How to monitor zigbee devices from Zigbee HS4 plugin ?

[jeanfgodin]

• Is it the Homeseer native Zigbee plug-in you are using in HS4?

Yes

• Are all of your Zigbee battery devices sensors with at least one child/feature that changes often such as temperature?

Steve

Yes, I haveSmartThings Multipurpose Sensor (IM6001-MPP) and Smartthings Water Leak Sensor (IM6001-WLP). Both of devices have blank "Device Type (String)" I have to enter "Battery" to be detected.

• If not does the last change time of the parent device update at a regular interval irrespective of whether a child/feature has updated?

Steve

Yes, it does.

[SteveMSJ]

Thanks, that is all useful information.

One last question, is there any pattern to the Last Change Time updates of the parent devices. Do they match the Last Change Time for one of the child devices or are they at a regular time interval?

Thanks,

Steve

[jeanfgodin]

Hello, they match the Last Change Time for one of the child devices

[SteveMSJ]

Hello, they match the Last Change Time for one of the child devices

Thanks for the info.

[The Profit]

Ok, that's interesting. The Zigbee plug-in isn't bothering to set the Device Types.
That makes it a little tricky for SDJ-Health to spot the battery devices automatically.

Anyway there is a work around that you can use. You will see that the 'Device Type (string)' is user editable. Click in the blank text box to the right of 'Device Type (string)' and enter Battery. You will need to that for all your Zigbee battery child devices.

Then:

• Go to the 'PLUG-INS>SDJ-Health>Battery Devices' page.
• Click on the drop down list called 'Select devices that require Activity Checking'
• You should now find your Zigbee battery devices in the list so click the checkboxes to get a tick next to each one.
• Make sure Monitor Activity is checked.
• Set the check period, the default is 12 hours.

After a couple of minutes you should find monitoring child devices created for each of your selected battery devices.

The pi will then check the parent and children of each of those devices at the time period you have set. As long as the last change time for at least one of the devices representing the physical device has updated in the time period then it will consider the device to be alive. If not it will raise an alert, but exactly when will be determined by the MissedWakeupFactor and Overrun settings.

Activity Checking works well as a monitoring method for devices that are frequently updating. If it is a device that sits there doing nothing for long periods then that won't work well. SDJ-Health can poll devices instead but that depends on whether the Zigbee plug-in responds to the HS poll request. Looking at your screen shot it says 'Support Status' False, so it isn't going to respond to polls. Some plug-ins update the last change time of the parent device each time they receive communication from the device so work well with Activity Checking even if a child device value hasn't changed. We will have to see over time how your Zigbee devices perform.

The pi will also monitor the battery levels and Low battery, High Discharge and Life alerts can also be raised depending on how you configure the plug-in. You can also set the plug-in to record the battery levels to a database so you get historical battery level readings for devices which can be very interesting over time.

What is the Zigbee plug-in showing the battery levels as? If not a scale of 0-100 then it is possible to configure SDJ-Health to apply a scaling factor.

Let me know how you get on.

Steve

Hey Steve,
I tried to find this information in your documentation but it only covered Z-Wave. I know that is what the plugin was originally designed for but after following your directions above, it's looking like it should work for Zigbee as well! Might consider copy/pasting this post into your documentation! Lovin' this plugin! Hope you're doing well!

[SteveMSJ]

Hey Steve,
I tried to find this information in your documentation but it only covered Z-Wave. I know that is what the plugin was originally designed for but after following your directions above, it's looking like it should work for Zigbee as well! Might consider copy/pasting this post into your documentation! Lovin' this plugin! Hope you're doing well!

Hi,
You are correct that a bit of updating of the guide wouldn't be a bad thing🙃

I know people use the plug-in for monitoring devices for all sorts of technologies but I have tended to limit the guide to technologies that I have, and therefore can test myself and iron out any issues. Other technologies, like Zigbee, get covered by posts in this forum but obviously tend to get buried over time. People don't necessarily post back to say how well the suggestions work, so I'm not always sure whether they were successful or just moved on.

If it is working well for your Zigbee devices then I will certainly add a section, like you have quoted, to the guide.

Thanks for the kind words,

Steve