I was having zigbee device dropping issues and I’ve been looking at the zbt-2. I was hesitating due to the price. I went to take another search this evening and there’s one listed at a huge discount. I’m not going to post the link here as I’m unsure of the rules, but it’s easy to find on Amazon.ca.
Can you give more specifics about device drops? Have you looked at the mesh layout in HA to see what connections are being made between devices?
You may not have a distance issue that a new adapter will fix. You might just need a repeater/router.
My first ‘issue’ is I have everything in ZHA. I want to move to Zigbee2MQTT, but with 40 zigbee devices and associated automations it’s a pita. So I figured get the zbt-2 and migrate that way. ZHA doesn’t report LQI and RSSI, so measuring the mesh isn’t completely empirical. First issue was a window sensor I use for the mailbox. It was a 3rd reality sensor and it was losing network connectivity about once a week. It’s just outside the front door, and I have a 3rd reality zigbee outlet in the front entrance. The Sonoff coordinator is mounted on the wall at the bottom of the stairs, which go down from the front entrance. (difficult to visualize, I know).
I then tried another window sensor on a closet door in the kitchen to trigger a light when the door was opened. Another zigbee outlet very close to the closet. Sensor (aqara in this case) can’t stay connected for 5 minutes.
So, considering I want to migrate to zigbee2mqtt anyway, I figured this was an opportunity to experience that pain.
Zigbee has an analyzer where you can see how the connections are being made and you can actually remove the sensor from your network and then force it to reconnect to the network using a specific repeater. I’ve noticed by default that everything seems to want to connect to my ZBT1, but if I want to connect something specifically through my smart plug repeater, I have to open the home assistant app and then tap on the plug and then tap add via this device in a three dot menu…
I’m certainly no expert, but are you talking about features available in Zigbee2MQTT? I can’t find anything like this using ZHA.
Nope, zha. Tap on Settings, then tap Zigbee, then tap Devices, and then tap a repeater. Next to the button that says Reconfigure, is a 3.Vertical menu. And if you tap on that 3.Vertical menu, there’s an option that says Add Devices via this device.
https://files.catbox.moe/ousauo.png
Thanks kind stranger! Was not aware of this.
Yeah, it’s pretty well hidden. I wasn’t aware of it for the longest time either, and just happened to stumble across it myself.
This right here.