Zigbee device issues, Anyone else?

Devices & Integrations
1

Is anyone else having issues with Zigbee devices falling offline, not responding when they are online, or constantly getting the message: “A network or server error occurred. Try again later”?

I first reported these issues on 9/29/2025, when one morning my Station and V3 updated to 58.10. Since then, things will work for a while, and then it’s back to not working again. I also started burning through batteries like crazy!

Support moved me to beta version 59.6, and everything worked perfectly for a month — until 59.8 came out. Then it was back to the same problems. I did a hub replacement from my Station to a V3 hub, and that worked for a while, until the next firmware upgrade — and then the problems came back again.

Support told me it’s happening because I have a lot of devices. It’s been five months, and at this point I’m not sure what to do. For users with a lot of devices, the ST platform is very unstable now. Before 58.10, things worked perfectly for years.

I want to know if others are seeing the same thing, or if it’s just me. Maybe my Zigbee devices are just too old and won’t work with ST in its current state. I need to make a decision about what I’m going to do to get everything working again. I really don’t want to move to another platform, but it’s been five months and ST support just can’t seem to fix what they broke in 58.10 with the Zigbee radio.

My theory is that this happened because of all the changes they made to support Thread, but I don’t know for sure. Maybe it’s because they deprecated the Zigbee monitored_attribute feature? Who knows? Support doesn’t, and they can’t seem to fix it.

2

I have 2 SmartThings locations. Each locations has 1 v2 hub and 1 ST Station. Location #1 has 264 devices and Location #2 has 297 devices. The devices are a very diverse mixture of Z-Wave, ZigBee, traditional Wi-Fi, Matter over WiFi, Matter over Thread, Matter via bridge, virtual and c2c devices.

Both Stations are lightly loaded. One is in a small out building and the other one is primarily used for thread devices and nearby ZigBee devices.

Location #1 has a single Z-Wave contract sensor that shows off line every few hours if the door is not opened. It comes back on line as soon as the door opens and it triggers STHM even when it is marked offline. So I assume it just over zealous ST offline reporting

Location #2 has a ZigBee motion sensor the shows off line regularly. Any it responds to motion and is again reported on line. So again I assume it just over zealous ST offline reporting. I also have 3 new Ikea Matter over Thread contact sensors and 2 of the 3 have gone offline. I have not been there to deal with them, so I don’t know what the deal is. It might be a weak Thread mesh. They tear through batteries when they are offline.

So no major complaints with nearly 600 devices. Location #2’s biggest problem is that I keep hitting the 300 device limit.

I dread the day when either of my v2s die, since the new hubs don’t support Z-Wave, and I don’t want an underpowered v3. I will probably switch at least my Z-Wave devices over to Home Assistant. And then use “Matter Bridge” to bring them back into ST via Matter.

3

I suggest you pick up some second hand spare V2s on eBay.
I got my first spare V2 for £6 in the UK. The same seller had a second which nobody wanted, so I bought it too for a similar price.
Neither V2 came with a welcome code but support on here got them for me in hours.
I keep the spares offline except to pick up firmware updates.

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4

When I did the hub replacement from the Station to the V3, support hinted that the V3 was more powerful than the Station, and that’s why it worked. The V3 worked for over a month without issue until there was another firmware update — and then the V3 stopped working as well.

There were other community members having the same issue. Here is a message from support to another user:

“The engineering team saw that the number of devices installed on your hub (100+) has a greater impact on the hub’s performance since a new feature in the Station hub was enabled.
They’re still working on improvements for this, but that work will take a while to be released.
So, the immediate suggestion is for you to acquire another V3 or V4 hub to divide the installed devices among them and balance the network’s workload.
After this, check the performance on each hub.
We understand your frustration. It took us a while to provide this feedback because we exhausted every other possibility to help you in the best way.”

If I told a customer, “Well, I broke your system, but if you spend more money, that will fix it,” I would have been out of business years ago.

Then, after the next firmware update, the V3 also stopped working properly.

I think users with a V2 may not be having these issues because the V2 has twice the memory of the V3 — at least for now. Who knows if the next firmware update to the V2 will cause the same issue?

I’m not sure why they keep lowering the RAM in the units as they roll out new ones. It boggles the mind. Why would you do that? RAM is very inexpensive now — they can’t blame cost. I would gladly spend $500–$600 if they released a model with significantly more RAM for power users who have a lot of devices.

When the Station came out, they were very secretive about the amount of RAM and the specs. Even calls to Samsung and questions to support didn’t clarify anything. They said they didn’t know for sure either.

It’s been five months, and they still can’t seem to fix this issue. I think the Station, V3, and the newer so-called V4 are way too underpowered to support all of the Matter and Thread features they enabled.

Its a shame, ST used to be the best home automation system out there, and now sadly it is broke for many users like me. I’m not sure what I should do now. Nothing seems to work but Zwave. I dont want to go out and buy new Zigbee devices because they probably wont work either! Most of the devices that I would need to replace have no Matter equivalents yet. Mainly leak sensors, door locks and thermostats. These are the devices I rely on the most. I can get up and turn the light on myself.

5

I may try to buy a V2 and do a hub replacement from the V3 that has all of my Zigbee devices on it. I don’t see any other option at this point to get things working again. My only fear is that I do this, it works for a month, and then they release another firmware update for the V2 — and everything stops working again.

6

I should say that I also bought a second hand V3 hub (~£35 on eBay).
I am keeping it online with only an experimental single Matter device (Ikea Bilresa scroll).
Question: do you have your V3 and Station in a hub group?

7

No, from what I’ve read, the hub group would only make the second hub function as a repeater, and all of the devices would remain on the primary hub. I would still have the issue of 180+ Zigbee devices on the same hub.

Zigbee is the only protocol I’m having issues with. I originally had one Station with all of the Zigbee devices on it and a V3 with all of the Z-Wave devices. After 58.10 and the issues it caused, I did a hub replacement to another V3, and that fixed things for a while.

My Station is basically a brick now, and I have no way to use it. It’s too underpowered for my setup.

I have no issues with Z-Wave at all — probably because ST has essentially abandoned Z-Wave and isn’t changing anything in the firmware for it.

I have several Matter devices and they also fall off from time to time and I just have to keep powering them off and on and they will finally reconnect.

8

I took your advice and brought a used v2 on eBay for $15 US including shipping. I had to jump through hoops to get the old 49.09 firmware updated, but I finally succeeded. Now I have a functional backup.

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