I am new to Hubitat (got mine last week) and home automation for that matter. I thought I would start out small so I purchased a smartthings motion and temp sensor and two Ecosmart A19 Zigbee white bulbs. Initially I was able to get the sensor and bulbs paired and working but not how I wanted. I later learned that the drivers that Hubitat installed by default were not the correct drivers and I needed to use the Generic Zigbee CT Bulb (dev) driver. I changed the two bulbs to this driver and they worked much better but I still had problems, when the dimmer level was set below 10% they would take twice as long to come on and the"Current States were not always getting refreshed to what state they were in at the current time. I wasn't happy with this as I needed to set one of the bulbs to a colortemp of 2700 and as dime as possible because the wife need some lite during her trek down the hallway to go to the bathroom after we went to bed. I purchased a Smartthing hub setup the motion sensor and was surprised to see that they supported the Ecosmart bulb out of the box. Now I can set the dimmer level all the way down to 1% and even at that level they come on almost as fast as they do at a 90% level.
Now for the question, I am not experienced in any form of coding or programming but but I would imagine that if the Smartthings driver coding for this bulb could be modified and brought into Hubitat it would work similar. These bulbs or reasonably priced $18 for two are zigbee and can do colortemp from 2700k-6500k and dim to 1% with the correct driver which at the moment Hubitat doesn't have. How would I go about suggesting to Hubitat that they also support the Ecosmart bulb out of the box as well.
I plan on keeping my Hubitat and experiment with it and eventually when I learn the basics come back to it, but for right now it is much more capable then me.
Just curious, there are two boxes in HE drivers where you can set the dim level and the rate at which dim level changes.
Top box is dim level, bottom box is the ramp rate (dim rate). Were you by chance changing both in the driver? You normally would only test the dim level by entering a value in the top box. The bottom box you would leave empty, and only enter a value in there if you wanted to test how the change in ramp rate looks when you change dim levels.
Since these bulbs are no longer available at Home Depot, I doubt you're going to get very far suggesting they add specific functionality for them. Also, it has nothing to do with the driver. Have you tried issuing a setLevel of 5% to the bulbs on ST? I suspect they will have the same problem that we discovered that hubitat has.
And as far as the quality of these bulbs, I bought mine to play with the remote. The bulb I threw in an outside fixture I had a dumb bulb in anyway. The bulbs are really crappy. Their color quality if terrible. They don't deliver a true scale along the color temp scale. I think that if you pick up a Hue White Ambiance bulb and compare it to this one, you will be blown away by the difference between the two.
If you enjoy ST better, by all means, stay with what you like. I would just hat to see your opinion of Hubitat soured by your experience with this bulb. A bulb that's so bad, you can't even buy it any more.
Not really what you asked (and the above advice should help), but since you're mixing bulbs and non-bulbs on the same Zigbee network, you should be aware:
Avoid adding Zigbee lightbulbs to your hub in combination with other Zigbee devices, since the lightbulbs will try to act as routers, but unfortunately they only perform this role properly with other lightbulbs. The exception we have found are Sengled Zigbee lightbulbs, which do not try to take on the role of repeating other Zigbee devices. Zigbee light bulbs do not have issues routing among themselves, therefore a good alternative is a separate Zigbee network via a compatible bridge such as the Philips Hub Bridge, or a second Hubitat Elevation hub with only Zigbee lightbulbs paired to it. This will avoid this issue of bulbs attempting, and subsequently failing to repeat signals for other devices, by establishing two separate and stable Zigbee networks. NOTE : Devices on a separate Zigbee network cannot repeat signals for devices on the main Zigbee network.
So while you may not notice problems now, you may down the road--in your setup, likely with the motion sensor failing to get active/inactive events sent back to the hub and causing problems with your lighting automations.
Again, not really the cause here (or at least probably not), but something to be aware of.
Maybe availability is a regional thing I live in Laughlin Nevada, I purchased two more here at Home Depot today and the first two last week and they had plenty in stock. When I set the color temp to 6500k and dimmer at 100% it was bright and blueish. When I set it to 2700k and dimmer to 100% it was an light yellow/orange. The only problem I had was it would not dim below 10% anything lower and it would shut off and at 10% it took a long time to come on. Now with the same bulb driven by the smartthings driver it is the same as far as colortemp but I can dim all they way down to 1% and it comes on with no appreciable increase in time.
Thanks for the advice. I am a little confused though in regards to mixing. Reading the forums I get the sense that one should not mix zigbee and z-wave together and that one my need to add repeaters to the zigbee network since zigbee bulbs do not act as good routers. If this is incorrect, then what I interpreted your saying is that I should only use zigbee bulbs then only z-wave devices
is that correct. My investment at the moment is minimal with just 4 ecosmart bulbs and a single smartthings motion sensor so before I get deeper I need to understand best practices
For these bulbs the available preferences are: Set color Temperature, Set Level, Start Level Change and Stop Level change see Newbie light dimming question. It was suggested that I change color temp in the Set Color Temperature box and the dimmer level in the Set Level box.
Most people (probably...we don't really have stats because Hubitat doesn't collect them) use a mix of Z-Wave and Zigbee plus LAN devices on their hub. There is no reason not to mix protocols in that way--that's the great thing about Hubitat (it can tie them all together)--but they are completely separate, so both Z-Wave and Zigbee will need their own repeaters to build out your mesh and have devices work consistently, especially if they are far from the hub (but regardless I'd recommend at least one repeater on each protocol, personal opinion).
