Have known good spares available for troubleshooting. By keeping known good devices available, they can be used to rule problems in or out with your project. Check them at your demo project then keep them with your field tools.
For 1.7 installations, you can use a contact sensor to check the area for ZigBee reception. Many installers use a spare wireless contact in radio test mode to check for problems before installing any gear. Add the sensor to the project, put it in radio test mode and scout the installation area for areas of bad reception prior to mounting any devices. This can save you hours of frustration by identifying bad reception areas.
Once you have found where you want to install the devices, ID them all near the controller prior to moving them to parts of the house. This way you can be assured that the device is working and narrow any reception or range issues to other aspects of the install.
If you are having reception or intermittent function issues once the device has been installed, repositioning devices often resolves these issues. We have seen cases where large amounts of devices seem to not work for unknown reasons and moving the controller or other devices in the network resolves the issue. Repositioning items in the mesh network can cause the mesh to re-form into a better mesh that causes everything to work better. We have seen instances where moving something as little as one foot has fixed a device’s performance problems.
Add a line-powered relay to your 1.7 network! If you still have range or reception issues, try the spare relay you have in your truck in your project in different parts of the house to see if that resolves the issue. The line-powered relay will strengthen your mesh network and is the go-to device installers use when having range or interference issues.
Use your spare devices for troubleshooting. Having spares in the truck gives you the ability to rule devices out as a problem. If you suspect a particular device is faulty, you can use your known good spare in the suspect device’s place and see if that resolves the issue. If the problem remains when using the known good spare, the original device is not likely the problem and you can focus your troubleshooting on other areas such as interference or range issues, saving you time and headaches.
Make sure any one device is within range of at least two other devices. This prevents bottle-neck issues. For ZigBee pro, make sure any battery operated devices are within range of parent devices. Parent devices are ZigBee devices that are constantly powered, such as switches and dimmers.
Make sure devices are not near large metal or electronic devices such as pools, hot tubs, hidden behind water heaters etc.. Keep hidden interference items in mind such as water or electrical mains, metal ceilings, heated floors etc..
Rebooting your ZigBee server: Some issues can be solved with a reboot such as: devices not identifying, latency on the project, etc.