Subject says it all, How do I change the zigbee channel that webthings uses? I’m using a Conbee II usb stick.
I don’t believe we currently have a way to set this for the Conbee devices. @dhylands could tell you more.
I’m not sure. I know that the channel is set when the network is setup and that you would need to setup a new network in order to change the channel. I’ve never actually done it with the ConBee (or ConBee II).
I resolved the problem by deactivating/moving my 2.4 ghz wifi channels, so that the default zigbee channel wasn’t overlapped by the remaining 2.4 ghz channels.
After thinking about this some more, I think that the best way would be to use the deConz software and reconfigure the dongle from within there. Once the dongle is reconfigured, it can then be used with the gateway and would retain the channel assignment.
Having said that, all of your devices would need to be repaired because they would be expecting to be on the old channel.
Yeah, I was also thinking of rigging up a development environment, and didn’t want the zigbee hardware for development stepping on my actual household system.
I recently changed from channel 18 to 26 using the XStick2 dongle. I was getting some suspected channel interference from my own wi-fi channel broadcast and the many others around my urban setting. The main symptom was devices on the network fringe or near my WiFi router experiencing what seemed like short battery life. The website below was helpful to understand the overlapping nature of Zigbee and 2.4 Wi-Fi.
www.metageek.com/training/resources/zigbee-wifi-coexistence/
I chose to make the switch while I had the “hood” open for the recent 1.1 alpha and beta releases. It was a successful transition from CH18 to 26. Maybe some users can learn from my success and/or comment on a better way.
I have 19 zigbee end devices (battery powered) and 5 wired power devices. All my devices were purchased in 2019 or later. Most I was able to verify their probable support for channel 26. Some I just had to try/hope. I suspect my wired devices were not acting very effectively as routers because they’d been added haphazardly over the last few years. One goal was to try improve the lack of zigbee routing those devices should support.
At the start of this task I had about 40 rules written for the gateway. I found that resetting the zigbee devices with rules in place was nearly impossible but I didn’t want to lose my rules. Using the SQLite reference below I 1) copied the SQLite3.db rules table to a backup text file. 2) Deleted the content of the rules table. Changed the “scan channel” variable in the Zigbee addon to 32768 (ch26 only) 4) reset all the zigbee devices (doing the wired devices first so they could perform their router function). 5) Inserted the backed up rules back into the previously empty rules table.
https://sqlite.org/cli.html
After a few reboots the zigbee network has worked perfectly for the last few weeks. It will take time to know if my original battery life issue has been improved but I am optimistic.
For edification, were you able to use a tool (like a WiFi network scanner) to view interference/overlap between the WiFi channels and the zigbee channel? Just wondering how to diagnose extraneous interference from non-WiFi devices…
Thanks for the hints how to backup rules in the sql db too…
I used the WiFi analyzer app on my android phone. I’m close to all the neighbors so the WiFi spectrum is pretty busy.
That metageek link above gave some hints as to where the overlaps are. As far as diagnosing with certainty my signal skills and tools are pretty limited. The new channel 26 seems to help but of course the evidence is subjective without better tools.
Since upgrading to WT1.1 (official) on my second Rpi, I was not able to pair any of my devices (all had been working fine under 1.0 until the certificate issue). Reading this article made me think about Wi-Fi channel interference so I used deCONZ to move ZigBee to channel 25 - et Voila - all works again, add devices paired (some immediately, others manually). Once I move this Rpi back to its real location, I will start again on my primary RPi controller - which I had swapped over to Candle 2.0 pending the release of WT1.1 production. I used channel 25 (not 26) due to the warning about Xaiomi/Aqara devics - of which I have many.
Thanks for the tip.
Searched a bit this morning and found this URL that talks about Zibee and WiFi channel overlap. It referenced the picture below at the bottom of the article.
https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/zigbee-wifi-coexistence/
BTW, how can we improve short battery life? 
I’m thinking that by changing to a channel with less interference the battery powered device is going thru fewer on/polling states. The theory is since zigbee networks like to self heal there will be less of that activity.
Could be too the power necessary to overcome marginal wifi interference just reaches a threshold of dysfunction as the battery drains and signals get weaker. This would look like a battery with short life when actually there is still juice available… just not enough to fight with a strong wifi signal.
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directly changing the Zigbee channel within WebThings is not currently possible i guess. However, there are two workarounds:
- Reconfigure the Conbee II using deCONZ software:
- Deactivate/move your 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi channel: