Post Ad1wfOf5HEmdfa1dZI by peturdainn@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by peturdainn@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #Ad1skavugDQDMO7VmS by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-12-21T09:01:23Z
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Apparently when in doubt just keep resetting and re-pairing Zigbee temperature sensors until they start actually reporting data
(DIR) Post #Ad1sxjzIKJNxCsyDhY by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-12-21T09:03:52Z
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The Zigbee stuff I have that works well works *really* well and the stuff that doesn't is hilariously fragile
(DIR) Post #Ad1u8ZmKiwLUgRddTc by dymaxion@infosec.exchange
2023-12-21T09:16:59Z
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@mjg59That sounds like ZigBee. We had a remote water valve shutoff switch in our place that, best guess, couldn't handle anything else on its channel at all, and had no UI for changing channels. In we move with three bridges worth of hue lights, and it promptly stops working. Cue a really confused plumber wildly out of his depth trying to fix it.
(DIR) Post #Ad1unnqHLAESAr8sUK by piofthings@mastodon.social
2023-12-21T09:24:30Z
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@mjg59 yeah… spite of best intentions, “automatically cconnect to closest repeater” is still theoretical! I have a sonoff temperature sensor right next to a sonoff zigbee mini that’s powered all the time and yet the temperature sensor connects to something completely random!
(DIR) Post #Ad1vCeoo1lgnQXIxdY by peturdainn@mastodon.social
2023-12-21T09:26:56Z
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@mjg59 I improved stability a lot by adding a few cheap Ikea repeaters to the mesh and shifting wifi channels a bit.
(DIR) Post #Ad1vCfdqxyWRyrBjCi by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-12-21T09:28:58Z
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@peturdainn It doesn't help that when we leave we cut power to a bunch of the powered nodes so there's no risk of the lights being stuck on after a power cut (which is, it turns out, something the US Forest Service disapproves of). I should probably cut power to everything and force them to pair with a point to point topology and see if that improves things
(DIR) Post #Ad1vMhLFV7Dq9HGeYq by lambda@chaosfurs.social
2023-12-21T09:28:57Z
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@mjg59 yep. Don't just reconfigure them, either, that won't do squat, you need to nuke the device and re-pair it completely.
(DIR) Post #Ad1vVRvUBWFswcOFI8 by peturdainn@mastodon.social
2023-12-21T09:32:25Z
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@mjg59 oh that certainly complicates thingsIt's totally understandable (but never mentioned explicitly) that battery devices don't participate in the mesh
(DIR) Post #Ad1w9sBPyu1Lxj7M2q by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-12-21T09:39:32Z
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@peturdainn Right if they wake up to send a thing and then discover they can't route then ideally they'd spend some more battery on figuring that out but it turns out that they often just don't instead?
(DIR) Post #Ad1wfOf5HEmdfa1dZI by peturdainn@mastodon.social
2023-12-21T09:45:08Z
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@mjg59 I had some that refused to use a new nearby repeater until paired again, the topology map sometimes made no sense to me (so I just threw in more repeaters). I'm assuming this all depends of the devices firmware
(DIR) Post #Ad1wxdsfQofY5E4xGK by mjg59@nondeterministic.computer
2023-12-21T09:48:31Z
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@peturdainn I had some blinds that would just hard crash if they saw a corrupt packet which given I'm in SF is kind of a given for the amount of 2.4GHz in flight at any one time (changing channel reduced the frequency but didn't fix it, the vendor just sent me new motors with different firmware)
(DIR) Post #Ad1xT1PC19N61LFtUe by kinnison@fosstodon.org
2023-12-21T09:54:20Z
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@mjg59 Having spent a year writing Zigbee firmware a while back, I can confirm that it's very hard to do something completely reliable with self-powered devices. If you can build enough of a mesh of routers then it's a lot easier to ensure reliability. However things still keep forgetting their network keys :(
(DIR) Post #Ad24nUHf3acx3ZRFCa by tienelle@mendeddrum.org
2023-12-21T11:02:56Z
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@mjg59 This sounds a lot like research equipment.
(DIR) Post #Ad2DTsn18PWMr6pcNk by p4block@mastodon.social
2023-12-21T12:53:23Z
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@mjg59 still mad about the sonoff movement sensor that stops reporting after a week or so in the network :/