I’ve definitely had a lot more success using the hue hub. I had lots of issues when I had my hue bulbs connected directly to hubitat. In part I think they just aren’t good repeaters and the mesh wasn’t working well. Since I put them on the hue hub, everything is running much smoother.
I believe the connection between hubitat and the hue hub is all local. They’re quite responsive through the hue hub (more responsive than when I had them connected to hubitat actually).
The connection with the Hue Bridge is local. I keep mine on the bridge as the local connection is reliable. I am able to use Hue Groups and can control a large number of bulbs by having the HE only send one command, essentially offloading the radio work. Also, if you keep it on the bridge you can take advantage of the different apps that let you do some pretty cool special effects.
Hue bulbs just don't cut it as repeaters, I actually witnessed this in my lab while I was sniffing packets on my dev hub.
I was sending lock commands to a zigbee lock, and the lock was ignoring them, turns out a single hue bulb (the little candelabra base jobbie) that I had paired to he for testing had acquired the lock as it's child but refused to forward the commands to the lock.
Unscrewing the damn bulb immediately restored the locks function.
I also use the Hue bridge. Since Hubitat can talk to the bridge locally it's still very fast, and using the Hue bridge lets you keep the bulb firmwares up to date.
Both my zigbee networks are on channel 11. I presume that's bad. Suggestions for the Hue which says it only takes 30 seconds to change channels, if all bulbs are on.
If none of the Zigbee light bulbs are any good as repeaters, which devices are best used as Zigbee repeaters instead?
I have Zigbee locks now, and really need repeaters as in my new old place the internal walls are all +30cm thick brick. Had been hoping to stick to Z-wave, but the only mortice locks available to me in the UK are Zigbee ones ordered from the US. And had been planning to use use Zigbee lights as repeaters, but it seems none are any good at that job. And stupidly hadnt realised that the Hue bridge creates a separate Zigbee network either, as I thought that would be my best route as I already have two Hue bridges.
I just looked in the respective apps.
In HE, Settings, Zigbee Information, and the channel is listed there.
In the Philips Hue app (Android), Settings, click on the "i" for your Hub, and it's in there.
As a conclusion, having moved my lights off the HE and to the Hue Bridge, I'm finding my zigbee networks have been far more reliable. And this is without the xbee which has not been added back into the mesh (yet).
Is this because, as has been said here many times, (all) bulbs make lousy repeaters? By moving them to the Hue channel, your "regular" Zigbee's have to pick another repeater and those happen to be non-bulbs?
I am migrating from ST to HE. My question is about leaving the Hue bridge connected to both ST and HE simultaneously during this migration should not be any issues right? Technically I could leave all my Hue devices in ST still operational via the Hue bridge the whole time I am duplicating the function on HE via the same Hue bridge. Is there any best practice suggestion for me?
My Hue bridge has about 5 Hue bulbs and 12 GE Link
Thanks, I am having some minor issues as I troubleshoot the Hue on the HE and just wanted to make sure I didn't overlook anything that may be causing it from the ST side
