This is the only thing I can think of. I have 10 Ikea GU10s in close proximity to the two dimmers, I can’t help but think they’re helping. Either that or maybe different firmware?
I gave up on pairing anything beside hue bulbs to HE. I could get a month maybe of the devices being connected and then they would drop off. Instead of pairing the device again, you can hold down all 4 button on the dimmer to reconnect it.
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@michael.l.nelson I’m pleased people are getting the dimmers to work and it only seems to be me. Damn frustrating though. When I setup hue bridge and HE on the same channels as you a lot of hue sensors (paired direct to he) don’t work very well and miss reporting movement (not sure if they just aren’t linked to HE or for whatever reason the devices them self are playing up - red light that comes on to show activity is detected doesn’t come on).
After changing channel, how long do most people wait before saying “yep, this isn’t good”? I assume when you change hue and he channels around it takes a while for the zigbee mesh to rebuild - anyone know how long? And when switching channels, does anyone then shut down the device for say half an hour so the zigbee mesh panics and forces a rebuild?
Lol seriously starting to think I need one of the little devices I’ve seen on the forum that scans all channels etc
Definitely don't shut down the device if you change the channel. I've heard it can take 24 hours for your devices to all migrate and your mesh to recover. It all depends on how much activity they are having to cope with at the same time. It's best if you can do it when you're not going to be home for the day (or more) to let it recovery in peace.
@Ryan780 thank you. That is interesting - when I’ve done channel hoping recently to try sorting the dimmer issue I’ve shut down HE for half an hour because I read somewhere once about making all devices panic and rebuild the mesh quicker. However, thinking about it, the high footfall sensors are the ones that have given me problems on new channels - generally about 5 hours after power up again
That's if you want them to go into panic mode and search for new route to the hub. if you want the hub to communicate that it has a new channel, you have to leave it on.
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If I switch channels on HE I don't wait for them, I re-pair everything. Only because I have a number of Xiaomi devices, and if I wait for them to reconnect, then I may as well be waiting for that cold day in hell.
Even if I leave dimmers next to the Hubitat hub, or next to a repeater, they loose the connection after about a day. So I don't think it's related to proximity, but something else.
I paired my test dimmer to Hue and checked the FW. Its already running the latest FW (5.45.1.17846). I've only had this one a month and they came with this firmware, they haven't updated. Although the others I have on Hue have updated in the past. How old are the ones you have?
I cant see the FW of the ones connected to HE sadly, and don't know of any other way you can check unless you have a Hue hub, and then pair back to the Hue hub. I could re-pair the ones I have on HE to Hue and check them, although a little scared of then losing them.
I know my older ones on Hue have updated in the past (I manually updated)
Yesterday I updated all my Osram bulbs, after purchasing their gateway to do it. This was due to a similar reason, they kept showing as "unreachable" on Hue, and not all of them were responding as well as they should. After updating, I reset them all and re-paired back to Hue (have all lights apart from Ikea on Hue). They've remained connected, and are way better than they were prior to updating.
Do you have any bulbs connected to HE?
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I have one old one, from Nov 2017, and the others were all bought in the last 2 months. But a good point about the firmware, I will pair a couple with the Hue hub and check the firmware.
@Keo I tried holding the 4 buttons to re-pair but wasn’t successful. Have you managed to do it on HE? I tried the following:
- Hold all 4 buttons down for 5 seconds. No joy
- Hold all 4 buttons down until the light flashed red. No joy
- Hold all 4 buttons down until the light flashed red and green (normal pairing flashing). No joy
Lol the only way I get it paired again was normal hold a pin in the back of the dimmer
FWIW I couldn't get the 4 button re-pair to work either.
But I connected 2 of mine, old one and a newer one, back to the Hue hub, and they both updated the firmware. So reconnected them to the HE after the firmware update, and will see if it makes a differences.
Forgot to say Royski, I don't have any bulbs connected to HE. All mine are connected to the Hue hub, to avoid the problems they have when acting as repeaters on anything other than the Hue hub. Shame really as I would have liked to be able to use them as repeaters.
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I no longer have mine connected to HE so I can't say for sure if it still works or not. I know I got it to work in the past. Sorry it didn't work for you.
