The lights are hard-wired canless so that is not an option, but I wish I could just unscrew them. Great idea, though!
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My plan is to get some Zooz switches. It is easy enough to change the wiring so the lights have power all the time. Just been tinkering with turning on and off to get things to pair. It actually works to an extent.
I just can't get all of the lights to pair. If I do a factory reset, HE will not find all 15. Usually, it finds about half of them at once. Try pairing again in HE app and it may find a couple more. Then I have to tinker with flipping power off and on. I usually get o the point I have about 12 paired and then it won't discover anymore. Does HE have a limit on how many devices it can find at once?
Oh!!! Sorry about that, I misunderstood/misread.
Yes, that would be MUCH more painful! I see your point.
You may want to consider using the Inovelli Blue dimmers if you are going to control Zigbee lights:
You don't even have to change the wiring. There is an option in the driver for Zooz switches and dimmers to keep power to the devices at all times (smart bulb mode), that way you can just change the option back and cut power to the lights if necessary. This is assuming you can get them all joined and working. The joining process must be timing out on the lights before the hub can get to all of them. It's a shame they don't have some kind of plug connector like some can lights have. If you're using a C-8 hub, you might try experimenting with the power output on the zigbee radio to see if turning it up or down gives you better results.
Only reason I would change the wiring is because I am in a 4-way setup. Simple enough to get power to all switch locations to power the switch and just have the lights hot all the time. That makes switch options simpler.
Unfortunately, I bought my HE a few weeks before the C-8 came out so nothing to play with there.
The joining process timing out too early seems like a real possibility. I wonder how long the lights stay in pairing mode. The HE usually finds about 8 lights in the first 15-20 seconds of pairing.
If you could power each one up by itself on a test bench of sorts, then join and configure and power off one by one. Then move them to their final location and they should work. I would imagine that bulbs only stay in pairing mode for 30 seconds or so.
I'll have to do something like that. They are all hard-wired in the ceiling so I'll have to take them down to do that. I will get as many paired as I can so I don't have to remove as many. At least they come out of the ceiling reasonably simply. Just hope they don't get out of sync too often because that will be very annoying in the future.
I've had another issue. In the other room, I have been able to get all 4 lights connected. I used the room lighting app to set them up. The app will turn only 3 lights on, but it will turn all 4 off. I checked and they are all set up the same in the app. Seems strange. I can turn the 4th light on in the device setting and then the app will turn all 4 off. That is how I checked. Any thoughts on that?
I always create a group for lights that I want to control at the same time in the groups and scenes app and enable zigbee group messaging.
After the last update, I don't even see anything for making groups.
I'd suggest using Room Lighting to create groups (the app is a bit complex, but it does groups and scenes as well as room lighting automations). The old Groups and Scenes apps have been superseded and are now legacy at this point.
Some specifics on Zigbee groups:
So I have used the Room Lighting App to group these lights in multiple ways. Here is the screen:
In addition, here is the detail on how I set one of these up. Is this what you mean by grouping or is there something in addition to this? This will activate all of the lights at once. It does have the popcorn affect, but it does turn all the lights on and off together.
I was able to get all 15 lights in the main room paired. It probably too 8-10 hours of tinkering with them. Once I got most of them connected, I had to factory reset 3 lights by pulling them out of the ceiling and disconnecting the wires, turn on the power, tap the hot wire against the terminal to reset and then connect the wires back. Doing this hot was not the safest plan, but it stopped me from completely re-wiring the lights and pulling them down to a bench. They really need to put a reset button on these since they are designed to be hard-wired.
I have yet to use Room Lighting, because I’ve had such good results using Groups with Motion Lighting, Button Controller, etc., but if you’re getting a popcorn effect it sounds like it isn’t using zigbee group messaging. I use Groups to turn off the entirety of the downstairs lights and every room turns off at once without the popcorn effect.
You should install a smart switch then simply cap off the rest of the 3/4 way boxes then replace the switches in there with decora scene controllers. This way you can retain the 4 way switches, maintain power to the lights, and reset if need be.
That is the plan. I just don't have the switches yet. My main concern is that I am sure I will need to reset these in the future and the only way to do that will be to pull them out of the ceiling. At this point, I'll deal with that when it occurs.
Did I use the correct app to control these lights as shown above? Is there a setting to help with popcorn effect? I keep reading that the group and scenes is the old way of doing things. This room lighting interface was much simpler to set up than scenes, but just trying to use the intended solution correctly.
Create a group then an activator to turn on/off the group instead of a rule that turns on the lights individually.
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Fill in a value for Command with Activator Device. This creates a device with that name. In your case it will create a dimmer device that you can/should use to control all your lights at once.
Under Activate Lights Options you need to
- set up indicator usage for groups (any or all)
- enable 'Activate as Group with Zigbee Group Commands'.
'Zigbee group commands' is what eliminates the popcorning as it sends a single signal to all the lights.
Another useful post:
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