Calibrating my new Zigbee soil moisture sensor.
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@bengillam that's what they claim. I'll try it tomorrow.
Also got some of these small temperature / humidity sensors.
They work pretty well. The one in my fridge *mostly* connects back to #HomeAssistant but occasionally just doesn't.
I possibly need more #Zigbee sensors dotted around to form a more effective mesh.
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Ok, this is slightly weird. The #ZigBee sensor in my fridge works overnight. But as soon as I open the door in the morning, it seems to lose the connection to the mesh.
WTF?
I need to put some more lights near the fridge to bolster the network - but that'll mean getting Alexa to talk to my #HomeAssistant box.
OK, this is slightly weird from my #Zigbee sensors. All were installed at the same time, all have the same batteries, all started at 100% charge.
After less than a week, the one in the fridge is at 62% battery 🤯 I don't know if that's the cold, or the fact it's in big metal box?
The bathroom experiences the most dramatic changes in humidity / temperature - but it reports once per minute like the other devices. So why is it lower in battery?
All part of the #HomeAssistant fun!
If anyone has a 5 metre USB-A extension cable lying around, I'd dearly love to take it out of your big-box-of-emergency-cables and give it a loving new home.
Happy to pay postage (UK only).
Hoping it'll solve some of my Zigbee woes 😆
@Edent I don't have a problem...
@Edent You share your office with a Sith lord?
@Edent I use zigbee plug sockets near weak spots as repeaters, they’re also good for Christmas lights etc but get left all year round.
I’ve always wanted to overlay the mesh on an actual map of my house too.
I have a zigbee and a Z-wave network of similar size. About a dozen devices each, some of which extend outside. Running for about 5 years. The Z-wave is definitely more reliable. Although the zigbee devices are usually cheaper.
@Edent Report from a happy User: Alexa with Home Assistant Link (née Home Assistant Cloud) works fine.
@Edent I have used ZigBee plug socket to help with the next work. For the fridge and freezer I'm using switch not Bluetooth sensors which work fine
@Edent is it when you open or when you close? fridge doors will pull a vacuum as the air inside cools back down for a while after closing them which might mean there is a better seal, and less RF gets out? </big guess>
@Mexicals pressing X to doubt :-)
It seems to happen after the door is opened - but stays off when the door is closed unless I manually reconnect it.
@Edent
Interference from the fridge internal lights?
@BrianSmith950 possibly - but the light goes off after the door closes.
@Edent can you find one that supports an external thermocouple? If so, you can leave the Zigbee box outside and snake the thermocouple wire through the fridge joint. That won't cover humidity, only temperature, however.
@Edent you probably know but just in case: remember that battery powered zigbee devices don't mesh, only the wired ones do
@peturdainn they will *connect* to a mesh though, right? I'm not expecting them to be a router.
@Edent yes, sorry that wasn't written very clear. They won't do routing unless externally powered (as they need to stay on all the time)
(reading back your first toot) You did write that you would add more sensors around it for the mesh, so that's why I wrote my reply. Battery powered sensors nearby won't help with creating the mesh.
FYI: Ikea has some cheap zigbee routers that also have a low power USB socket (or had, I haven't checked their offers lately)
They will - you can even see them as different coloured dots in your network graph in #HomeAssistant.
/config/zha/visualization
@Edent Note that sensors are usually battery-operated, in ZigBee lingo "end devices", devices and won't operate as routers. Look at the ZigBee visualization in Home Assistant to see it.
That being said, last time I tried I didn't get *any* signal to an in-fridge sensor, and there's plenty of routers around in the room. Do you use a fridge made from cardboard?
@Edent generally only the mains powered ones will act as "routers", so anything that's a lightswitch or socket or an IKEA VINDSTYRKA or etc.
(just in case you didn't know and later wonder why the mesh isn't doing much meshing)
Home Assistant has a map which shows what's a router and what's talking via what. It's under Settings, Connectivity, Zigbee, Show Map
@Edent interesting, I don't think mine can be calibrated. Then again they're cheap and the batteries don't last well so they don't do much for me at all (should probably try some LiIon AA tbf)
@sldrant by calibrate, I mean checking it goes from 0 to 100 and back again 😄
@Edent tbf I'm not sure mine do much from 0 to 50, but even having them reliably keep power so I get notified to water when dry would be great. Have had mine years and never got around to properly utilising them
@Edent @sldrant From conversations with some soil scientists, years ago, soil moisture sensors are deeply unreliable -- even the good ones tend to drift (a lot) in their calibration over time.
Someone at Southampton was trying to develop ones using thin-film techniques, which drifted even more, but were a lot cheaper, so you could replace them more easily.
@kianryan certainly is after I lick it.
@Edent Are these sort of things usable outside ?
Ive got a plan in my mind to use these for our outdoor plant to set off alarms if stuff is struggling my workload is usually quite heavy and watering is often forgotten by my stupid brain