So in the past day or two I've noticed that my Hue dimmer switches have stopped working. Ive had no issues since I bought the HUB in February but now all of a sudden the dimmer switches will not trigger my lights to come on.
Some background:
I use my Hubitat as a bridge between my Zigbee Hue dimmer switches and my Phillips WiZ wifi lights. It's been working perfect the past few months but now all of a suddenn the switch wont turn them on.
Here is what i've tried so far:
Factory reset for dimmer switches - No change
Battery replacement for switches - No change
Reset Zigbee radio on hub - No change
It seems that the switches will only work within 5-10 feet of the hub with line of sight when previously I had no issues across my 2000 sq ft house.
I even verified the hub can control my lights by manually turning them on via Hubitat elevation.
That was just luck. I’ve found that they will even drop from the Hue bridge, except Hue does something (in the driver?) that makes them automagically rejoin. Rebooting the hub, updating firmware, a glitch in the space time continuum, pretty much anything will take them down and sometimes nothing apparent. This is with multiple Samsung zigbee 3.0 outlets nearby.
If you added any other Zigbee repeaters recently, that’s probably the culprit.
I find Hue dimmer switches work terribly with Hubitat. They were ok when I had no repeaters in the mesh. They start dropping off as soon as i started adding smart plugs and the ikea repeaters. Battery dies within a few weeks. I pretty much moved them off to a conbee II now.
I guess it was luck. It's just interesting that it's all the hue devices that just stopped all at once. I have 5 across the house. 4 dimmer switches and one hue button. I haven't added any new devices since February when I got them all working.
Could you have a neighbor with strong wifi nearby? Since you’re on channel 3, their router would probably also have selected a non-standard wifi channel. 20 is only between channels when wifi channels 1, 6, and 11 are used.
Is there a table I can find which channels are optimal to work with the others? Which zigbee channel works best with Wifi channel 3? Also I cant remember when I set up the hubitat if it can connect via wifi to my router but it is hard wired in with ethernet.
I run 4 UniFi wireless access points in my home, alternating 2.4GHz WiFi channels 1, 6, and 11 across them. I also limit their radio frequency range to 20MHz, to avoid RF overlap.
IIRC, the Philips Hue bridge only allows 15, 20, and 25 as its Zigbee channels. This is to help avoid WiFi 2.4GHz interference. My Hue bridge is set to Zigbee channel 25 for the Hue bulbs I have paired with it.
I use Zigbee channel 20 on my Hubitat hub and no interference issues whatsoever. I also have ~8 Zigbee outlets spread through the house to help provide a strong Zigbee mesh network.
So I've switched over the wifi channel. Still no change currently. The remotes blink red when I press any of the buttons. I manually turned my lights on via Hubitat Elevation and they worked fine. This is why I think there is an issue with the link from the switches to the Hub. All was working fine until the last update. You mentioned zigbee outlets. Are these things as simple as a plug that you could plug a lamp into? Do they work as repeaters for the signal?
Tagging @aaiyar as he seems to be up to speed on which Zigbee outlets repeat well, and are reasonably priced. Hopefully he'll have a few minutes to chime in.
The eWeLink zigbee 3.0 outlets, which are sold under a variety of brand-names on Amazon, repeat very well. And they are inexpensive. Some of the brand names include: CMARS, Dogain, Seedan, Wishiot, and Luntak. They are about $19-20 for a 2-pack.
I don't mind the IKEA one's, I believe from comments by others that they are weaker than others, but you have the option of plugging into a power outlet, plugging it into a USB outlet, as well as daisy chaining other USB devices by plugging them into the repeater. A very versatile device. I have a few dotted around the house on the few Zigbee networks I have setup.
Switching zigbee channels sometimes takes a while for the hue dimmer switch to realign itself. I didn't time how long the dimmer took before it started working again after changing the zigbee channel on my hub to pair a Konke humidity sensor. I did this around 10pm at night and by morning the hue dimmer was working again.
This means they aren't connected to the hub. You will have to press the reset on the back of the switch with a paperclip or similar until it flashes orange. Then rejoin them.
You mention
This is only something done as a last resort. It erases your devices from the radio. This means that when you rejoin them, they will have a different zigbee ID and your rules won't work.
If you have a backup from before you did this reset, restore the hub with it and then try rejoining the dimmers.
Is that correct? I ask because my zigbee devics have the same device ID irrespective of the coordinator I pair them to. So I've been believing that zigbee ids are determined by the device and not the coordinator.
Well . I assumed that was the case, since I had a problem with device IDs changing back when I was using SmartThings, but I never actually tested it with devices that aren’t terrible. Or, I could be misremembering that. Either way, you don’t ever want to reset your radios and then expect automations to work.
. I assumed that was the case, since I had a problem with device IDs changing back when I was using SmartThings, but I never actually tested it with devices that aren’t terrible. Or, I could be misremembering that. Either way, you don’t ever want to reset your radios and then expect automations to work.
