Does anyone else find HE extraordinarily unreliable in almost every way? I am migrating from SmartThings and unless things get better soon, I will throw this expensive toy in the trash and go back!
Examples of things that are unreliable:
Devices that stop responding.
Scenes that won’t save.
Scene Transitions that don’t! Or more accurately only partly transition.
Locks that won’t set codes.
Dashboard tiles that don’t report status accurately
Automations that only work sometimes
Rules that won’t Save.
With out reliability this is a toy not a tool, and not suitable for serious use, let alone as part of a home automation system that handles locking doors!
I, too, had a short time of frustration with my migration from ST. However, after working through some of the issues, I think I'm on the right track.
These sound like they could all be related. What type of devices are they? I had similar issues, but narrowed it down to two device types. One required a small adjustment to the driver code to correct (wemo bulb), and the other I ended up removing from my smarthome until new firmware has been released (Inovelli LZW42 has been removed from the compatibility list for the C7).
How's the mesh where your lock is? To even get my lock to pair, I had to use a 50ft network cable (a smarthomesolver tip) with a usb battery and bring the hub to the lock (within 5 ft or so). I think most of my devices seem to favor using a device in my basement as a repeater after they're joined. The antenna in the HE doesn't seem as good as what was in the ST hub, but it doesn't matter if the nearby devices repeat correctly.
One observation I have is that the zwave radio can crash, and that can only seem to be resolved by removing the power from the device (a soft-reboot doesn't fix it). This issue was resolved (mostly) after removing those Inovelli bulbs.
I have a couple of LZW42's I am using for our master bedroom sconces - They were updated with the Inovelli beta firmware a while ago. Note: We leave the sconces powered on and control the bulbs via some buttons it's really working well.
The tricks to get them to run properly are:
leave power on, use a smart button or switch to control not a manual switch.
pair them with no security via a secondary controller like a Z-Stick+ or UZB-7.
For sure. The only reason I went with the smart bulb at all is because the switch wasn't in a good spot.
Bought one, tried it. 30 minutes after the pairing, and confirmed operation, I lost all zwave on the c7. After removing these two bulbs, I've only had one z-wave crash.
Their support recommended this. I gave it a try, but the update never finishes uploading. It doesn't appear to ever start the upload. I've been bouncing back and forth with their support, so I'll see what they say.
One odd thing of note: it seemed only a single bulb caused the issues. The bulb I numbered 2 never caused the issue, and worked fine when I was using it.
Yep, used the simplicity studio. It's been a day since I tried, and I wonder if I tried to update the bulb that was giving me issues. Perhaps I should try the other bulb and see if that one updates.
When you did the update, did you have your stick paired to your main hub? That's the current config I have, as I've been disabling S0 security.
Yes - I think it was still paired. If I recall all I did was pair the bulb via the Z-Stick (ignoring HE), updated the firmware then did the "Is Failed" test and removed the "failed" device. Rebooted HE for giggles and after that included again via the Z-Stick.
Stick at it. After 2 years and a lot of work/trials/set-up, my system is relatively stable and performant. I've focused on Zigbee (just read around the forums to see all the Z-wave troubles), good repeaters, stick to supported devices or those with a good track record on the forum, careful rule creation, use of Node-RED for anything I want to run fast (like motion lighting), stable power supply to the hub, making sure the hub doesn't overheat, very limited use of reboots, not too many dashboards open at the same time, etc.
In my opinion, the technology is still really not stable enough for popular usage. It's getting there, but it takes a lot of work to set up and then at least some to maintain it.
Today I had a visitor and they were blown away with what my system does. Sometimes we forget just how cool the end result can be.
But that’s a lot of problems you’ve listed, and to troubleshoot them effectively we’ll need a lot more details.
Have you created a ticket with support?
For starters, since you’re describing what sounds like constant problems, do you have any recurring errors in your hub’s logs? Which hardware revision and platform version are you using?
Does anyone else find HE extraordinarily unreliable in almost every way?