If you use Zigbee bulbs, the document above provides some advice. Actually, it provides good advice in general. But the best practice there is to use either no Zigbee bulbs at all on that same network (except Sengleds, which don't repeat and avoid this problem) or to use only Zigbee bulbs and no other type of Zigbee device on that hub (bulbs usually behave well for each other so you'll avoid problems with other devices). Mixing Zigbee bulbs and non-bulb Zigbee devices is the trouble zone--or at least potentially. A lot of people have reported better luck with newer bulbs, and the Ecosmart ones may be some of those. But there's no guarantee, and I personally wouldn't risk it. Adding non-bulb repeaters won't necessarily help. Zigbee devices choose what they think is best, and you can't control that, so today they may route through a "good" repeater, and tomorrow they may route through a bulb, and that may cause problems. The only way to avoid this and the possible problems is to not have repeating bulbs on the same network.
No, this is not true. Different technologies and radios. Perfectly fine to have both Zigbee and Z-Wave at the same time, in the same hub. Many of us do, myself included.
The warning is to not add Zigbee bulbs along side devices that are Zigbee, but not bulbs. The bulbs (except for Sengled) will try to forward the signal to a non-bulb device and fumble in doing so. For some reason if it’s just bulbs, you are fine. If it’s just devices that aren’t bulbs (and again, Sengled bulbs don’t repeat signals at all, so they don’t count in this problem description), you are also fine.
Mix Zigbee bulbs and non-Zigbee bulb devices on the same Zigbee network, you get trouble.
Thanks. Is the converse true for z-wave meaning that if one has z-wave bulbs they shouldn't have z-wave devices? And what about mixing z-wave and z-wave plus (trying to keep up with this stuff seems impossible especially as quickly as new devices come out that are z-wave plus or zigbee 3.0),
There aren’t many Z-Wave bulbs out there, but no that’s a Zigbee problem only.
Mixing plus and non-plus I am not the best to ask. My understanding is you want to keep your repeaters and devices capable of repeating, all plus if you can. Z-Wave works differently. The plus devices have this capability called explorer frames. It’s supposed to update the neighbor tables (which devices are closest to the repeaters) automatically over time. If you have a non-plus Z-wave device repeating signals, that has to be done manually any time you make a change to the Z-Wave network by clicking the Z-wave repair button in HE.
There’s also beaming, which Z-Wave locks need, and not all repeating devices support that.
But that’s not to say that you cannot mix Z-Wave Plus and non-plus devices. But best to limit non-Zwave plus to the end devices (battery powered devices that do not repeat signal). At least that’s how I understand it, and so far that has served me well. My two non-Zwave plus devices are my Aeon Home Energy Monitors, and they are quite happy with the Z-Wave plus device I added recently that has the ability to repeat. The only other Z-Wave device I have is a Yale YRD256 Z-Wave plus lock, and it has never given me a moment of trouble.
There is no evidence that these bulbs have issues routing. I have 4 and no dropped messages. The bulbs that have issues were the first round of Zigbee bulbs.
As far as the Ecosmart bulbs go they are slow to turn on under a dim level of 30. I have not had time to play with the ramp rates or connect them to Smartthings.
You can still buy these bulbs as a 2-pack for $20 i believe. I think they just discontinued the single bulb with the remote. I could be wrong but all of the stores I have visited have tons of the 2-packs with no indication that they are going on sale.
I wonder if your experience with the ecosmart bulbs was driver related like mine was.If I set the dimmer level at anything below about 17% it would take them about 2-3 times as long to show light. Hubitat initially installed the generic zibbee rgbw driver and while the light worked it was slow to come on at low dimmer levels. It was then suggested that I install the Generic Zigbee ct driver which I did but still had problems. Now that I put them on the Smartthings hub my problems have gone away and I can dim them all the way down to 1%. I am not that familiar with Smartthngs yet to know were to go to see what drivers it is using, but I would think of Hubitat could use the same driver modified to work with it that the results would be the same. When I was searching google for a fix, I found some who had a similar issue mention that they solved it by install the GE connect driver and when the did could also dim down to 1% but this was back in 2015 and I could not find that driver in a Hubitat compatible form.
Yes that has been my experience as well. Yesterday when I went into my local Home Depot (Laughlin Nevada) more than half the total bulbs they sell were some form of Ecosmart. As for these specific bulbs, the only sold them in a two pack for just shy of $18. I chose these as they were reasonably prices for learning on. Hue lights will be something to consider in the future once I become more knowledgeable. I don't want to have too much invested then find out I wasted my money because this technology is too far above my head.
Which bulbs are you referring to specifically? The Ecosmart? If you just added 4 to your mesh, there is no reason to believe that any of the other devices you have are routing through these bulb yet. If those other devices had an establish route to the host, there is no reason for them to change it after the bulbs are added. I added two cree bulbs to my hub and had no routing issues either....that was until my hub was shut down for an hour one day, forcing all my devices to go into panic mode and re-establish routes to the coordinator. After that I had tons of dropped messages. So, while your observations are appreciated, they are anecdotal. Until you have proof that these bulbs are functioning well as repeaters, I would lump them in with all other zigbee bulbs until given reason not to. If you have been able to prove that every other zll bulb on the market has a specific behavior, there is no reason to believe that these don't unless proved differently.
Also, do you think a bulb that they are selling for $2.88 is going to be a better router than the Hue bulbs which are close to $60? In the home automation world, you get what you pay for.
