I have a SmartView2 remote device, has just been installed/replaced a type-1 smart meter.
Question: What frequency and channel is Zigbee connection on ? as this is causing interference with other devices in the house which are critical in nature.
Question: can the channel be changed / how ?
Question: can ZigBee be turned off / how ? and yes I know the smart meter would not work.
ZigBee operates in the 2.4GHz Band. It's similar to Wi-Fi but should be capable of keeping out of the way of Wi-Fi stuff. It's generally best to leave things alone and your ZigBee stuff (including the smart meters) will eventually learn to play nice with the environment. There's no way to manually force the channel though, you must allow the automated routines to do that for you. Likewise, it cannot be turned off, sorry!
What devices are being affected? I might have workarounds for them.
Just another guy passing by... The unknown tech way...
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Hmm thats does not sound good. It is causing major issues at the moment, a week in and it is not stable ...i am really unhappy as it is causing major issues. If this continues the meters will have to be removed as it not acceptable. It is impacting security systems and therefore critical and unacceptable.
I think it's more likely a problem with your security systems than anything else. ZigBee is designed to actively avoid causing interference. If your security systems are misbehaving, it's not because of your smart meters and more likely your security systems being badly installed.
Further research confirms my suspicions. ZigBee runs in the 2.4GHz band (and there's a huge amount of other stuff that does too!), Wi-Fi runs in 2.4GHz, 5GHz and in some cases 6GHz bands.
Wireless burglar alarms and most other wireless security systems run on either 433MHz or 868MHz. These are so far away from even 2.4GHz that it's basically impossible for them to clash. The problem is your security systems, not the smart meters.
Just for information, I have 3 Z Wave networks in our house. One is for the heating system (Genius Hub), another for the home automation system (Fibaro) and Security system (Ring Alarm). These all use the 868MHz (or thereabouts) frequency and happily co-exist. I also have a BT Whole home WiFi mesh network which is both 2.4GHz and 5GHz with about 30 wireless devices connected to it including Ring cameras/Doorbells, Amazon Alexa devices and whole house audio. Again, no issues. My only issue is with my smart meter IHD (SmartView3) being only 2.4GHz Zigbee the Smets 2 signal barely penetrates more than four feet. So unless I position the IHD on the other side of the meter cabinet wall it doesn't search find and keep a connection.
Still wondering why E.ON Next didn't offer the option to fit the Zigbee dual band version (Smets2 meter c/w SmartView4)? I guess the bean counters are not bothered about the customer and the 'customer experience'!
Trying to support customer Wi-Fi and devices must be a nightmare for companies regarding smart meters when a customer has a smart meter installed why is it not documented by the installation person what the signal strength of the Zigbee network from the smart meter is like and advice accordingly? I think I may already know the answer.
In actual fact, it's not as bad as you think. Except when a supplier uses terrible IHDs like those from IHDL. Which E.On Next is now moving away from and starting to switch to Chameleon instead thanks to me. The Dual-Band Comms Hubs are needed to provide that extra range and they'll currently only be installed if the gas meter needs the extra range - an IHD alone might not be enough to justify the extra cost and that's the same across most suppliers. Plus, there's only so much stock and DCC would rather that most of it goes to the sites that actually need it to get the meters working at all.
IHDs are very low power devices though to conserve battery and keep running costs down. If they had stronger radios, that would increase running costs and potentially cause other issues. It's a tricky balance!
I can beat you though. My friend Blastoise186 does the IT for a local charity. He's installed Ubiquiti UniFi kit there with three UniFi U6-LR Wi-Fi 6 Access Points (WAAAAY better than anything BT spits out!) with regular stats of 50+ connected clients at once across the three access points (which also blast the entire building despite it being huge!) and also a UniFi Protect G4 Doorbell for good measure. Even with all that noise, the Geo Trio II Touchbutton IHD has no trouble getting a signal from nearly 15 metres away from the smart meters, even through solid brick. It's all about the quality of the components at the end of the day. :)
Ultimately though, I get what you're asking for, but it'd alienate most people and hardly anyone would understand it unfortunately.
Oh, and Z-Wave would inevitably have a far longer range than ZigBee ever would anyway because of the lower frequency. :D
Oh, and by the way... @Grizzly if you can force your Mesh Wi-Fi to run only on Channels 1, 6 and 11 and only run at 20MHz Channel Width with Channel Bonding disabled for the 2.4GHz Band (the 5GHz band doesn't matter so much as there's more space so feel free to run with Channel Bonding enabled and Channel Width at whatever you want there), it'll probably help with some of your issues.
If you'd like to sweep the environment to find the best channel combination, I'd recommend the Ubiquiti WiFiman app. It's basically the only free Wi-Fi tester app on Android and iOS that doesn't have a bazillion ads all over the place because people like me buying their stuff helps to fund the development costs for the app. You're looking to make sure that there's as little overlap as possible between the channels and that you're not using any that clash with anyone else (like you using Channel 7 when everyone else uses Channel 6).
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