Going crazy

I have Cree and Sylvania. The Cree ones worked great for us on wink. The Sylvania ones not as much but it's also in a kids room where they decide to play with lights and probably have reset it a half dozen times lmao.

Actually they gave me the most headaches reconnecting with power outage situations.

But these are only for a bit while we're here, won't be using them in our RV.

I had Crees - thought they were good until they started to die on me but this was pre-HE days. Also not sure if they act as repeaters or not. If they do then that may mess with your Zigbee mesh.

For HE - Sengleds seem to be the way to go right now as they don't repeat and are fairly decent quality for the price. I have had some oddness when using the HE driver for Sengled but the generic ones seems to be okay.

Also recently took delivery on some Inovelli Ilumin Z-Wave bulbs. Am interested in seeing how they work.

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Okay ran into my first headache... I set up my HE, set up the Alexa skill with my test sensors, everything showed up fine no issues, got Alexa to notify when they changed, awesome stuff.. I added two lights that were previously on wink to HE, they connected and work perfect, I went into the Alexa skill app in HE and added them to my devices so I could voice control them... But they would never show up in my Alexa app. (Part of the WAF is making voice control seamless during the transition).

I tried discovering devices in the Alexa app they wouldn't show up nothing.

The only way I could get it to add the 2 new lights was disable and re-enable the HE skill in Alexa... After that it discovered and and saw the two lights and could then add them to my rooms to make voice control...

Is this going to be the case, or did I miss something? Having to do that extra couple steps each time I add something is going to suck because I have to add the devices all back to the Alexa group each time..... And I have 9 or 10 lights with 5 or 6 groups.. and putting them all back to add something new to the hub each time is going to get really old and I'm going to forget or miss something... Which will cause issues with the known voice controls...

Any tips here?

I use GH so hopefully someone better will come along, but for now in GH you need to go into the GH app within HE. Once your in there you can tick the additional device you need. Then you go to GH and if there not already there ask G to sync my device and the new ones appear. Nothing happens to the old ones unless you removed them, so I'm assuming you need to do something similar for "she who should not be named" :crazy_face:

There is also I believe 2 apps for her? A old one and newer skill or something like that? Which one are you using.

Edit yes "app" and "skill" not sure which one is the better one.

That also works for Alexa.

It also seems that if you wait a bit after selecting them in Hubitat, they sync by themselves. I have had them nearly instantly appear after updating the list in Hubitat, to maybe an hour later.

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I'm using the skill 'app' in HE. I added the device through that last night, and still as of this morning not showing up in the Alexa app as a device. Only when I disabled and re-enable the skill in Alexa did they show up.

Skill is the newer one that I believe should be used in most cases. Apparently the older App is what you should use in some countries where the Skill isn't supported.

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Yes that sounds correct to me :+1: knew I had heard it before but couldn't remember which way round :grinning:

I'll move another light over here in a bit and see if maybe it was a fluke... My hub was set up then offline for 4 days before I plugged it back in here and started adding things...

So maybe it was still waking up or had a miscommunication because of that. My network is the same I take my router with me, and the Alexa account is also the same .. so that part shouldn't have had any issues....

Did you try the command "Alexa, discover new devices"?

I didn't do it via voice but I ran it several times in the app. After trying it last night and this morning was when I decided to disable and re-enable the skill to see if maybe the devices we're not set up right... But that added them...

That should have worked. But try the voice method too. That isn't normal to have to mess with anything in Alexa app.

Okay, success.

Added my dining room light over to HE. Tested to make sure the controls worked, added to the skill app, and I got a pop up on my phone that a new device was added for Alexa.

So that saves me a lot of headaches to maintain the WAF.. lol

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Maybe Alexa was just being temperamental. She gets cranky sometimes.

:yawning_face: :joy_cat:

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That's very likely.. lmao.

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Sorry for the late reply. Zigbee bulbs are fickle beasts. They seem to be OK repeating bulb commands but can cause problems with other devices.

I haven't used the Cree bulbs (except for dumb LEDs) but I did have about a dozen Sylvanias on Wink. I would have to reset one or two every few months. I updated their firmware and it helped make them more stable. So first recommendation is to update the firmware. If you don't have a Sylvania bridge you can usually find a bridge and bulb on Amazon for under $10. Factory reset the bulb (five times on, five times off at 3 seconds each). Pair it with the Sylvania bridge and do the updates. It can take a while so be patient. When it is done unpair or factory reset the bulb again and rejoin it to Hubitat. HE will recognize it has a previously attached device and you won't have to update any rules.

Now I have 20 or 30 Sylvania bulbs on HE. Everything worked great until I started to add several motion sensors to the mesh. I was frequently having the sensors and sometimes the bulbs drop off the mesh. It turns out the bulbs make very poor repeaters (well documented). I picked up a second HE and moved all the Sylvanias to that hub. This way they have a dedicated mesh. This takes some planing as you now have to support two meshes and may need additional repeaters. In the end it was worth it as I haven't had anything drop in a long time.

This is true for most every Zigbee bulb I have heard of. The one exception are the Sengled bulbs. They do not act as repeaters so they do not get confused like pretty much every other bulb. If you plan on using lots of smart bulbs it may be worth the extra effort to add a second hub so that you can save on the cost of the bulbs. You can often find four packs of Sylvania Smart+ bulbs for a bit over $30. I recently got four BR30 bulbs for $23. If you aren't planing on using that many smart bulbs then the Sengleds are the way to go. They are much cheaper than some (Hue) but typically about twice the cost of the Sylvanias.

All the lights in my house are RGBW. I like to change the color temp during the day for standard lighting. I also use a lot of accent and mood lighting. Depending on how complex you want to get it is worth planning a strategy early.

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Yeah that's something I'll shave to worry about down the line. We're in the process of selling our house and moving into an RV, which is actually the reason I picked HE over smarthings, is the local control. Won't have any regular bulbs in the RV all 12v built in LED and strips.

We have 7 smart bulbs, 5 Cree and 2 Sylvania bulbs. The rest of the fixtures I did in wall zwave switches. I wanted rgbw bulbs but at the time these bulbs were $20 each and I didn't want one of the dedicated light hubs added .. oh how things have changed since 2016... Lol

Oh I love the thermostat app... Way better than setting anything up in wink..

Only going to take me another day to move everything else over... Only have a few more lights to move. Waiting for my smoke/co listener to come (had Kidde connect alarms which I thought was zwave oh well), then my quirky power pivots which I'm going to replace with smart life outlets in going to flash with tasmoto (sp?) And then the wink relay's which I saw the custom drivers that were made but they are not really issued much and since we're moving out in the near future I'll just remove them and put light switches back in, lol. Although I haven't decided, might leave that and the wink hub since I'm not going to fight to take out the in wall switches and sell the house as a 'smart' house.. And the new owner can deal with wink... Lol

And think I made a decent looking light control dashboard that will function for the wife like the light control in wink did... So that should be easy enough.

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You doing very well so far. The Zigbee lights (except for Sengled) connected directly to the hub are a problem and will destabilize your Zigbee mesh for anything but other light bulbs. Sounds like you’re well aware of that already.

The Alexa thing was probably a cloud fluke. When I add anything to the HE Amazon Echo Skill, as soon as I click OK, I get a notification in my phone just like you described and it’s just there ready to use. I never have to do a manual discovery anymore.

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