I got my hubitat a week ago and started switching everything over from SmartThings. It worked awesome for about 5 days. I switched the last of things over on Saturday, but since then I’ve had issues. I’ve had one Cree connected bulb drop out, and it seems I have several others (both Cree and ge link) that aren’t always getting commands, or getting incorrect commands (one bulb log shows an on command when all of the rules show it that it should be turning off). What causes this? Any fix? I switched from SmartThings to get away from these problems, but now it seems I’m right back where I started
Do you ever power off these bulb by a switch?
Nope.
I did some reading, and it looks like having multiple Cree and GE bulbs can cause issues if you get over ~10 bulbs, which may explain why everything worked fine initially. I guess the fix is to run everything through a hue hub first, so I’m going to try that. Got a 3rd gen hub in the mail.
Hi @qtrain2391,
I am new to Hubitat; coming from SmartThings and have 14 Cree bulbs in my house. And may encounter your issue.
What does the Hue hub repair have to do with not being able to control the Cree connect bulbs?
Yea my osram zigbee bulbs drop off about once a week. Thinking about moving back to smartthings but don't have time to migrate at the moment. Bulbs will just randomly drop off, out of about 15 bulbs, 4 have already dropped off so far. Only thing to do is unpair, and reset bulb, and repair. Quite time consuming and annoying but this is still very beta software so Ill give it that. Looking forward to a time when lights stay connected though...
Did you open a support ticket with @Hubitat ? What did they say? I don't want to have to return the hub even before I cracked open the shipment.
Why return? Its a beta product...just gotta be patient and treat is as such If you wanted a stable product, wink or smartthings is closer. This is all still "beta" in a sense because zwave/zigbee hubs generally aren't that great but again, this is new, we bought with the expectation of bugs/betatesting. So keep it!
Yeah. I am with SmartThings since their KickStarter days. They got better, but I am really in need of a True Local control device with out the need for Cloud.
9 times out of 10 this is zigbee interference or lack of repeaters, or bad repeaters.
zigbee bulbs are notoriously poor repeaters.
This isn't anything specific to hubitat or our zigbee implementation.
Hi @mike.maxwell,
How many Zigbee bulbs is max for Hubitat?
there is no hard limit within hubitat, whatever the zigbee network limit is...
You can probably achieve the same result by doing a physical reset on the bulbs, then putting the hub into pairing mode.
Much less time consuming than removing the devices from the hub first, which would also require fixing any automations that included the bulbs.
Edit: FWIW I agree with Mike that this behavior is more likely related to zigbee mesh issues than anything specific to hubitat. When I moved some zigbee devices over from ST to hubitat I found that some flaky behavior by zigbee devices (including some bulbs) was mostly fixed by adding a few zigbee repeaters.
Zigbee mesh issues can be solved, I’m not so sure about ST cloud instability so I’m sticking with hubitat.
I had issues early on with zigbee bulbs dropping but was able to sort them out using the zigbee logging in the settings. I kept a logging tab open and watched the rssi and lqi values. My conclusion was that I needed to connect Crees directly to the hub if possible, and Osram bulbs are crappy repeaters. If @mike.maxwell or @JDRoberts need to correct me on my methods, please do. I don’t want incorrect info on here.
RSSI Is just signal strength. Higher is better.
LQI is the result of an assessment of the link quality. Lower is better. ( less variation from the expected value)
Interference usually means a higher LQI (higher is bad) because the message is damaged by the interference.
See the edge case examples in the following:
Thank you! I knew I’d mess that up. Hence, the tag.
I haven't yet. I don't think this is a hubitat issue.
I believe this is the root cause. I'll link a thread I found on the smart things forum about bulbs in general. I think the issue is that as I added more bulbs, they went from being connected to the hub, to be connected to each other and then the hub, which is causing issues since they're poor repeaters. The hue hub apparently controls bulbs slightly different, and it seems to fix the issue, at least according to a few people in the other thread. I was able to get a hue hub for under $40 shipped, so I figured I'd try it before switching over to z-wave switches or changing to a different brand bulb.
Here's the thread in question:
And while trying to find that I found this, which seems to explain the problem exactly.
This one may also be useful:
What @qtrain2391 meant was, he would pair the Cree bulbs with with a Hue Bridge and then use the Hubitat Hub's integration with the Hue Bridge to control the bulbs. Not sure if you guys are talking about a the Cree bulbs with the 4Flow design, but I have one of those. It shows up in the Hue Bridge app, but did not show up in the devices list with Hubitat's Hue Bridge integration, so it is now directly paired with Hubitat instead of the Hue Bridge.
Those are the ones. I also have several GE Link bulbs. Going to try both.