Zigbee devices offline in November 2022

how is it posible for zigbee devices to go offline
today 6 devices went offline one of which is a smartthings plug ,
i rebooted the hub but still offline i had to reset 3 devices and re add them (sonoff zigbee conatct button and pir ) the smartthings plug i had toturn off and back on .
ive had the odd contact sensor go offline before ,things that show as 100% battery when completely flat
just dont understand how
now i do

should have looked there first before pulling my hair out lol

If I understand your question, Zigbee devices can be marked off-line for any of the following reasons:

  1. the device itself has failed (hardware)

  2. another device, which was repeating messages for the failed device, has been physically removed, turned off, or is having problems, so the first device can’t get its messages through to the hub (hardware or network configuration)

  3. the hub itself is having problems, including a dead or failing Zigbee radio (hardware)

  4. there is too much interference in the area from devices of other protocols, usually Wi-Fi, but could also be thread or even Bluetooth (environmental issue or network configuration)

  5. something is flooding the local zigbee network with way too many messages, so that other messages can’t get through. This could be a specific device, usually an energy monitoring device, or it could be something like runaway polling. (hardware issue, or network configuration, or software)

  6. as @orangebucket notes below, the hub is incorrectly marking the device off-line because the edge driver that it is using considers the device inactive even though there may have been some activity. The details on this will vary from edge driver to edge driver, so it might get marked offline with one edge driver, but not with another. (Software)

  7. there is a platform problem with the cloud which is incorrectly marking devices as off-line. (Software)

  8. SmartThings has released a hub firmware update, which is causing the hub to either lose messages, fail to process messages, or keep rebooting. This might only affect some customers. (Software)

  9. the problem isn’t with the device, or another device on the same Network, or the hub, or the cloud – – it’s the app. Although, in that case, you won’t usually get an “off-line“ message, you’ll get a “failed to connect“ message or something like that. (Software)

The status page messages you referenced apply to .8 above. But you could still have one of the other problems also. It’s just that those are going to be very hard to research if there’s a .8 problem happening as well. :thinking:

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Certain devices, and the Sonoff Contact sensor is one of them (the IKEA Motion Sensor is another), may be reported offline because the Edge driver is unable to determine that there has been activity within a certain period. It might be incorrectly expecting particular activity to occur with a certain period, and/or it may be incorrectly expecting the device to be able to report status on demand to show it is still active. As soon as contact (or motion) is detected the devices are shown online again. So offline can be misleading.

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I have no ZigBee problems thruout all these firmware updates.

Perhaps theres a common routing device that’s causing the issues that others are having. Maybe post your list of ZigBee devices to help narrow it down?

My Zigbee Routing devices:

  • Sonoff SA-03 Outlets
  • Jasco plug in dimmers
  • Jasco plug in outlets
  • Peanut Plugs

Non routing devices:

  • Sengled RGBW bulbs
  • Iris IL07 (V3) motion sensors
  • Linkind Leak Sensors
  • Sonoff SNZB-02 temp/humidity sensors
  • Sage/Echostar Doorbell sensor
  • Smartthings Multi Sensors
  • Smartthings Leak Sensors (v2)
  • Tuya TS201 temp sensors

On V2 hubs, running 45.11 (although no problems throughout all these updates) . ZigBee channel 15 in the US.

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hi the devices in red are the worst ones
image

cheers for the info all
i didnt know about Routing devices will have to read up on that .
thanks
martin

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I seriously considered to change to Home Assistant when I returned from vacation only to find out I had to reset every single Zigbee component connected directly to SmartThings. Probably due to this firmware “update”. We are talking about 50 sensors, buttons and lights. Fortunantly all lights and buttons on Hue, as well as Z-Wave sensor were still operational.

more zigbee devices offline again , funny thing is rebooting the hub makes no difference have to re pair them .

I’ve been having the same problem lately. I was able to fix it by turning off “zigbee secure mode” on the hub:
Find your smartthings hub in your app and click on it.
In the menu (three dots on android) open settings
turn off zigbee secure mode
Click on zwave utilities
Click on repair zwave network

It’s my understanding that zigbee secure mode prevents zigbee devices from rejoining the network if they become disconnected (not sure if that is really what I want), presumably to exclude devices that have intentionally been removed. I don’t care about this (I use zwave/zigbee so that I don’t have to worry about rogue devices on my home network. If my zigbee network is hacked, nbd)

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Jordan, thanks for the post. I have been struggling with this issue for a while now and it looks like the solution from your post fixed the issue.