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When I was channel hopping to test mine, it seemed my dimmers found the new channel very quickly(sorry, I don't know exactly how long "very quickly" is). But when they didn't, I used the hold all 4 buttons down to "restart the hue dimmer" and they would be on the channel after that. The only way to actually put the dimmer in pairing mode is the setup button on the back. I never shutdown the hub. I'm thinking firmware at this point myself. I updated or made sure my dimmers were updated before I moved them over. I bought another one shortly thereafter and then realized I didn't really have a need for it. I was just exited they were sticking as I also use mine to control non hue light and plugs, etc. I haven't touched it in about 4 days. I just took a look at it and HE shows it as "Inactive". I have no idea if that's just a haven't been used in a while or gone. I picked the last one up from a local Home Depot and it was covered in dust. I'm pretty sure it does not have the latest update but I did not check. I will check to see if it works when I get home. If it doesn't I will pair it back to Hue to see if it updates. I feel your pain, brother. Nothing more frustrating than the old "works for some not others".
UPDATE: So I came home and tried the newest dimmer that stated "Inactive" in the system and it works. Now says "Active". I'm still going to remove it and pair it with Hue to see if it updates.
I don't think this info will help at all. I paired it back to the Hue hub and checked for an update, took a phone call and when I came back to the app it said no updates available. But the dimmer shows it last updated today. I don't know if that's just because it was paired today or if it actually updated. I can try again tomorrow unless someone knows for sure about the date shown. I have to say I'm skeptical that it updated, obviously it stated there weren't any but I do have auto update on. My experience with the Hue updates though, is that they usually take while to complete and my phone call was only a minute or so.
I can report that both my dimmers, updated with latest firmware, disconnected again this afternoon.
After they disconnected, I paired them again. But one has already disconnected again this evening.
So the firmware update hasn't helped fix the problem. I'm not sure what else to try. Maybe I'll try another channel change.
Last night I shut down my hub, moved it to the bedroom and temporarily cut power to the room to pair a ceiling fan. This also removed power from the repeater in there. The fan paired and repeater recovered fine but the Hue Dimmer in that room did not reconnect. This leads me to believe that solid repeaters are key to keeping these working.
I don't think Philip's intended for them to work through repeaters since their bulbs don't repeat. So there probably isn't much development beyond the basic specification in regards to repeaters.
Hue bulbs definitely repeat when on a Hue network (as some people would say, "paired to the Hue Bridge," even though that is not technically accurate). I'm not sure of their behavior on Hubitat but would be surprised if they didn't also repeat on it or any ZHA network, and at least I've never heard anyone say that they didn't (but they're still probably lousy ZHA repeaters and I wouldn't do it.)
That being said, I'd assume they're still capable of routing through ZLL bulbs like other ZLL devices, and Philips' FAQ provides some hints. It says to make sure the dimmer "[is not] further away than the farthest Hue light that is connected to your Hue bridge (The lights re-transmit the signal towards the Hue bridge)." However, the remote can also communicate directly with (and directly control) the bulbs, so I guess the remote "working" on a Hue/ZLL network doesn't always tell you anything, and I might be reading too much into this (but the Bridge is supposed to register the button as pressed, so it's probably the case that they repeat this--HomeKit can use this, and the app also lets you see when it wa slast used).
I only had my Hue Dimmer paired to Hubitat for a brief time because I decided it was too awkward to use to control things that weren't lights, and I decided I wanted enough button devices that Picos would be cheaper anyway. I honestly can't remember if I had problems with it "falling off" since I wasn't a fan of it. But I do know I had problems with my Osram Dimmer remote dropping off. I'm not sure if that device prefers ZLL and only falls back to ZHA or if it was designed as ZHA, but I also suspect good repeaters are the key.
Maybe this was the same issue. I'm just guessing. But in this case, I definitely haven't had this problem since I added a couple XBees to repeat on my network. 
Wow did I ever get that wrong. I was under the impression that they didn't repeat since moving unreliable Osram bulbs to hue keeps them from repeating. While my premise seems wrong, I am still seeing a correlation between my dimmer switch working and having a quality repeater in the same room. Time will tell. If I go more than two weeks without a problem that I can't chalk up to a power loss I'll be confident of my assertions. I have Osram dimmer that has never given me a problem other than being ugly. But it's within 15 feet of my HE hub.
