My first entry into connected home was with this kit several years ago: GE Link Starter Kit, amazon com slash dp slash B00TJ4WMZE
The system is some proprietary mutation of Zigbee.
I bought a Vera and used it for a few years and added these bulbs to it without too much issue. The pairing didn’t workd perfectly, but they didn’t have problems after the setup. Once in a while they’d simply die and I’d have to re-pair them.
This week, I added them to my shiny new hubitat. They worked for A few days and then simply quit responding to commands.
I know they’re weird bulbs, but keeping them saves me the price of replacing them. Has anyone had any luck getting them working with hubitat?
I have a few but had them paired to a Hue hub connected to HE. I have replaced most of them due to unreliability. The one or two that I have left drop off the Hue hub quite regularly. The GE Link bulbs are not on the compatibility list unless I am mistaken. I would have a look at building a ZigBee mesh paying special attention to the bulb section.
In addition to the above, if you don't want to replace the bulbs, they should work fine on a Hue Bridge. You can usually find one for cheap on eBay (or not much more direct), and this keeps them on their own Zigbee network, off Hubitat's, where they will play nicer (see the above document). Hubitat has a native Hue Bridge integration that can then bring these devices in. Still probably cheaper than replacing them all if you have a lot, even though I think many people wish they never got these bulbs in the first place.
Thanks for the links and info. I only have the two zigbee bulbs, so it might just be cheaper to do something else instead. Honestly I don’t even like having bulbs themselves connected because it breaks the interaction model of a lamp — you can’t use the switch if the bulb is also switched.
That said, I have two questions. The article “building a ZigBee mesh” says I should power down my Hub for 20min. Is disabling the ZigBee function on my Hubitat the same?
Given that the bulbs seem to have failed to connect, or stay connected, should I delete them from the hub, factory reset, and re-pair them before doing the 20-min mesh-reset?
As far as I can tell, yes, it's the same. (The idea behind it in either case is to freak out your Zigbee devices that are trying to communicate directly with the hub by taking the hub away and forcing them to try going through a repeater instead.) But this isn't usually necessary except in the specific circumstances noted (for example: the hub has a 32-directly-connected "end device" Zigbee limit, so if you just added a bunch and they're all trying to go directly to the hub, this is one way to try to get as many as you can to find another way and free up some of these slots).
In your case, I don't think it would help in general. It may temporarily help when pairing non-bulb devices: leave the bulbs powered off when pairing other devices so they don't try to route through them. But Zigbee devices are free to re-evaluate routes at their discretion and may end up routing through them once they're powered back on, which is why the only certain advice here is to keep them on a separate network. Personally, I've seen bulbs just fall off on their own sometimes, which sounds like is what is happening to you too and is a bit different from the problem that is documented (lost messages from other devices trying to route through bulbs). In my case, they were Crees, and they are perfectly fine operating on a Hue Bridge but didn't like Hubitat long-term, even when only other Zigbee bulbs were on that network (a Hue Bridge network is ZLL and Hubitat is ZHA--slightly different but largely compatible Zigbee profiles in that ZLL is more or less a subset plus some differences in how they can join a network; it appears some like to occasionally fall off when in ZHA land).
If you only have two, my advice might be to replace them with something known to play nicely. Of course, I understand that this woudln't be without cost. If you do want to, Sengleds might be a good choice--they're not repeaters (avoiding the above problem) and not too expensive (at least compared to something like a Hue bulb). I'd suggest selling the Links on eBay to recover some of the cost, but I'd feel bad for whoever gets them.
There are also a few Z-Wave bulbs out there (Inovelli Illumin is new and not too expensive, either), but I'm not sure I'd fill a whole room/house with those given that there is nothing like group messaging for those (which can help eliminate the "popcorn effect" when manipulating multiple bulbs and improve speed and reliability). With only two, it may not be a big deal. Just some other ideas! If you think you'll eventually add more bulbs, a Hue Bridge (or second hub, but I'm not sure that will help here) may be a good choice.
It is, but bulbs are usually fine repeaters for each other (the issue is usually with other devices). The fact that these apparently stil manage to fall off is a bit of a mystery but not unheard of--I know a few of us have had similar isuees with Cree, and both usually pop up on "worst repeaters" lists.