Just the opposite. My C4 zigbee set-up is so reliable that I go for months without looking at a dashboard or logs. That gets to be a problem because I lose familiarity with Rule Machine, though.
Not really - I have encountered difficulties in pairing devices and some devices holding on to "bad" routes but once those get resolved things seem to work okay. I also do not use Rule Manager or many other system apps on HE.
A common and silly (but annoying) issue I've noticed is sometimes a smart dimmer will inexplicably get set to it's default minimum brightness usually 1%. It then appears like the switch is not working or the bulb has died. To get around this I usually set the minimum to 15% or 25%.
My experience has been the opposite. Especially true if you consider that ST has been sending outage notifications so frequently of late that my e-mail auto-marked them as SPAM because I quit opening.
To be honest, this happened FREQUENTLY for me on ST. But on HE, it hasn't ever happened.
If you use zwave, I would look for faulty devices. I was having HUGE stability issues until I identified the faulty devices (that failed due to a power surge)...
I did have instabilities on my C-4 hubs a while ago and it was tied to some very flaky/faulty devices + using older Z-Wave (not Z-wave +) devices which require polling in order to function properly.
Yeah dunno why but had my mudroom dimmer do this yesterday. My devices "seem" reliable though. I am having a zigbee button issue with my office desk lamps. The button now never works the first time in the morning but is then okay for the rest of the day. weird.
If you have 1 hub, lots of devices, dashboards, and apps yeah you might have issues (I did). Also know the HE radios are weaker than others, so your mesh is more critical. I had nothing but trouble with my Z-wave switches, so I got rid of all of them and got Lutron. I also got rid of all non Plus Z-wave devices.
My locks were equally unreliable, so they were replaced with Zigbee (I'll echo what @Angus_M said, Zigbee seems more reliable than Z-Wave), and they have been rock solid ever since. On that subject make sure you remove all codes from the lock at the lock and make in code length changes at the lock before using Lock Manager to adjust the settings. Those setting must be done AT THE LOCK 1st, or LM won't work.
In the end I have a C4 for Zigbee, C7 for Z-wave (for devices they do not make in ZB), and a C5 running dashboards and Apps. I run ALL my automations via NR and don't use any apps on the device hubs other than "Groups". This setup has been working great for the past several months since I implemented it.
I have noticed this with certain buttons that are linked directly to bulbs(Mainly Ecolink and Sengled). If I use the button to turn off a light it is connected to, and then use HE to turn it off. The button thinks it is still on. So, you have to toggle the button twice to change it. (Basically, if the button remote uses the same button to toggle on/off, then I think that is what causes it. The ones that have a button to trigger on and a different one to trigger off don't seem to have this problem)
For my desk lamps I have sengled bulbs in them. I have a Node-RED "rule" that reads a "single tap" as a toggle for my "left" lamp and a "double tap" for the right. Long press toggles both.
This morning I single tapped and the left lamp did not come on, then I double tapped and the right one did not come on. When I repeated the process both worked. In my experience this will now work all day/night until tomorrow morning even if I leave it alone for a few hours.
Is the switch SENGLED also? If so, that was a specific one that I have with the same issue.
Are you using the switch to cut them off at night? or something else? That is what seems to cause the issue for me. I was using the switch to cut on a light, and then letting it turn off on a timer. The switch "thought" the light was still on so the toggle button sent the off command next time I tried to turn it on. I reproduced this by turning it on with the switch then telling google to turn it off. The following button press required two taps to turn it back on 100% of the time. However, if I used the same button to both turn on and off, then it worked 100% reliably.
I believe it has to do with how the button is designed to communicate directly with the bulb and not the hub. The fact that you are using Node Red instead of the hub automation tells me it's probably one of those devices. Basically, the switch, and the hub you have it associated with get out of sync with respect to the status of the bulbs you are trying to control.
No the button is a one button samsung. I use them in a couple of places. Tomorrow morning will physically power one of the sengled off/on and see if the button works. I guess I could also watch the logs.
