ZigBee devices keep losing connection every 8 hours or so

Every 8 hours or so all of my ZigBee devices (motion sensors, open/close sensors, water sensor) lose connection.

Sometimes they show up as still connected in the app, and even seem to be sending temperature information, but don’t register when they open or close or when motion occurs and thus not triggering their automations.

Sometimes they show up as simply disconnected in the app.

Usually if I pull out and then replace the battery in one of these devices they will connect again and many of the other devices will also connect automatically. Only to lose connection again 8 hours later.

Currently doing a reboot of my hub, leaving it disconnected for 1 full hour. Hopefully this will work.

The issue has been happening for about a week now.

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Reboot complete. Not very optimistic. Most of the devices did not come back online on their own. I had to do a power cycle to get them to connect again.

Zigbee and WiFi can overlap each other. It’s possible you may have your Zigbee channel and WiFi channel interfering with each other. Use a WiFi analyzer app and see what’s around you, because it could be your neighbor’s WiFi that’s hammering away at your Zigbee network. Usually, changing channels on one or both will solve the issue, but you need to know what’s around and what’s available so you’re not guessing.

More info here:

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Yeah. All the ZigBee devices went down again. Lasted almost 24 hours this time.

I checked for wifi interference. Doesn’t seem to be any according to the analyzer. I was on channel 24 for ZigBee.

I tried changing the channel to see if that would do anything and now none of the devices will reconnect.

I am using some older devices. I got smartthings stuff back when they first entered the market, well before they were bought by Samsung. Really don’t know what to do here. :frowning:

What’s your zigbee mesh like in terms of available repeaters distance between them, including the hub. Sounds like a interference and/or range issues. You could also have a zigbee repeater failing and causing issues in your mesh.

I have 13 total ZigBee devices placed all around my 1300 square foot house. I would say no device is more than 10 foot from any other device.

The routing that ZigBee has set up is weird in that it bounces all over the house.

But note that this has all been extremely stable for literally 6 years. I can’t think of anything I have changed recently and suddenly all the ZigBee stuff is losing connection.

By any chance have you installed any new USB device, like a USB 3.0 harddrive or something? That can cause interference as well. Try to unplug that and see that is it improved.

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To add to the thought above, also check for any misbehaving zigbee router devices, especially some older GE switches and even their newer outlets (non power meter capability ones). I have one of their outlets causing issues like this and I’m about to ask for a replacement.

Been a while since I posted here. I did end up changing the channel that my zigbee devices were using to channel 25 (previously they were on 24). This solved the problem and things have been working well for the past month.

And then 2 days ago they started back up again.:frowning:

I’ve tried switching to a different channel and then switching back and that usually solves the problem for a few hours and then we are back to being disconnected (or worse…it says it’s connected but it isn’t).

Did you ever find a solution to this problem?

Kind of. I ended up migrating everything over to home assistant. Many of my ZigBee devices were first generation from when smartthings first came out and they gave home assistant issues too. So I ended up having to get rid of many of them and kind of start over. System is pretty stable now and I have MUCH more control over it with home assistant.