I’m getting pretty close to giving up on my zigbee network.
The weird part is that it’s not one sensor or one plug dropping. When it happens, basically every device in that mesh becomes unavailable at the same time. My internet still works. Wi-Fi still works. Cameras still work. It’s only the low-power smart home network that dies.
This used to happen maybe once every few months, but now it has happened three times this week.
The setup is around 50–60 smart home devices, most of them are powered devices that should be helping the mesh, not just battery sensors. The coordinator is wired and powered over the network, sitting pretty central in the house.
Any ideas where to start before I throw the whole thing ?
The first thing I’d check when a mesh stops working is the coordinator. If a reboot returns everything to normal, there’s a good chance the problem is with the coordinator itself.
I wouldn’t ignore interference. The 2.4 GHz space is messy, and it’s not just other Wi-Fi networks. Honestly, the biggest thing that fixed stability for me was moving the mesh to channel 26, since it sits outside a lot of the worst Wi-Fi overlap. I know some devices supposedly get picky with channels 25/26, but in my setup it’s been rock solid.
I probably wouldn’t pick channel 26 just because it worked for someone else. What’s perfect in one apartment or house can be terrible in another. Use something like NetSpot to actually look at how crowded your environment is first, then choose the channel that makes sense for your setup.NetSpot can be useful here because it shows nearby Wi-Fi networks, channel width, signal level, and channel overlap. If channel 26 works great for somebody, that doesn’t automatically mean it’ll be the best option for you too. And If your 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi is using 40 MHz width, I’d drop it to 20 MHz. That alone can make coexistence way cleaner.
This could be boring power/network stuff too. Since your coordinator is PoE-powered, try a different cable, different switch port, or different PoE injector if you have one.
Good points. I was mostly thinking “mesh issue”, but the coordinator locking up makes sense because rebooting only that port fixes everything.