What's a cheap zigbee repeater?

Take a minute to look at what we are discussing here. The Hue bulbs repeat ZigBee traffic there is no doubt about that. This community (created by SmartThings) has recognized and pointed out they don’t appear to repeat traffic for non Hue devices well, that is all we are saying. But somehow you put all that on SmartThings saying they better figure this stuff out. Well if you were to ask them instead of bash them you would probably find out they don’t officially support Hue bulbs directly connected to the SmartThings hub. And I for one am glad they have this stance and here is why:

I like having my Hue bulbs directly connected to my hub. Even though the Hue bulbs may not be good ZigBee repeaters when connected to a HA profile there are still advantages to doing this. One of the biggest ones for me is my Hue bulbs can be much further away from my hub because my other ZigBee routers will route packets to them. So in other words if I had to connect my Hue bulbs directly to the Hue hub most of my bulls would be out of range. The fact that SmartThings lets them connect saves me a ton of money and they work great for me.

I just had to chime in and say I don’t think it is fair to put that on them. If it wasn’t for this community I highly doubt anyone would even be discussing how well the various light link devices work when connected to the home automation profile. I’m going to say it! I still love my SmartThings network. Yea its been a rocky relationship and she may be high maintenance but she is still the best looking gal at the dance!! I’m not going anywhere.

So I would like to close by saying I’m not going to get in a pissing match over this. If you have technical questions I can help with I will do my best to help answer them but if you want to take this conversation in some other negative direction you will not hear anything more from me.

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I’m not saying change anything, just give us documentation. I’m happy Hue works. What I’m not happy about is the fact it is the only device we have any serious details about. If that is because the community did all the work, then that is a failure on ST’s part I think. We know that Hue is ZLL, we know that the bulbs repeat their own ZLL network. But outside the blanket statement of ‘most plugged in devices are repeaters’ we don’t really know what works right.

I am 100% behind community based support. I am a linux sysadmin by trade so half my work is doing nothing but adding to or finding community based support. So the fact we know so much about Hue is great. I just want to know more about generic zigbee.

ST chose to lean heavily on zigbee. Even changing up their store listing to more prominently feature the zigbee based GE switches. All ST devices are zigbee. Yet outside of their smart plug we dont have any details on how to make their main network mesh better. “Most plugged in devices are repeaters”, then we have so many caveats already or so much hearsay. Add to that the fact that ST actively promotes the fact other devices work with their system, but gives you no indication of what really works. Its this shaky half step of openness that makes us have so many problems.

Their zigbee devs/engineers I would have to guess know a little more than most of us, I say most cause there are people here with TONS of knowledge, and sharing that info would be nice. A simple note on the compatible list is all I ask for. Something they already do, if you look at the list, all GE zigbee devices they spell out as repeaters. None of the bulbs give any indication of that. No news is good news?

More info is all I’m asking, not asking for any changes… aside from the usual stability changes

That’s my thought. In most cases, it “just works”. But, then there’re the 10-20% on the far end of the distribution that ST still has to support. For those of us in that boat, more details in the specs for the devices would be helpful. Protocol (ZHA, ZLL, Zwave), Router/Repeater (Yes, No, with caveats), etc. That way I think you could have a little more certainty about what your network would look like as you’re assembling various pieces.

In my own case, I made some assumptions on the basis of the “Most plugged in devices are repeaters” statement, and am pretty certain that it’s caused me quite a bit of frustration and time spent troubleshooting in order to get a functional and stable network. That should not happen.

I also think that it would be very helpful for us power users to be able to get some network information from within the platform. Not in the app, necessarily, but certainly in the IDE. The only way I was able to really figure out what was going on was to buy the Digi xStick and use XCTU to map the network. That should not be necessary.

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I broke down and got my hands on an xStick and mapped out my v1 mesh with XCTU. It was pretty interesting.

I have a bunch of Link bulbs which advertise as routers, but don’t seem to do much of that. I find it interesting that the Links don’t seem to be showing a LQI/signal-strength value for both directions in XCTU, while my OSRAM and Hues (which pretty much everything on my mesh is routing through) do. I believe I saw one device at the fringe of the mesh route through a Link, but it’s in the garage behind a metal door and likely can’t reach the OSRAM/Hue/SP-outlets/Hub.

Part of the routing algorithm is to rank neighbors based on this (link cost calculation.) Are the Links just not providing an LQI and getting pushed to the bottom of the list? Maybe they’re ranked so low that literally anything else with a signal will be a preferable router to an end device. I don’t know enough about the lower layers of ZigBee to really say.


TL;DR: Links don’t route. Hues do. ST/Iris outlets seem to work even better.

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I’m not sure if this has been mentioned but the CREE LED bulbs act as repeaters as long as the light socket is always energized. You don’t have to have the CREE bulb illuminated to repeat Zigbee signals either. Best part is, they are only $15!

Had a chance to work with the xStick and XCTU software a bit and thought I’d report back. First screenshot is my “before” network “mesh”. As you can see, it’s not much of a mesh. Only the coordinator and one router/repeater (both highlighted) actually talking to any of the devices; everybody else is just listening, and in many cases only to one of the two. Not very robust.

