I own an Aqara Smart Hub M2. Along with other accessories, I have about a dozen water sensors placed throughout my home in various bathrooms, under sinks, in the laundry room, near water heaters, and by refrigerators.
I am experiencing significant range issues with the sensors located farthest from the hub. My hub is already positioned in a fairly central location, and I am strategically using an Aqara Smart Plug, which I understand should act as a Zigbee range extender.
While my home is not small, I would still like to use the system effectively, especially for safety devices like water sensors. I am looking for advice on options to extend the range further. Should I add more repeaters? Are there certain Aqara devices that work better as Zigbee range extenders? Any tips for optimizing placement in a larger home would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks so much for the reply. However, I think that that guy’s set up with 15 hubs is extremely absurd. Any ecosystem that requires hubs like that is a poorly designed ecosystem.
In my home for example, I have a single Lutron bridge a single Hue bridge, a single Ecobee hub, and I get full coverage with each of those in the same space.
To be clear, I’m not opposed to getting a second hub, a newer hub, or another extender, just hoping for an elegant solution.
Everyone has their own smart home architecture, the main condition is high-quality, continuous, reliable work. The slogan is once done and forgotten how I came up with it (after three years, like mine) and it works (automation). I would compare it to a personal computer when the user made his desktop for himself. By the way, in my house I also use three gateways according to the directions of work, the criticality of automation and the size of the house.
I have had great success using these devices to firm up and extend my Zigbee network:
Aeotec Range Extender Zi - Zigbee Network Extender. This is all it does, but it does it very well. I have these placed near the physical periphery of my home and also where the network has trouble penetrating or going around some walls. I currently have 3.
The Third Reality nightlights are also good range extenders. I have 2 currently. They link floor to floor nicely.
Zigbee is a self-organizing mesh network. Reliability increases with the more routes you have from one device to another.
A Zigbee network visualization tool is very helpful in identifying peripheral devices and/or low quality routes in your network. I use the one that is included with the Home Assistant Zha integration
I’m the absurd guy here, not all the hubs are predominantly used as hubs. Some like the cameras just act as hubs.
By having room centric hubs, I have zero issues with connectivity.
I do appreciate it’s a sledgehammer to crack a nut but by pushing everything through a single Hub or even just two hubs means lots of devices will go down should the Hub go down.
Most of my M2 hubs were purchased second hand from eBay some for as little as 10 pound.
As I stated in my article, everyone’s mileage varies but if you are having range issues, sticking in another hub will solve your problem and the m100 Hub is a cheap solution.
Love the direct response! Major props to your setup. I think your approach is definitely rock solid and I understand it if so many of them are easily accessible affordably or more functional hub devices. Thanks again!