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I am trying to figure out some ways in which a ZigBee network can be monitored. As is the case in any network, here we have a central coordinator and several slaves joined, however, there seems to be a tendency for the established links to break during operation.

I'm not entirely sure why this happens, but I was wondering whether there is a means in ZigBee to monitor the 'strength' of connection. Repeatedly pinging is of course, one way to do so, but are there any other, possibly less demanding options?

Vadim Kotov
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genesis
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1 Answers1

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  1. If you want to monitor a Zigbee Network you will need a 802.15.4 radio that can act as a sniffer, you can google '802.15.4 radio sniffer' and there are many vendors that sell these hardware (I prefer the ones that have a usb dongle form factor like cc2531 usb).

  2. Additionally you need to have a software that can translate whatever the radio is catching so you can make sense of that information... the vendors of these radios usually have a development tool to catch Zigbee communication that allows product manufacturers debug their products as they develop them and usually these are free in their website or you need a code provided with the hardware to get the tool.

  3. There are also 3rd parties that provides the software like wireshark which is free but not so friendly to start with; there is also Ubiqua which is more friendly and focused into Zigbee, there is a trial you can use after which you can get a subscription monthly based if you didn't finish the job, for sure there may be others but I am not aware of those.

I constantly work with Zigbee and I'm very familiar with Ubiqua, so if you get a Over-The-Air traffic log or you can provide more details of your network, may be I can provide more help or point where to look at. Hope this helps!

Luis Luna
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