Then I added three of those Iris outlets, so I now have 5 total “known” routers. I placed them so that they’re reasonably well distributed through a very long, relatively narrow ranch house. None of them is more than about 25’ apart and they’re generally separated by one room. Big difference. From left to right as you’re looking at the front door; Master Bedroom, network closet near the Den (the hub), Family room, Spare bedroom, Garage. They’re laid out accordingly in the “after” picture below. The green router/repeater is the xStick; it doesn’t count as it’s not always going to be there.

Note that in this second screenshot I’ve grouped and highlighted the lights in the rooms rather than the routers/repeaters, so that I have a better idea of what’s what. You can clearly see the difference in connectivity here; most nodes now have at least two, and in many cases three nodes to listen to. That looks and feels a lot more like a mesh to me!

And, no, I don’t know why some of those leaf nodes didn’t show up in the second scan. I let it run for an hour, but just a few of them showed up.

Anyway, an interesting exercise and I think at this point I’ve done about all I can to ensure that if there’s a command sent, it’ll get to the appropriate device. The huge difference this has made tempts me to pull all of those bulbs that I moved over to the Hue hub last weekend back, if only just to see if they’re improved. But, they seem to be working fine on the Philips hub, and I’ve spent plenty of time futzing with this stuff over the last month, so I’m probably going to leave sleeping dogs lie for a while.

I should also add that I have not done any testing, yet, to see what I can see regarding Cree and GE Link bulbs acting as routers/repeaters.

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Actually, I take a least part of that back. The “Pantry” light in my second screenshot is a GE Link bulb. Looks like it’s only listening to me.

EDIT: I went ahead and paired spare GE Link and Cree bulbs and ran an XCTU scan again. Results below. Definitely looks like the Cree bulbs act as router/repeaters.

However, it doesn’t look like the signal strength of the transmitter in the bulb is very good; check out the color-coding of a couple of those links. Drilling down on those indicates that the downlink signal is good (green), while the upstream signal isn’t. LQI values, for example, are 246 and 23 (downstream to the bulb and upstream from the bulb) for one of the links. The others aren’t much better, and the best link is to the coordinator, which is only about 10 feet away. I don’t know enough about Zigbee to fully grok the meaning/impact of all of that, but I’m guessing that it’s not good.

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Well done! Very cool to see this detail. Its kind of cool that ZigBee can figure all this out and self configure its self as you add new routers. Thanks for sharing!!

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@JDRoberts Hi JD, would you happen to know if the UK version of the ST outlet would work as a ZigBee repeater for the US V2 hub?

I understand that all ST devices run on the same ZigBee frequency but I just wanted to confirm that the UK version of the outlet would work as a repeater the same way the US ST outlet would?

I would ask support to be sure, but as long as you can plug it in to mains power it should repeat fine. Both the US and the UK pocket socket use the zigbee home automation 1.2 profile. Of course the UK pocket socket would have to be joined to the network controlled by the US hub. A zigbee device can only belong to one network coordinator at a time.

Do you already have one, to be honest I’m not sure what style plug is on the back. Perhaps @aaron can get a picture of the back of that device. :sunglasses:

Thanks for the response! I’ll double check with support.

Here’s a picture of the back.

If I am understanding the question, a UK version of the SmartThings Outlet can work as a repeater for US versions of the sensors. It’s not a problem if you already have them, but in general, I do not recommend buying and bringing US sensors across the pond as it voids the warranty (and the typical US v EU wireless frequency regulations).

Support@smartthings.co.uk are some of the smartest and best looking agents in the country. Do not hesitate to reach out if you have additional questions

Hey @Aaron, thanks a lot for the feedback. I live in between a couple of different countries and trying to make use of my old US/Canadian V1 Hub. So far, it seems like the UK ST outlets are working very nicely with it.

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I have an Osram lightify gateway I am not using . If I simply plug that into the wall will it act as a repeater for the lightify bulbs that currently are connected to smartthings?

No.

The lightify gateway is a zigbee coordinator. So is the smartthings hub.

Most zigbee networks, including those established by both the lightify Gateway and the SmartThings hub, can only have one coordinator. (This is different than zwave which allows for one primary controller and additional secondary controllers.)

So the lightify gateway cannot join the smartthings network or vice a versa. Even if they both exist in the same building, devices on each network cannot repeat messages from the other coordinator’s network. They aren’t using the same address tables and they will just ignore the messages from the other network’s devices.

Each lightify bulb can be joined to either the SmartThings hub or the lightify gateway, but not both at the same time.

I’m still looking for a cheap reliable zigbee repeater. I currently have been using an Osram EU plug, which is not reliable.
I saw the Orvibo relay, anyone tried that as a repeater?

I have ordered one ‘ORVIBO ZigBee Hub Smart Home System Lighting Intelligent Control RGB Remote Control Relay’. I hope I can use this as a Zigbee repeater.

Let me get back to you once I got up running for a while.

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Received the repeater? Any luck?

I tried the Xiaomi Plugs as a repeater, they’re a no go.

Confirmed! The Orvibo RGB relay works extending my Zigbee mesh - I have now no problems with Zigbee devices (farest away from ST hub) loosing their signal. So I am really happy :slight_smile:

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Stupid question: I have the V1 round Hue Hub, Is it possible to convert it to ZigBee repeater?