In the case of Xiaomi / Aqara Zigbee devices, they ignore all commands regarding device reporting and sending “heartbeat” messages to the hub. These devices only follow what they were programmed to do, and nothing else.
So between the a4refill and bspranger DHs (device handlers), there is no difference in terms of keeping the Xiaomi / Aqara devices connected because the device handler has no effect on maintaining a connection.
In other words, your issues with your Aqara motion sensors dropping their connection has nothing to do with which device handler you are using.
I recommend reading at least the first post of this thread I started and maintain on the community forums for the Hubitat Hub - which has the same kinds of connection issues with Xiaomi / Aqara Zigbee devices:
Long story short, the reason for Xiaomi / Aqara devices dropping their connection with the SmartThings Hub is that they were designed to work only with a Xiaomi / Aqara Hub. There are ways to get them to remain connected to a ST hub, but it requires careful selection and use of other Zigbee devices that are mains-powered (plugged into your home’s electrical power).
Has anyone tried connecting anything to the pinouts on the 1st gen version of the Xiaomi button ?
They have a Grd and a DI+ connection on the boards and I tested 2 peices of wire loosely attached and when they short it sends a pushed action to SmartThings.
So I’m hoping I can use that to create this Smart(ish) doorbell I’ve seen HERE
Cheers
Quick question! I’ve had a number of sensors for 2 years now and the battery needs replacing. (Motion, temperature and door). They went offline, so I put a new battery in. However nothing happens, it doesn’t reconnect. I got the motion sensor back online by completely re-pairing from scratch with catchall. Do I now have to do this with every device? Thanks!
You should not need to completely re-pair. With the new battery in place set the hub in include mode. Then press the sensors button every few seconds. After a while you should see the led flashes change. Keep pressing the button every few seconds and you should see the sensor appear in the app like a new device, but it will say something like it was added again. Press the button a few more times then save the re-added device. You can also watch the hun events to see a zbjoin. Once you have close out the join mode place the sensor within 2 meters of the hub and leave until you see it report battery status.
Note for this to work you do need the sensor Zigbee ID to be stored against the device.
That’s not necessarily the case. Because these devices aren’t fully compliant the ZigBee id doesn’t always transfer in the handshake. So you will need to monitor for a catchall event and repopulate the NetID field.
Yes, that’ll why I said “Note for this to work you do need the sensor Zigbee ID to be stored against the device”.
If it does not transfer automatically you need to go and enter it manually. I recall someone giving the advice to put the Device Network ID also in the Zigbee ID field. This is bad practice. If you have the correct Zigbee ID then you should never need to delete and re-pair the device if/when it drops off.
Still not the case. Unfortunately the device frequently does not handshake with the ZigBee id so will not necessarily rejoin with the original device. You can see this happening if you plug an xstick into the mesh.
I just recounted what I know works for me. I even did this two days ago with a door sensor that had dropped off. Because the Zigbee ID is in there when the device attaches it uses a new Device Network ID, but attaches itself to the original device entry. YMMV
My motion sensors all started being stuck in motion detected, replaced battery, re-paired, it works for one cycle and then it gets stuck. if I reset it from within the ST app it works once before the problem is back.
Anyone else?
Thanks for the confirmation, I’m pulling my hair out trying to find the problem.
Interesting is that if I leave it in the stuck motion detected mode it will still report battery status periodically without problems
Same here. There are occasional times where an inactive event registered at the right time, but several times were there was an inactive event registered much later. It looks like sometimes the event gets processed and sometimes it doesn’t. I wonder if other motion sensors are having a problem.
I’m also having this issue where when motion has been triggered, it just stay that way. Tried using the original DTH as mentioned by @lifeisfun yields the same result. This is very strange as the only problem i’m having are with the Xiaomi’s motion sensors. Other sensors from Xiaomi is working and other motion sensors (hue, ST) is working fine.
As Wayne pointed out that it is most likely a smartthings issue as the above issue is present say 75% of the day. It sometimes work, but most of the time, it doesn’t.
Was just hoping that someone in the community figured out a way to resolve this rather than waiting for ST to get this sorted out.
