Event turns two Zigbee light switches on/off. Why the delay ?

[Traction Tim]

Hi all,

So I have HS4Pro with a Conbee 2/Phoscon/deCONZ and the Jowihue plugin. I run Blue Iris on the same pc, which sends motion detection commands which HS4 uses to turn three outside lights on the front of the house on/off with an event. There are two Zigbee devices in use here. One is next to my front door fitted behind the light switch (TS0121 ?), and the other (Sonoff BasicZBR3) is in the adjacent garage feeding two lights.

The issue is that there is a variable delay of up to approx 1 second between the lights when they turn OFF, which is enough to get BI to re-trigger them. I can't run a wire between all of the lights, so I need to try and make this work.

I have tried putting a Zigbee repeater device close by inbetween the two Zigbee light switches but it made no difference. Is this normal with Zigbee, or have I done something wrong ? The BI5/HS4 PC is in the garage, as is the Sonoff device.

I note that the deCONZ screen that shows connections only has one strong green connection between the Conbee and a battery powered Zigbee device inside the freezer the PC is sat on. The other eight Zigbee devices have yellow or light green connections.

I also have a quite large Z-wave network on this pc. Could this be electrical noise ?

FWIW1 I did have the two garage lights on individual Sonoff switches, but that gave an even greater spread of delays between the lights, so I removed one.
FWIW2 I am setting up Deepstack with BI5 so my triggers are all over the place.

Any ideas ?

[TC1]

I will answer part of this...

Z-wave and Zigbee are very far apart in terms of interference, Z-wave at approx 908 Mhz (Europe will vary slightly) and Zigbee at 2.4Ghz. Your most likely culprit is residential Wifi at 2.4Ghz also. The problem is that if you have a dense neighborhood, your neighbor's Wifi will bleed into your airspace causing even more problems. Most residential routers are now setup to automatically switch channels when they sense interference from neighboring access points, this constant shifting can crew with your zigbee network.

I solved my Zigbee "noise" problems by doing a radio survey and moving my Zigbee channel to the end of the spectrum where there was less interference from my neighbors (or my own wifi).

This is a good article that explains the problem:
ZigBee and Wi-Fi Coexistence – MetaGeek Support

[Richel]

I will answer part of this...

This is a good article that explains the problem:
ZigBee and Wi-Fi Coexistence – MetaGeek Support

I'm very much interested in a solution, because I have the same issue. It is variable, however. Sometimes it is nearly instantaneous, sometimes it could take several seconds for the event to occur (smart switch turning on/off a zigbee device via an event). My thought is that it is HomeSeer and the plug in, because on occasion, I have had to use the Hue Essentials app (connects directly to PhosCon/Conbee) on my smartphone and turning on or off zigbee devices is always instantaneous. See if you find this the case, too.

[ewkearns]

I will answer part of this...

I solved my Zigbee "noise" problems by doing a radio survey and moving my Zigbee channel to the end of the spectrum where there was less interference from my neighbors (or my own wifi).

Oh, geeze! I may be screwed. I don't have my RaspBee operational, yet, but I have no less that 7 networks showing up, besides my 2. I think I still have InSSIDer on my laptop. It looks like I'll be needing it...

[TC1]

Oh, geeze! I may be screwed. I don't have my RaspBee operational, yet, but I have no less that 7 networks showing up, besides my 2. I think I still have InSSIDer on my laptop. It looks like I'll be needing it...

You're not screwed, just need to do a little tweaking. For example, I have two APs for my property, one inside my house in a centralized closet and one in my detached garage directionally facing my backyard patio area. A radio survey using my smartphone revealed that for the front of my house that Channel 1 for Wifi had the least interference, so I subsequently locked it there. I then moved my Zigbee to Channel 20, which sits in the sweet spot between Wifi wide-band channels 6 and 11 (which besides Channel 1, every residential AP defaults to) which solved some of my zigbee sensors losing connectivity to my ConBee2. For the garage AP I locked it to Wifi Channel 11 so it didn't overlap with my house AP, which allows your Wifi clients to cleanly move across APs as they roam the property.

A little knowledge and pertinent data points are the best problem solvers.

[w.vuyk]

Hi all,

So I have HS4Pro with a Conbee 2/Phoscon/deCONZ and the Jowihue plugin. I run Blue Iris on the same pc, which sends motion detection commands which HS4 uses to turn three outside lights on the front of the house on/off with an event. There are two Zigbee devices in use here. One is next to my front door fitted behind the light switch (TS0121 ?), and the other (Sonoff BasicZBR3) is in the adjacent garage feeding two lights.

The issue is that there is a variable delay of up to approx 1 second between the lights when they turn OFF, which is enough to get BI to re-trigger them. I can't run a wire between all of the lights, so I need to try and make this work.

I have tried putting a Zigbee repeater device close by inbetween the two Zigbee light switches but it made no difference. Is this normal with Zigbee, or have I done something wrong ? The BI5/HS4 PC is in the garage, as is the Sonoff device.

I note that the deCONZ screen that shows connections only has one strong green connection between the Conbee and a battery powered Zigbee device inside the freezer the PC is sat on. The other eight Zigbee devices have yellow or light green connections.

I also have a quite large Z-wave network on this pc. Could this be electrical noise ?

FWIW1 I did have the two garage lights on individual Sonoff switches, but that gave an even greater spread of delays between the lights, so I removed one.
FWIW2 I am setting up Deepstack with BI5 so my triggers are all over the place.

Any ideas ?

A Zwave transmitter with the Conbee have been known to cause interference. What you could try is to put the conbee on a USB extension wire to bring it 1.5 meters away from the Zwave transmitter. This might help - it is often strongly advised by the developers of deCONZ. Maybe this can be a first step to solve this?
Did you put both lights in a group with the plugin? This can also help as this synchronizes commands send to the bulbs better if you send the command to the group device?

Let me know if this works out for you?

[Richel]

A Zwave transmitter with the Conbee have been known to cause interference. What you could try is to put the conbee on a USB extension wire to bring it 1.5 meters away from the Zwave transmitter. This might help - it is often strongly advised by the developers of deCONZ. Maybe this can be a first step to solve this?...

Well, I did this (moved my Conbee further away from my Z-Wave transmitter) and things have noticeably improved for me. Elliott

[w.vuyk]

Great!