After the most recent couple of updates I began noticing my Hue Outdoor Motion Sensors would blink red and their status would not update in the hubitat app telling me they arent communicating with the hub.
I tried a handful of different things to remedy this but so far nothing has worked. Rebooting the hub, shutting down the hub and unplugging for 5 minutes, removing batteries from motion sensors to reboot, factory resetting motion sensors and reconnecting them to the hub, backup and restore the hub, roll the hub back to a previous firmware.
The system I have set up isnt very complicated, only consisting of a handful of zigbee devices. The devices themselves are all within range of the hub, the furthest one being maybe 8ft away. I have a few ThirdReality motion sensors scattered about of equal distance that are functioning without issue. This seems to be isolated to the Hue motion sensors and more specifically the Outdoor motion sensors.
Any advice on how I can troubleshoot further? What information can i provide from the hubitat that would assist you in a better analysis of my setup? And where can i locate that information? Prior to these issues my setup was generally pretty solid and consistant.
The Hue motion sensors have always given me issues compared to other motion sensors I've tried and I'm considering replacing them entirely. Are there any motion sensor recommendations for the quick response time and reliability for lighting? I'd like to get these working since they were pretty pricy but when compared to the rock solid consistancy of the thirdreality sensors I'm inclined to make a switch.
Do you have any repeaters in your network?
I have had 4 or 5 Hue Outdoor motions running in production on C7, C8 and now a C8Pro for almost three years now with no issues.
I have a centralite zigbee smart outlet acting as a repeater for the farthest sensor. The other two are fairly close to the hub itself, in the same room. Would this distance still require a repeater?
If the sensor is blinking red when motion activated then the device isn't receiving an acknowledgment from the hub for the motion event, this always indicates a network/communication problem, irrespective of distance.
You can try a battery pull on the device, which should cause it to find a different route to the hub.
What type of home WiFi system are you using? What 2.4GHz Channel is your WiFi system using? What is the 2.4 GHz channel width? The recommendation is to use either 2.4GHz WiFi Channels 1, 6, and/or 11 with a 20MHz Channel Width.
What Zigbee channel is your Hubitat hub using? The recommendation is to use Zigbee channels 15, 20, or 25. Do not use channel 26 as it is restricted to lower power.
The goal is to reduce the chance of RF conflicts between 2.4GHz WiFi and 2.4GHz Zigbee networks. The following charts explains why the above recommendations make sense, to prevent overlap between these two networks that share the 2.4GHz frequency range.
All great stuff about the zigbee and wifi channels. Even with that taken care of in my system, I found reducing the Zigbee power level was what kept my outdoor Hue motion detectors working. I run at Power level 4.
Hi Ogie I have my 2.4GHz channel set to 11, width 20MHz, 5GHz channel set to auto. Zigbee channel is set to 20. Should be no problem there. Router itself is a TP-link AX3000 and i live in the woods where congestion isnt an issue.
Mike, Ive done battery pulls on each of them but this hasnt fixed the issue. It will reconnect and respond to the hubitat momentarily but will quickly drop off again.
Tom, Im not seeing the power settings youre refering to. A quick google search tells me it can be found under zigbee details but i dont have a power option.
So far after some more troubleshooting I've found that rolling back to firmware 2.3.5.152 has fixed my connectivity issues with the hue outdoor motion sensors. Still not sure what root cause is but thank you for your guys help nontheless!
I had something very similar happen with my usually reliable Hue indoor motions during two power outages, while on inverter generator. House power was out overnight before generator was started. Returned to normal when utility power returned. Couldn't replicate it later. Now trying hub mini ups battery backup. Also live in woods. Weird.
