Help to select smart bulbs

+1 for Andy's recommendation to use the XBee. Maps your Zibee network and doubles as a very strong repeater that is compatible with everything Zigbee including Xiaomi devices. IKEA Trådri outlet is also a compatible Xiaomi repeater by the way. Just need a few of them, at they're not powerful like the XBee is.

Anyway XBee is how I know the Trådfri bulb caused the issue and that the Trådfri outlets are good at repeating (besides the evidence that none of my Xiaomi devices have dropped since adding them). You should be forewarned that Zigbee network issues can crop up from Zigbee Smart Bulbs of any make when paired directly to HE except for Sengled, which do not repeat at all. If you put the Zigbee bulbs on a separate Zigbee network (e.g. the Hub bridge), then you can avoid the issue and still have really fast and local control of the bulbs.

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Suppose I want to put my Crees on my Hue Bridge, which is already integrated with HE. Do I remove them from HE, pair them to Hue Bridge, and then remove and re-integrate the Hue Bridge to HE?

Skip the last part. No need to remove the integration. Just do a bulb discovery once you get them added to the Hue Bridge.

Easy as pie. I haven't had any issues with my Crees, but might as well take a load off HE where possible.

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Well, easy I can’t say. I have a hard time trying to do the factory reset on the Cree bulbs, so I use a Lutron Connected Bulb Remote to do it. Apparently you can do it with a Hue Dimmer too, or at least it’s said to work with the Hue bulbs, so I assume the Cree might also respond. I have one Hue dimmer, but have never tried it to reset bulbs because I have the Lutron Connected Bulb Remotes.

I've got the reset procedure down pat. Takes some practice. Didn't help that there's some misinformation out there.

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Would you please share your Cree reset procedure? I have one bulb which is very stubborn and refuses to reset. I am actually wondering if it has failed at this point. I’d like to try your procedure to see if there is any hope for this bulb.

Hmmm, I wonder if I could create a Rule Machine Rule to reset these bulbs by plugging a lamp into a Zigbee outlet. RM could then cycle the outlet with much better timing than I can manually achieve... just an idea... :thinking:

  1. Begin with the bulb turned off
  2. Turn the bulb ON for 1 second
  3. Turn the bulb OFF for 2 seconds
  4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the bulb momentarily dims (about 4 or 5 times)
  5. It will only dim for a second, signaling that it has been factory reset.

It helps to have a physical switch or pullchain. Otherwise you can sort of achieve it by unscrewing/rescrewing, but that can be tricky.

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I did, but then I had one bulb not reaching the hub, apparently after pairing them with hue, each bulb must reach the hub directly, so I ended selling the Crees and the hue system, I was very frustrated.

Hmm, that may be an issue for me. My 4 Crees are in the basement and garage serving as sort of a mini-mesh to help get them back to the hub.

As mentioned in the thread below, that's incorrect. Hue creates its own ZLL mesh, and bulbs can therefore reach the hub by going through other bulbs.

I went ahead and moved all 7 of my Cree bulbs to the Hue Bridge. Here's to more stability! I wonder if the 10-limit rule still applies if they're on the Hue Bridge and not routing ZHA messages.

This technique worked to recover my 1 troublesome Cree bulb. Thank you!

It is now safely back in the box of unused devices, awaiting a rainy day when it will come in handy once again.

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What's the 10-limit rule? I'm not familiar.

Cree Connected bulbs have a defect where they start dropping messages after there are 10 or more of them in a mesh. According to what I've read. I don't know if this means when only repeating ZHA, or ZLL, or both.

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Not sure but my farest Cree bulb stopped to work when I moved it to Hue, only worked when I opened the garage door, but there was another Cree about 8ft of this one in straight line and working perfectly, why it did not use that bulb for repeater, I don't know, I did all to get it work, even swapping, nothing worked, this is why my theory of each bulb connects straight to the hue bridge, but maybe just Cree.

Had never heard that, or completely didn't remember if I did. Was that the older 4 flow bulbs? I have one of those. They suddenly disappeared from shelves here and I always wondered why. Cree had no explanation when I asked.

Don't know much about it except that my brain had logged it as an issue a while back. A lot of these bugs may have been fixed in the time I've been avoiding them.

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How should this work for adding new bulbs? I don't have problems, but want to prevent issues, lol. e.g., I have 4 bulbs connected to Hue Bridge; then did HE integration. Now, I have a new 5th bulb I add to Hue, and subsequently refresh HE to add it. Should be good still?

Once joined to the hue bridge, you can just scan for bulbs again in HE

I just can't get into connected bulbs. Other than Lifx (?) they are all too low lumen for my needs.

I don't know how all is you can live with 60w bulb equivalent. :smile:

So I stick with dimmable high output LED and zwave dimmers.

Oh another data point is that I don't want/need color changing ability either.