[OBSOLETE] Original & Aqara Xiaomi Zigbee Sensors (contact, temp, motion, button, outlet, leak, etc)

[veeceeoh (Keith G)]

@LittleJohnny

I have not been able to get them or any other Aqara Door/Window sensor to rejoin. I have used the method as described by Veeceeoh (thanks Veeceeoh) for HOURS… no can do… I have tried two new devices right out of the box and even one that was operating on another hub.
Nothing will pair…

@AnubizDK

Obviously i tried to re-pair it, but after numerous attempts i still can’t get it to pair, so i am having the same problem at the moment…

I’m not 100% sure, but this sounds like a known issue with custom DTH’s going “stale” in SmartThing’s cache for a user’s hub, as explained in this thread:

@RBoy

Symptoms

• When you try to pair a device using the ST app or the Classic ST app it may appear to pair successfully, i.e.: the device will provide feedback that it has paired. e.g.
  • Devices/locks flash green lights or other lights to indicate successful pairing
  • Device may successful sounds/beeps
• But the ST mobile app won’t show any new devices, it’ll continue saying Looking for devices
• There are no new devices showing up in the IDE under My Devices
• You are able to successfully manually exclude the device using the General Exclusion process

Cause

This is caused by custom DTH’s being marked as “ stale ” in the platform cache which then prevents the device from being created because the “stale” DTH is inaccessible to the platform, even through it pairs successfully.
Ideally the platform should automatically refresh the cache but due to an issue sometimes it fails to do and the custom “stale” DTH then prevents successful creation of a paired device. ST’s engineers are aware of the issue and hopefully it’ll be fixed in future.

Resolution

• Open the custom DTH in the IDE and “ Publish ” it again. Do this a couple of times, publishing the DTH removes the “ stale ” mark and refreshes the DTH cache which allows the platform to access the DTH and finish the pairing process to create the device.
• Check if you have multiple custom DTH’s which may match your device fingerprint. Sometimes you may have old unused DTH’s lying around who’s “fingerprints” match the device you’re trying to pair. If any of those old/duplicate/multiple custom DTH’s are marked as “ stale ”, the device will not be created (it’s a chain process that goes through all custom DTH’s who’s fingerprint match and the weakest link fails). Steps to rectify the issue:
  1. Delete any used/duplicate/multiple DTH’s who’s fingerprints match your device. If you’re unsure which DTH’s are being used, just start deleting all custom DTH’s. Any DTH’s that are in use cannot be deleted (the IDE will print an error saying that it’s in use), and the ones in use will be left behind, all the rest (unused) will be gone.
  2. If you want to keep the DTH’s for legacy reasons, open the DTH’s and delete or comment out the “ fingerprint ” lines, “ Save ” and “ Publish ” so now the DTH’s won’t be used by the pairing process
  3. If for whatever reason you need to keep all the fingerprints in all your DTH’s, then you need to open each DTH and “ Publish ” them again so that it refreshes the cache of all the DTH’s

The “stale” DTH issue has actually happened to me twice while pairing a device, and although it did not appear in the SmartThings mobile app when in “Add a Thing” mode, I could see Live Logging output showing that it had successfully paired. Oddly, the device was not in my hub’s Device List as viewed in the IDE.

In addition to re-saving and re-publishing my custom DTHs, I also had to look at the Hub Activity logs to figure out the Device Network ID so I could manually add the device to the Device List before I could delete it and try pairing it again normally. I call this phenomenon “ghost devices”, and it’s quite frustrating to deal with.

There are other possible reasons why Xiaomi / Aqara devices may have trouble pairing, so if the above suggestions don’t work, let me know.