@Eric_Inovelli – I’m 9 switches into the install of the 70 (+ a bunch of AUX) that I got. Here’s where I am so far.
Information on my setup:
- Running an OpenThread Border Router (OTBR) implementation on a SkyConnect (Home Assistant’s solution-on-a-stick) connecting to HA via their approved/standard path. Nothing exotic or home-rolled about the software side of this.
- Everything’s in a single VLAN, IPv6 connectivity is fine, and commissioning of the Matter devices proceeds without a hitch.
- Switches are scattered about among a handful of gangs between two floors. By my estimation, every switch is within 30 feet of almost every other switch. There is one gang that hosts 3 of the White switches side by side; this is the only multi-gang that hosts more than 1 of the White switches.
- The house is standard construction, no concrete walls or floors, no crazy metal plates. Typical drywall, lumber, plywood.
- I killed 2.4 GHz WiFi on channels 1 and 6, and have left Thread channel at the default 15. (I already had very low traffic on the 2.4 GHz side, but I felt it was prudent to eliminate this as a source of interference after trying everything else I could think of).
Rough rundown of steps so far:
- Commissioned devices one at a time to add them to the network. Started upstairs, since the OTBR is up there. Connectivity initially seemed okay, but I noticed that I had to keep my OTBR USB device completely out of the closet to get a decent connection to the first switch I commissioned. This surprised me, but didn’t think a ton of it – the USB device has a fairly weak radio in it, supposedly only about 5 dBm, so I thought it’d just need a solid connection to a nearby switch to make this work well.
- Finished installing upstairs switches, and connectivity seemed okay from what I could tell through light testing. I put the OTBR back in the closet, since it now had a switch essentially right next to it, outside the closet door. And indeed, I was typically seeing green connectivity indicators on the switches, although not consistently. Again, did not think a ton of it, figuring the network would strengthen as I added switches.
- After adding downstairs switches (the 3 in a multi-gang side by side), first noticed what appeared to be significant connectivity issues where those downstairs devices would randomly report “unavailable” in HA for periods of time. Surprising, since the multi-gang was only needing to send signal through the floor and maybe the wall to get to the next switch in the chain. Confirmed that this is essentially the signal path that’s being attempted by looking at diagnostics in the OTBR – very weak link appears from one of the multi-gang switches up to the switch on the second floor.
- Figured I should add a handful of additional downstairs switches to confirm that there wasn’t some freak interference in the specific path just between the upstairs and downstairs switches I’d already installed. Added three more switches downstairs, each in a single gang, spaced out a bit from one another. All the links from upstairs to downstairs are weak, and importantly, the OTBR itself tends to be the most stable of those links (albeit a weak link) to one of the downstairs switches, despite it having a supposedly weak radio. The poor performance continues.
- Killed the WiFi channels as mentioned above, eliminating potential sources of interference. No real improvement here, same weak links observed, which was expected due to how lightly the 2.4 GHz was being used here.
- Finally went back to remove the OTBR from the closet again, thus allowing at least some potential paths from it to other switches downstairs and maybe improving strength of signal to any switches that could reach it. Fascinating result: I got an explosion of links directly to the OTBR, some of which are stronger than the links I’m getting between switches themselves. Again, the OTBR dongle in question is supposed to have a weak radio. I am currently seeing it connect to 8 of the 9 switches (!!) (EDIT: minutes later, now seeing “just” 6 direct connections). Uncertain yet whether this is going to yield better overall reliability in the network, but it’s hard to imagine it not being so.
- Went around doing the “network strength” config button test on each White switch just now, since it’s been a while since I looked at those. 4 show green, 2 show red, 3 blink red (no connection?). Funny enough, probably not a coincidence, the green ones are the ones that are in the multi-gang within centimeters of one another, despite being furthest far from the BR of all the switches, and the one that is within 3 feet of the BR. (Important question, not explained by doc: what does “network strength” actually mean? Link quality to the strongest link of one other router? Link quality to all linked routers, averaged? Measured route cost back to the BR? Something else?)
Deductions, take with a grain of salt: It feels like I’m getting symptoms of either A) weak transceiving between the switches (either low transmit power, or poor reception, or both), or B) interference between the radios all attempting to establish links as REEDs. I am guessing at both of these, but I don’t know how else to explain what I’m seeing so far, and no way to test the theories (yet!).
Here is what I think I need at this point to diagnose and ultimately solve connectivity issues before I can commit to the remaining 60 switches in my overall install:
- An understanding of the transceiver power on the switches. I looked for documentation on this, including trying to look up info on the MG24 itself – but I think this comes down to the user of the chipset to tell the radio what to do. Thus, I assume this is ultimately a firmware thing.
- Any (hopefully inexpensive) suggestion on how to test the actual signal strength, plus any interference getting in the way, from one of the switches in a real world setting. It’s one thing to say “this radio should be transmitting at +10 dBm” and another to see that the signal is actually strong a mere 20 feet away. All I have at the moment is a diagnostic report coming off the OTBR indicating relative (ordinal) link quality between nodes, and I don’t know how trustworthy that is (besides it being hard to diagnose anything when the network itself is deciding upon the linkages).
- A very nice-to-have would be the ability to set the transmit power on the radios via config. Since there will be a lot of multi-gang setups, it feels crucial to me that the user be able to specify one of the switches in the gang to have full transmit power, while the others have low transmit power, such that at least one of the switches is very likely to “break through” any interference from the other switches and reach a more distant switch/gang.
- I also feel it would be practically a necessity in a large installation like mine to have the ability to set the role of each device in the Thread network via configuration. E.g., in a multi-gang setup, I need to be able to specify one of the devices to act as a REED, while the others are set “down” to just FEDs. (Ideally, we’d use the REED setting in combination with a higher transmit power where necessary, while the FEDs would likely be set to lower transmit power).
Any comments at this point appreciated, even if only “message acknowledged, we’re talking!” 