes interference is one of them. One of the first things to try is rebooting… everything including the hub. If interference is your issue some devices will report a rssi value. The value is always negative (closer to 0 is better) and -40 to -60 is fairly normal but -75 to -100+ is low and would indicate an interference or range issue. I find this chart works well for both zwave and zigbee devices when trying to estimate range.

Other things to help reduce interference is keep your hub away from all microwave ovens and non zwave/zigbee wireless devices. This includes your WIFI router, baby monitors, speakers and xmas lights.

A faulty device can also cause this and can be very hard to to find, but a device in the throughs of death can cause the zwave or zigbee mesh to hang. Find it, remove/replace it and all will be right with the world. You may have to power off 1 device at a time to find it.

Checking logs:

Everything else:

(John Hernandez) #3

Thanks for the info. If a device reports rssi values, where would you look?

(sidjohn1) #4

https://graph.api.smartthings.com/device/list > Select a device

This is from a smartthings multi

(Kurt Sanders) #5

It is hard to relocate the ST Hub away from home devices that emit wireless band frequencies when the new ST V2 hub, in all it’s glory, only provides a WIRED ethernet connection. In my home, the ST hub is located 2 feet away from a Netgear Tri-Band wireless router, cable modem, switch, Assurelink router, and several NAS. The kitchen is right above the basement computer room, and has a Wireless phone, microwave. Oh, did I forget to mention the 5 Sonos devices…

Yes, I realize I could relocate the ST hub using a set of home Powerlines or plug into a wireless repeater, but that would add risk that those network extension devices might introduce occasional instability and leave the ST hub in an offline state (which happens enough with the ST Cloud being unstable).

(sidjohn1) #6

ST recommends keeping the hub @ least 6ft away from your Netgear Tri-Band wireless router or any other wifi router/access point. I’d start here.

This is how Wifi channels and zigbee channels line up in the same frequency space. My hub v2 is on zigbee channel 20 and my wifi is on channel 1 to keep them as separated as possible. My hub v1 was on zigbee 15 and i kept my wifi on channel 11 for the same reason, until it was replaced by my hub v2. If your hub is also on zigbee channel 20 but your wifi is on channel 7-10 this would be a major issue.

You’l have to double check on your Netgear Tri-Band wireless router but these should be operating in the 5 Mhz spectrum, as long as they are they should not affect your zwave or zigbee devices.

Depending on the building materials the basement floor/kitchen ceiling can greatly reduce the zwave/zigbee signal and make it difficult to communicate to devices on the first floor. If the Wireless phone is a 2.4 Ghz phone, than yes it might interfere with zigbee devices if its a 5Ghz phone, then it shouldn’t

This may help too:

(Kurt Sanders) #7

Thanks @sidjohn1 for the detailed technical response. :grinning:

I have verified on the ST Hub IDE that it is operating the Zigbee channel at 15. I have our Netgear R8500 Tri-band wireless router 2.4 GHz channel manually set at 11, separated at the top end of the spectrum to minimize potential collisions with other home wireless devices.

A neighbor’s wireless router occasionally shows up in a wireless scan I routinely perform at channel 1. So I hesitate to place anything at that end of the allowable spectrum.

The Sonos wireless gateway operates in the 2.4 GHz range and one can manually select 1, 6, or 11 in the Sonos App. Our Sonos gateway is operating at channel 6 and does not have any connectivity or playback issues.

I recently purchased an Aeon Labs Aeotec Z-Wave Range Extender/Repeater (DSD37-ZWUS) which I thought would allow our Z-Wave door lock in our garage obtain a connection, but that did not materialize. The Aeon Labs Aeotec Z-Wave Range Extender/Repeater (DSD37-ZWUS) had to be placed within 20’ to the V2 Hub and the garage door is another 30’ through a wall. So I guess I would need to purchase a second Aeon Labs Aeotec Z-Wave Range Extender/Repeater (DSD37-ZWUS) or equivalent, and that is more than I care to invest without certainty.

I cannot replace any of my switches because of the cost, and they are already perfectly controlled by X10. I still have several X10 switches and handheld remotes that are rock solid in their operation, using the existing neutral house wiring and a unique broadcast band for handheld remotes.

Z-Wave and Zigbee definitely have their growing operational issues with distance coverage in this day and age of larger homes and more wireless broadcasting devices. I have tried the other solutions below, and none are a clear winner. :angry:

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(sidjohn1) #8

This may also help with viewing your zigbee rssi levels.

You may want to look into a plug in zwave gen5 device the range is better than standard zwave. If you buy from amazon you can return it w/o hassle if it doesn’t work.

(Kurt Sanders) #9

Funny that you suggest that @sidjohn1! Great minds think alike.

I did purchase the following Gen5 device from Amazon. Unfortunately after several hours of tinkering that same day, and getting it to pair as a generic outlet (which is what ST decided it was), I decided it was not functioning as expected and returned it. After pairing, the device would not connect with the V2 hub further than 10’ from the hub and to make matters worse, SmartThings does not offer a native driver in their less than robust library, which severely limited the extra functionality of the Gen5 device which I was hoping would saturate the dead Z-Wave garage area.

Thanks for the link to the Network Monitor App. I installed and ran it and obtained a -64 RSSI and 96% Link Quality. The App only measured my ST Presence Sensor Fob. I have several other Zigbee devices, but it did not show them in the list. I reviewed the Network Monitor SmartThings groovy code and it only can list and measure those devices that have a signal.capability.

(sidjohn1) #10

Every environment is different and you may find out zwave and zigbee just don’t work well in your home. x10 does have the benefit of hard wired communication that neither zigbee nor zwave can do.

With the network monitor app you can use it to check your zigbee signal strength with the key fob in various areas of your house where you have other zigbee devices. Saddly I’ve not found a zwave device that reports RSSI.

(John Hernandez) #11

I paired an aeon multisensor to see if it reported RSSI but it does not. Again, I had to pair it right next to the hub and then after moving it away it lost connectivity. The odd thing is everything used to work well, even on my v1 hub.

(Kurt Sanders) #12

Yes, I remember the V1 days of stability… then I decided to upgrade to V2 and now have issues almost every other day, as I add more error logic to my smartAPPs, reboot the hub, and check for outages on the status page. :rage:

(Anthony S.) #13

I’m at the point where I think they may need to make some leadership changes within the organization, I have never seen this level of consistent outages or failures before from a company that stayed in business long
I also think ST should pull this product out of consumer stores until they get this crap sorted out.

I really miss the days where the worst thing I had to deal with was a missed schedule.
I haven’t been able to reliably control any of my zigbee or z-wave devices for almost a month.
Thank god for my Lifx bulbs because those are cloud connected and still respond to commands.

(sidjohn1) #14

This is a zwave device and so far I’ve not found a zwave device that reports RSSI.

If you are familiar with reading device types, any devicetype with “capability.signalStrength” should report RSSI and LQI.