So I have my new C7 hub and I have been trying to setup a couple of scenes for my mancave area.
I have 7 Inovelli LZW42RGBW bulbs and a LZW30-SN red switch. I am running C7 on Version 2.2.4.158
The room I am running all of this in is 14' X 21' and the lights are all mounted in Can light fixtures recessed into the ceiling. hub is within 12 feet of all lights
From my computer I can individually control each light without any issues dimming, color changes or on/off
However
Any way I try to control these lights as a group or in a scene or rule engine I have totally inconsistent operations.
I have two functions I am trying to accomplish
Movie Mode
2 lights over the video screen should dim to 20% and turn red
4 lights in the rear of the room should remain white and dim to 25%
Work Mode
All lights should go white and go to 100% level
Seems pretty rudimentary, however I have tried rules, groups, scenes to accomplish this and my only constant is they don't work.
Switching from on scene to another has happened a few times but 99% of the time 1 or 2 bulbs will react as commanded but the other 4 will do nothing at all. issuing the same command after waiting a minute or two might coax another bulb to comply but generally not. The bulbs that react are not always the same bulbs or in the same positions in the room fairly random as to which will work.
I have tried watching the logs and I see lots of activity but nothing I can relate to why this is happening. it looks to be the commands are issued but just ignored by the bulbs. it seems to only be a problem when I try to send a group of commands from one action.
Can anyone help me understand to see why this is happening? or how do diagnose it?
Could my can light fixtures effecting the light radio reception although they work fine with single commands just not groups.
I appreciate any assistance you might lend or ideas I can try.
I have used Zwave for 20 years in Homeseer and very seldom had any issues like this .
Those bulbs will join with S0 security on the C-7 Model. This is enforced by the 700 series chip and Hubitat doesn't have control over it. S0 is a lot of overhead. It's terrible by accounts of others that have these bulbs when trying to control more than one of them.
Forum members have some kludgy workarounds they say works. You can give those a try, but there's no way Hubitat can be expected to support such a setup. Everyone is going to be better off finding different bulbs to use with the hubs like the C-7 that have 700 series Z-Wave chips.
This is the way.
The current solution is to get a 500 z-wave stick, pair it to the hubitat as a secondary controller, pair the device with no security to the secondary controller, and remove the z-wave stick.
Have you updated the bulbs to the latest firmware? (Check Inovelli's site if you're not sure.) The firmware these originally shipped with was quite chatty, which was problematic for some people as-is but as mentioned above is likely to be even worse if you use S0 (which these will pair with on a C-7 for reasons beyond Hubitat's control), which adds even more overhead. Updating the firmware may help, but I'd also recommend re-pairing without S0. It's not quite as scary as it might sound from the above, but it's still not officially supported. But all you need is a secondary controller, like a Z-Wave USB stick and a PC running Z-Wave PC Controller (which is also an easy way to update the firmware, by the way, though Hubitat can do that on its own now too).
So just to be sure I understand this process the S2 security is causing chatter and that is causing the devices to not hear the commands being sent? That makes perfect sense to an ex ethernet network administrator.
If I add the secondary controller (I have a Z-stick sitting here and downloaded the Z-wave PC controller app) do I use this to just rejoin the devices with no security and then remove it or do I need to run this after it is done discovering the bulbs?
Is there any advantage or disadvantage in using the secondary controller in the future?
I have a fully functional Homeseer system running and hoped to include the Hubitat C7 as a vary capable addition to the HS4 server. I want to get everything fully integrated and operational in Hubitat before attempting to merge it with HS4. Now I am extending the Hubitat environment with a secondary controller to get my Inovelli bulbs to work. Not a problem just trying to control complexity
I kinda get what you are saying but will also comment that I do not think pairing devices with no security via a secondary controller is "kludgy" - a bit more technical than the average person might want to get involved with yes..
Certainly the spec allows for devices with no security so that shouldn't be a problem unless I've missed something?
edit: Are you saying pairing via a secondary controller is not supported or can cause issues with HE?
