Centralite 3420 Nightlight Repeater

You are giving me more hope!

Both Bryan and I have written drivers for it, to the extent possible, and if they provide firmware that actually does deal with the color I will definitely add Color control to mine then publish it on my site with my other drivers.

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I got the OFFICIAL response from Centralite yesterday regarding the 3420. It is not good news. Basically everything it does not do, the spec is incorrect. Apparently much of the spec sheet was based on some product(s) made for other companies or such...

  1. Changing the color: Only directly on the device NOT via ZigBee.
  2. Temperature sensor: Nope. None of their mains-powered devices have one.
  3. Power outage notification: Nope. Does not provide any notification.
  4. Button on the back near the power plug: It is a TAMPER SWITCH... that was never implemented in the firmware and will never work/report.
  5. Battery level: Nope. The battery level is not reported via ZigBee. They did mention that "according to some tests" it should recharge fully within 12 hours. They also said that the battery should allow it to act as a ZigBee repeater for over 24 hours (if it was fully charged). So that is one piece of good news.
  6. OTA Update: It could, supposedly. However there is no newer firmware for it, none was ever made, none will ever be made.

So... that is the end of this one. Very cool sounding product but overall not worth it once you find out most of the features actually do not exist. I can still dream of something similar though. Just really do not want to prototype my own and go the hubduino or other WiFi route...

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Nice.

So we are sure it works, but it cannot possibly work because we are publishing misleading specs. Doublespeak at its finest.

Good job Centralite! Way to make your customers trust you. :-1:

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Yes. It also only took about 2 months to get the final information. I appreciate that the support person DID eventually provide it to me (not her fault if the program manager or whatever does not provide it to her), but it appears that their internal processes are a bit broken (even assuming there are COVID-19 delays in there).

I was just directed to this thread about this product. Are there any similar night light products on the market in z-wave or zigbee?

Not directly, no. This HAS worked OK as a night light for my daughter. Once she set the color she wanted (manually pressing on it to change the color) it has been fine for her. Responds to Rules to turn on at Sunset and off at Sunrise (plus I may have it set to turn off if her main room light is on, I forget). It DOES respond to on/off/dim commands and DOES have a battery. I cannot tell how well it works as a ZigBee repeater anymore (I have too many things that do that now).

As far as direct alternatives... Not really. It somewhat depends on what you are looking for. There are some outlets and repeaters (Aeotec Repeater 7 has a white LED that CAN be controlled) with LEDs that can be controlled (usually with community-written drivers). Not really what they are MEANT for but it kindof works.

If you want something with a battery there are workarounds like USB-powered ZigBee LED strips. Pop one on a USB battery pack (that provides power while charging of course) and it works just fine. I have a GLEDOPTO model (not sure about others)

At this point I'm thinking for behind the toilet in the master bath (we have an outlet behind it). Want to have it come on it's lowest brightness setting after 11:00 and stop at sunrise simply to illuminate the area without fully waking us up and to lessen the chance of me missing the toilet :joy:. I already have a motion sensor in there to trip it. I really don't need to change color so this may still work for me (set it for blue and be done with it)

It should work fine for that purpose. I think I read that having it (a nightlight, not this one specifically) red or some similar color is more beneficial for use in the middle of the night because it will allow you to get back to sleep easier than blue light or such.

I really like the CONCEPT of these and would even get a couple more if they were ever super cheap. But... as a product they really needed to at least allow controlling the color over ZigBee. Getting power notifications would have been only a nice-to-have for me personally.

Holy Cow, what a saga of incompetence on Centralite's part. Is it any wonder they went under?
"We publish specs, swear to them without validating" sell you a product that doesn't fit with the user manual capabilities. SMH
I'll say one thing, whoever was in charge when they built the Iris plug 3210-L knew what they were doing as far as zigbee signal.
Can anyone comment on the repeater performance of this light? number of devices routed/LQI ?

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I will say, I do not know how it is doing as a repeater (not why I bought it unfortunately). I checked my zigbee/getChildAndRouteInfo just now and it is not shown in there at all, so nothing is using it. I do have a large number of Peanut Plugs and devices are routing through those mostly it appears (when they need to route at all).

I told it to turn on and off and the ZigBee logs show:
lastHopLqi:255, lastHopRssi:-55

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Just got 1 of these. with the RGBW bulb driver, I can send a "flash" command and the light starts flashing through all its colors, even if initially off

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What happens if you stop the flash? Does it remain on whatever color the flash was at or does it go back to what it was before?

I will say I never tried a flash because none of the drivers I was using (including my own I started making) HAD a flash command to it.

So Flash starts the flashing, hitting flash again does return the device to the color & level it was set at before the flash was initiated.
So I guess we could use the flash as some type of notification?
And it's awfully huge. My wife was like "What the hell is that?"
I told her it's a night light so you don't stub your toe at night, and she replied but I'll crack my knee on it, it sticks out a foot from the wall.

And the router performance is very good, it's routing for 14 devices already.

Is it dimmable?

Yes, I was able to control the level of it. I had it do Identify also, which caused it to go through colors. There is a couple lists of the features that did work and the ones that did not.

The main one for me is if they had gotten remote control of the color working...

It is pretty large but it has decent battery capacity. My daughter still loves having her purple nightlight... So it has been a win overall.

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What driver are you using?

I am using one I made and have never published due to the above-mentioned problems for the device. Did not want to support the "lost cause".

So I'm seeing, like with the peanut plugs, the nightlight is changing 16 bit addresses, despite it have a great link direct with HE. It's done it twice in the last 5 days. Is this a definite problem or acceptable for zigbee?
Anyone else seeing this behavior? It just did it again in less than 24 hours

I got it in and it detected as generic zigbee dimmer. Overall this will do for my purposes. Put it in the kid's bathroom so that after 10:00pm it comes on at %50 which is enough to illuminate the toilet so the kids don't pee all over the wall :joy: and then go off after 5 mins of inactivity. I let the kids pick the color.

If it works for your purpose, great! For my original purpose I REALLY wanted control of the color remotely. Power loss notice and temperature were nice bonuses but the color control was a key feature that killed getting any more.

I used to have a couple of those first toilet bowl lights but they ended up more of a novelty.

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