WiiM Pro and Pro Plus Interfere with Phillips Hue lights

[thatsnotmynaim]

Anyone noticed this issue, for a number of weeks I've been struggling with my Hue lights, unplugged my WiiM Pro and Pro Plus today to move things around and all of a sudden all my lights are working again...

 

[Brantome]

Are you using a hue bridge? Are your WiiM devices close to it? Any chance there’s a clash of IP?

 

[thatsnotmynaim]

Thanks for the reply. Not particularly, the bridge is in the lounge at back of house, WiiM was in Cinema at front of house so probably 5 meters away, I also had another WiiM upstairs in office, I did then put a 3rd WiiM in lounge but probably 2-3 meters away later but thinking back I’ve been having issues since day 1 tbh. No IP clash, I’ve worked in IT all my life, the Hue lights will eventually work but it often takes 10-20 presses to get them to work, I’ve left all my WiiM devices off all day and have not had an issue since…

 

[Brantome]

The hue bridge is Ethernet connected and uses zigbee to control the lights. Zigbee operates on the 2.4gHz band and can interfere with other devices using that as there’s an overlap in the channels between zigbee and wifi devices that use 2.4gHz. I wouldn’t expect your WiiM devices to be a cause of interfence if they’re using 5ghz wifi though - which are yours using?

 

[thatsnotmynaim]

I use a mix of both, I have 4 x BT disc repeaters hard wired in and they have both 2.4 & 5 enabled. I have some devices that only like 2.4 and I know some far reaching places (garden / garage) only get the 2.4 as it goes further. I’ve never had too much of an issue though before the WiiM’s tbh. Also as soon as I turned off the WiiM’s the issue immediately went away, the effect was not subtle at all..

 

[Brantome]

If you force the WiiM devices to only use 5gHz, does that help? Can you control which 2.4gHz channels your BT kit uses I.e. something other than auto?

 

[thatsnotmynaim]

Ok I’ll give the force 5 a go tomorrow and see .

 

[Balthazar B]

I use a mix of both, I have 4 x BT disc repeaters hard wired in and they have both 2.4 & 5 enabled. I have some devices that only like 2.4 and I know some far reaching places (garden / garage) only get the 2.4 as it goes further. I’ve never had too much of an issue though before the WiiM’s tbh. Also as soon as I turned off the WiiM’s the issue immediately went away, the effect was not subtle at all..

You ought to do scans to understand what 2.4gHz WiFi channels are in use nearby, as well as what Zigbee channels your Hue devices are using. What you're describing is not uncommon when there are overlaps. See this discussion, for example:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Hue/comments/5vzi7z

 

[Brantome]

Also see https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/zigbee-wifi-coexistence and https://devicebase.net/en/philips-h...use this feature,instructions in your Hue App.

As above, use a wifi analyser app to see what channels are in use and which are congested/ overlapping. Switch your wifi away from auto channel selection and try a quieter fixed channel away from the one zigbee is using.

 

[simbun]

Whilst that's all good standard practise it shouldn't prevent traffic being delivered (he shouldn't need to press it 10-20 times).

What might be an interesting test - if you haven't changed things already - would be:
Turn on just one of the WiiM devices, the furthest from the Hue hub, and see if everything works.
Assuming it does, turn on another, ideally in the same place (they don't need to be connected to anything) and test again, and continue doing this until you have them all on.
This would test whether it's broadcast related.

If everything still works then bring one closer to the Hue hub and test again, although this should only slow things down.

I know they announced in the other thread about the ability to disable features on the mini to conserve memory, but it might be beneficial for network traffic too on the rest of the product line.
I know UPnP, Squeezelite and Chromecast all announce differently, but I don't know if the rest do or whether it's all just additional services under a single mDNS broadcast.

EDIT: Sorry I should have realised that ZigBee didn't use WiFi so it could be interference that's blocking the ZigBee mesh.
The tests as outlined above should still help identify the source of the issues though.

 

[Balthazar B]

Also see https://www.metageek.com/training/resources/zigbee-wifi-coexistence and https://devicebase.net/en/philips-hue-app/questions/how-does-the-zigbee-channel-change-work/2tp#:~:text=You can use this feature,instructions in your Hue App.

As above, use a wifi analyser app to see what channels are in use and which are congested/ overlapping. Switch your wifi away from auto channel selection and try a quieter fixed channel away from the one zigbee is using.

And/or change the channel on which Zigbee is operating. I don't know much of anything about Hue, but other Zigbee environments can be configured to use a channel that's unlikely to interfere with prevailing WiFi traffic. If there's WiFi interference coming from sources you can't control (e.g., neighbours), then changing the Zigbee side can be the more effective cure.