For the past few years I’ve been wrestling with Aeotec sensors (purchased because they seemed to be highly recommended everywhere). First it was spending weeks trying to get Z-Wave JS UI (nothing better than this??) to perform firmware upgrades, then replacing a Z-Stick 7 with an older version due to unfixable bugs in that, and now it’s on again / off again factory resetting and connecting the sensors back to the controller.
As time has passed my wife and I have essentially forgotten about automating anything based on temperature or presence. I replace the batteries in sensors from time to time (since they’re never not showing 100%) with no effect.
I ask because I’m planning on buying some Aqara devices that depend on WiFi. Preferably I’d like to use something other than WiFi since it’s usually the extremely congested 2.4 GHz band.
I’ve got Philips hue lights that use Zigbee but I thought it also tried to hog 2.4 GHz spectrum; though I’m more open to it as of late considering my horrible luck with Z-Wave.
Zigbee and wifi do clash a bit more, but after I set my channels I’ve never had problems: https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/zigbee-wifi-coexistence/
My zwave has been bulletproof though. I suspect something is wrong with your setup, I assume you’ve tried things like healing the network?
Is your stick on a USB extension cable or hub extended away from your pc? That can help quite a bit.
I’m in an urban environment where I’m surrounded by people using crappy ISP-supplied routers set to broadcast 2.4 GHz at maximum power.
Personally I use a Ubiquiti U6-Pro with bandwidth steering to 5 GHz because the 2.4 GHz side is just trash (even with nightly channel optimization). I’d love to simply shut off 2.4 GHz but a lot of IoT insists on using it (god knows why).
As far as the Z-Wave controller, it’s an Aeotec 5th generation Z-Stick but no, I’m not using a USB extension. I’m in a tiny apartment with the Raspberry Pi 4 it’s plugged into in the middle of the apartment. I’ve only got four sensors using Z-Wave but it’s always been horribly unreliable.
For what it’s worth, about once per year the Philips hue lights just fall off and I end up factory resetting those too (I always mistakenly try to change the Zigbee channel when they’ve already disappeared).