Sonoff Zigbee contact sensors going offline

Hi all. I have bought quite a few sensor for the house and the ones downstairs work fine.
However when I set up ones and take them upstairs they lose the signal and stay in either the close or open position (which ever was there last position)

I have a Orbi mesh system and think it must be to do with this.
Can anyone help at all? Very annoying!

I’m sure that’s very frustrating. :disappointed_relieved: what’s the Brand and model of the sensors that are going offline?

Hi mate.

They are sonoff (SONOFF SNZB-04 ZigBee Wireless Door Window)# It cant be that they lose the signal as the mesh is Orbi 753 and covers all the house?# Just no idea.

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OK, those devices use zigbee protocol, not Wi-Fi. That matters for several different reasons.

First, the good news: they get much better battery life than Wi-Fi devices. That’s why zigbee is so popular for battery powered sensors. You will commonly get a year, sometimes even two, battery life in a zigbee sensor, where the same device using Wi-Fi might only get two or three months.

The bad news is the way they get much better battery life: they use much less power. Which means they have much less range, typically about 15 m from the hub, AND a Zigbee radio can very easily get drowned out by a nearby Wi-Fi radio. Basically the stronger your Wi-Fi is, the harder it is to get your Zigbee messages through.

There are several ways to improve the situation. The first question is do you have any other zigbee devices which are plug-ins, not battery operated? They can act as “repeaters“ and pass along messages from other zigbee Devices. This helps you cover a longer distance and sometimes can help with the interference issue as well.

What model hub are you using to control your Sensors? That will determine what additional repeaters you might be able to add. :thinking:

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Thank you very much for taking your time to explain.

Thank you.

I am using the smarthings
Hub v3 EU

If you can advise on any repeaters I need I would welcome that and I can get them asap!

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IKEA Tradfri smart plugs are usually good Zigbee repeaters with smartthings and are very inexpensive if you get them directly from IKEA. They are available in many different countries. They are just a simple one socket smart plug. You can also use them as the smart plug: the repeating ability works whether the socket is on or off. The product description will say they need their own gateway, but they don’t: you will be using the smartthings hub instead. :sunglasses:

Thanks again. I will get them tomorrow hopefully. Thanks for the advice and help

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Hi JDRoberts. I bought 2 and setting up tonight. I will let you know how it goes!!

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After you add them to smartthings, unplug the hub and leave it off power for about 15 minutes. While leaving all your other devices on power. Then when you power it up again all the Zigbee devices will look for the best route, which will cause them to use the new repeaters.

Also, you might find the following helpful:

May seem like afterthought, but I was having the same thing with my Sonoff/Zigbee door sensor. Turns out the battery was low. I’ve only had it a week or so. Replaced battery and I’m good. We’ll see