These are lights and switches in my basement and I have no current "security" items like door locks or cameras where I would think security might be a desired attribute. I don't pretend to have an in-depth knowledge of zwave security practices so I could be overlooking some aspect I am unaware of.
I am OK with my current level of knowledge running these devices in question without security unless someone can bring s sound reason to my attention.
I am curious as to what @SmartHomePrimer's issue is with this technique. If there is some sort of problem or causes a lack of HE support then I may need to reassess what I'm doing with devices like my Aeotec Recessed Door Sensor Gen 5. Paired 3 of them via a secondary controller with no security and they seem to be working fine - better than they did with the "forced" S0 security.
Not to get too technical, but it's the older S0 security that these bulbs use (not S2, which is the newer standard and is not considered "chatty") that can cause problems like the ones you're experiencing.
You can exclude them all from your hub (using Hubitat's exclusion process, or by joining the Z-Stick as a secondary controller on your Hubitat hub and then doing the bulb exclusions using the PC Controller app.
Then join the bulbs back to you hub using the Z-stick and PC controller app. They can be joined to your hub that way w/no security.
Exclude will break your automations, so you may want to put in a place-holder device (real or virtual) in your automations in place of the bulbs, if you want to save/re-use your automations.
You can also do the recommended FW updates (if the bulbs aren't up to date) to the bulbs via Z-Stick/PC Controller, but I'd try that via the hub first as that process is pretty easy when it works (may not work for all devices in my experience). Try the FW bulb update via the HE hub Device FW Updater app before you exclude all the bulbs from HE.
I like updating via the PC Controller sw because it seems faster and you can easily exclude it directly afterwards - device should register "is failed" and (with my new understanding) reinclude with no security. ymmv of course!
When you are working with Zwave PC controller how do you identify the devices?
I have successfully removed all my lights in my network and have added one back in and successfully updated the firmware but I am unsure what device identifier will remain with the bulbs so if I do this again in the future I can identify the devices from my notes.
Is it the DSK?
It identifies all my bulbs as Power Switch Multilevel.
On HE go to the Z-Wave Details page and look for the device you want.. in the "Node" column the number is in parenthesis "0x0C (012)" - in this case "12" - that's the id (in decimal) of the device in the column of devices in the PC Controller Sw.
A new number will be assigned. There are games you can play with copying and replacing the "Device Network ID" in HE but I would caution against it for now.
Thanks again. I don't need to be that edgy I was just curious if there was some sort of ID like a MAC address that would follow the bulbs and devices in different settings or software ( HomeSeer4 or Hubitat) I have learned a lot in doing this update, Thanks to everybody that lent a hand and helped me out.
OK so I have excluded all my bulbs and switches in PC Controller, I updated the firmware files in the bulbs and my red switch and I added all of my bulbs and switch in PC Controller software.
In my Hubitat software I see under Zwave radios all bulbs with corresponding ID numbers to what I see in PC Controller but I don't have any devices listed, did I miss a step or is there a DB refresh or some other action I need to complete or did I do something wrong?
This was the answer to making my Inovelli RGBW lights work in Hubitat! I am now able to use the 8 functions in my Inovelli Red Switch to launch automations and group functions. I would like to again thank everyone who helped me figure out the problems and offer solutions to the issues.
I am still trying to figure out the Hubitat/Inovelli configuration for custom color tuning bulbs in the Hue, Saturation and level mode to achive around a 2700 to 3000 color. I am reading a bunch of stuff but currently its all a fog of information.
Just adding an update to this thread in case anyone else runs into this issue with the Inovelli LZW42 bulbs. There is a firmware update available from Inovelli (2.31 - available here). It will allow you to add the bulbs in non-secure inclusion mode.
I updated the firmware in my bulbs first and then excluded and re-included them. Inclusion in non-secure mode requires you to turn the bulb on 3 times (on-off-on-off-on) after powering down the bulb for a few seconds.
Good post! It is strongly recommended to upgrade the firmware if on a version prior to v2.30 as there are significant performance enhancements among other things.
But all you need is a secondary controller, like a Z-Wave USB stick and a PC running Z-Wave PC Controller (which is also an easy way to update the firmware, by the way, though Hubitat can do that on its own now too).
