Help with Hubitat

Hi,

I have been a Hubitat user for about 5 months already. Nice product, love the fast response between Hub and devices. Improves nicely the Smartthings delays due local interactions. However i had a few inconveniences with different devices, here are a little detail of my troubles, maybe someone knows any solution for them.

  1. Fibaro Double Switch. FGS-223
    I found a DH for FGS222, but doesnt work with 223. I took a DH from ST community, add the commands for on1, on2, off1 and off2, and works, but seems slow at response. When you first include the Fibaro at ZW network, doesnt detect the status, and takes a while until you're able to control both switches. And when it works, sometimes gets stuck if you hit more than once to quickly. Is there any DH more reliable for this?

  2. I saw issues with phillips hue. You add the hub, and control lights. But after a few weeks, lights doesnt respond, and i need to repair de hub, pressing the button and everything. Very annoying.

  3. The ZW include/exclude process its a little unreliable compared with ST. I got both at home, and sometimes its hard to add one device to Hubitat, but very easy to be detected by ST Hub. Same when i want to initiate a general exclusion, with ST no problem, but with Hubitat, in many moments, nothing its detected.

For question 2:
Does your Hue hub have a DHCP reservation on your router?
For the Hue integration to work, the Hue hub has to keep the same ip address at all times. If you don't have a reservation then, the hue hub will eventually pick up a new IP, which breaks the connection to Hubitat.

2 Likes

Have not had an issue like this since day one of installing the Hue Bridge integration. Experienced an issue with communication to the bridge recently, but I was a bridge issue. A reboot of the Hue Bridge resolved it. Are you using a gen 1 bridge? If gen 2, is the bridge firmware up-to-date? Do you have third-party apps installed on the bridge that might be responible for abnormal behaviour?

I'm not the right guy to answer Z-Wave issue questions, but I have read that if the device is not first excluded from ST, you will have issues joining it to HE. Some have said unplugging the ST hub while pairing with HE helped. Some devices are really slow to be discovered, like around 3-5 minutes slow.

Seems very likely that's the issue. I never did any reservation for the Hue bridge ip. Just did and will try on the following days.

Why it takes so long to be detected compared with ST Hub? The other shows faster the devices after being included.

I couldn't tell you. My limited personal experience with Z-Wave is that some showed up right away (a Leviton Outlet I was testing) and some take a while to show up (the Aeon v1 HEM I own).

1.) I have noted FIbaro devices to be relatively slow (compared to general) for motion detection and RGB strips, but I have no experience with this specific device.

2.) I have experienced the hub bridge changing IP Addresses creating this problem. And I did not have that problem with ST, so I didn't ever give it a static IP. Doing so resolved my problem.

3.) I have noted HE sometimes* takes a little longer discovering devices than ST. It greatly depends on the device make. For example, the GE Fan Switch was exceeding lengthy, some HomeSeer WD100+ took longer than others, but an Ecolink motion sensor is instant. But I'd argue that ST had similar experience. I believe it to be related to the amount of meta-data provided by the device. But that's uneducated speculation.

And exclusion was less reliable on ST than HE, in my limited experience.

Hope that helps.

@doug It's interesting you say: "the amount of meta-data provided by the device" because I was reading that part of the spec plus "advice".

Inclusion into a Z-Wave network is efficient for all device types, but the user experience of including a device can be affected significantly from vendor to vendor. Waiting time is based on how much a controller decides to ask of information from the device, and when it’s asked. The interview process done by a controller varies after the inclusion process. Some controllers will ask for all capabilities and states of the device before proceeding, while others will hide much of this communication behind a dialog, e.g., asking the user to enter a name.

Not sure how this works, i often see things that i dont know why happens or how to fix it. For example, right now i have 2 fibaros in the ZW network of hubitat, both same device, with same DH, but the information gathered is different:



Response is different between them as well, one execute commands faster, the other takes a while sometimes.

Right after you pair the device, click Configure to send the driver parameters to the device.

Would you mind sharing your Device Code for the FGS-223?

Good advice about unplugging the ST hub while pairing. It's not always necessary but on numerous occasions I have had issues discovering devices in HE only to find it had automatically paired with ST without my input. I wonder if sometimes it's just a race to see which hub can claim it first.

@onetap
As per @daniel.john.edge request, would you mind sharing the 223 DTH code.
I'm getting one of these and will need a DH for it.
Thanks. :slight_smile:

Maybe someone could port this or change what needs to me changed.