How to pair a device out of range of the coordinator

General support
1

How would you pair an IKEA ceiling light that is in a location where the coordinator cannot or can barely reach it ?

I have tried pairing an IKEA remote close to the coordinator after device reset with 4 pushes of the config switch, and then moving over to the light and pushing the config switch for 10+ secs.

Alternatively would there be a way of pairing a device manually ?

The only remaining alternative is to unmount the armature from the ceiling, which is not really a solution since re-pairing with z2m may be necessary in the future after e.g. update.

2

An Ikea remote is not a router. You need a router device between your coordinator and your ceiling light.

3

I have found that it is possible to pair devices outside the coordinator range. Two caveats:

  1. the pairing process requires a fairly good link quality. So pairing devices with LQI of below 50 did not seem to work reliably. LQI above 100 makes pairing much more reliable. In my case, the Zigbee network wasn’t large / dense enough yet to initiate the pairing process or run it to completion.

  2. the z2m coordinator software isn’t very robust. It is possible to end up in a state where everything works, but not pairing (even when joining is allowed). After shutting down zigbee2mqtt on the host, unplugging / plugging the CC2531 coordinator back in and restarting zigbee2mqtt, the pairing process suddenly is possible again.

4

If your CC2531 does not won’t to pair, unplugging and plugging it back in is the documented fix.

5

Does this also work with the “regular” CC2531 firmware, not the source routing one?
I believe the second one is only required in larger network, right?

I will, try your suggestions anyway.

6

I would expect so, yes.