i have had 6 1000lumen Ikea bulbs for about 3 or 4 years. One of them has died, one doesn't always switch on with the rest of the lights on the button controller, and most excitingly the 2 in my bedroom ceiling randomly turn on full blast in middle of the night.
Has anybody had these or similar issues? I'm debating what I can replace them with as an alternative. I'm a renter, so I'm somewhat limited in what I can install, hence the bulbs.
I'm not sure it matters, but my hub is Rev C-5 running the latest firmware. My modest zigbee deployment is currently 11 bulbs, 4 sensors, plus the hub. I have a mix of ikea and hue bulbs, and the sensors are Xiaomi. (also have Lightify, GE, Sengled, Eria bulbs from a larger deployment at previous accommodation with less existing lighting and higher ceilings)
My Ikea Opal 1000 lumen bulb is acting strange also. It's about 3+ years old and doesn't always come on/off when it should, where in years prior it was 100%. I know because I have a lightify new bulb in the same room involved in the same automation, the lightify always responds, but the Ikea is not reliable after 3+ years
They ran fine on the Hubitat for a few years. It's not the hub, it's the bulbs. Also, the whole point of having the Hubitat is to not have a separate bridge for other things, isn't it?
They are cheap bulbs. You don’t get, what you don’t pay for in this case. I have had a few just stop working reliably, constantly drop from either the Hue Bridge or Hubitat when just three feet away, turn themselves on, etc.
I’ve also had the TRÅDFRI LED strip drivers act really flakey on a Hue Bridge, yet behave just fine on a Hubitat hub. For example, I could open the Hue app, press a Pico and see the light switch toggle On when I pressed the Pico button 1, and toggle Off when I pressed the Pico button 5, but the light never came on. Yet if I tapped the room On/Off button in the Hue app, the light worked everytime. Previously they worked more reliably on the Hue bridge, but I always had occasional issues with them. Pairing them to the Hue bridge again always fixed the issue, but only temporarily.
Once I paired the TRÅDFRI LED strip drivers to my Hubitat hub, the problems have all gone away. You could point the blame at the Hue bridge, and you could blame the TRÅDFRI LED drivers, but Hue bulbs on the Hue Bridge, together with the Hubitat integration for Hue have always worked without fail. The TRÅDFRI LED drivers also now work on the Hubitat Hub without fail.
Point is, some things just don’t work in a certain configuration, and some smart home products are inexpensive for a reason. None of this is straight forward. There’s no substitute for experience.
Does seem that way - all my tradfri strip drivers have always worked flawlessly on my hue bridge.
The only time the actual tradfri bulbs never worked well were a few that were a bit too far from the hub. A genuine hue bulb in the middle fixed all that. Since then dropouts on my hue network have been almost non existent.
I did learn from that, that the tradfri lighting stuff appear to make poor repeaters.
Well if they ran well originally surely it's got be either the hub or some other devices added recently to it? As @SmartHomePrimer alluded to there is a bit of black art to home automation.
You'll see in the forum that many people run multiple controllers apart from HE. This is because good as HE is, it does not support everything.
Have you looked at your Zigbee mesh in the HE settings?
192.168.X.X/hub/zigbee/getChildAndRouteInfo
Checked to make sure your Wi-Fi (or a neighbours) hasn't changed to a channel that is interfering with your Zigbee channel?
Do you have any repeaters on there? I just deployed a Aqara Button Switch, and am learning all about the joys of the Ikea/Xiaomi/Aqara Zigbee. From what I've read it sounds like you could use a compatible repeater on your mesh.
... or the bulbs failed, which is definitely what happened to at least 1 of the bulbs. (wouldn't turn completely off)
I've been home automating for 20 years, and using Zigbee for about 5 or 6 years. I live in an apartment, nothing is more than 15ft from my hub. My previous place was twice as long and I had no issues with the same bulbs and hub. My current install hasn't changed in over 2 years and the issues only started recently.
I'm not sure what I'm looking for here. LQI on everything is 253 or better.
The hub is fairly central to the deployment, and nothing is more than 15 feet from the hub. I used to have a RaspBee in the mix but I took it out over a year ago.
I live in an apartment so nothing can be all that far away, but on the other hand there is plenty of opportunity for interference.
Thanks for the tip! How is the spread on these? It seems like these are fairly directional, which may not work well in my application. The ceiling fixture in our bedroom is actually something of sore point.
I think you will shortly discover these bulbs are on their way to death. Both of mine started acting strange right before they died. Guess there cheap for a reason.
If you want a killer warranty, some Hue bulbs have a 10 year warranty, that's if a 40-50.00 lightbulb doesn't make your head explode. For me I'll just buy cheaper bulb and replace when they die in 2-3 years. Homedepot used to have Ecosmart CCT zigbee bulbs at a very realistic price. These work well for me and don't appear to cause mesh issues. Same with the sylvania RGBW Smart+ zigbee bulbs, at about 10-20.00 each
