So I have been using Hubitat for a month or two now and I'm still learning everyday. I'm loving the speed of a local solution. I'm loving the features it offers as well as the community participation and support. Great community and worth the purchase based on that alone honestly.
I'm seeing a few issues some caused probably by my ignorance and some by my lack of experience.
RM4 is a real challenge for me currently I have no issues writing simple rules but the more advanced rules are a real challenge of course it was the same for me using webcore so this is just something I need to wrap my head around and learn over time.
I do have a set of LIGHTIFY Gardenspot mini's and I continue to have issues with them. I also have a total of three recessed lights from the same company. I do not currently try and implement any rules or anything to control the recessed lighting only the garden spots. Hubitat seems to loose control of them several times a week on two occasions this has been caused by power outages the others I have no idea. Anyway the garden lights are one of the wife's favorite automatons and I'm trying to find solutions to make them more stable. Anyone use them or familiar with them? I do have one of LIGHTIFY's hubs but don't use it. Should I begin using it? Anyone know if this hub will work as zigbee repeater? Would I be better off to add these lights to the Hue hub and interface them to Hubitat that away?
On my old hub I had an occasional hiccup but not multiple times a week like now. The device driver Hubitat is using for these is a Generic Zigbee RGBW light.
Thanks for any input as they say Happy Wife Happy Life!
Hello and welcome. I have 2 sets of garden spots running without issue. Although power outages will cause issues. Outside of that most issues are caused by a weak zigbee mesh. You can try adding some mains powered repeaters, like zigbee plugs, but not zigbee bulbs, are those are known problem creators.
Check for threads on how to increase zigbee mesh strength.
I have 4 sets of GardenSpot lights without any issue as well. Power outage shouldn't be an issue other than them ON full bright but a cycle of ON/OFF on the app usually get them going again. I improved them greatly with an Xbee as a repeater.
If you have weak repeaters in your mesh, like Osram bulbs or Cree bulbs, the spots might not be using them normally but when there's a power outage, if your hub is off for a while, your devices will go into panic mode and start looking for new routes to the coordinator (hub). This is what happened to me with my cree bulbs. My mesh was fine until I lost power for an hour one day. Then BAM, nothing worked. Had a cree bulb very close to my hub that was now trying to repeat for a ton of devices.
Thanks guys I appreciate the info. I will look at improving my mesh nothing has really changed on my end except the hub and additional Z-wave devices added. That was the reason I was a little hesitant to blame the mesh but yeah I definitely need to improve the mesh network.
But I don’t want to use the OSRAM RGB controller because of the potential for Zigbee mesh issues. Anyone know of an alternative RGB controller that can be used with these? Preferably one that will play nice with Xiaomi? I have three Xiaomi devices left on my Zigbee network. Two can be moved to the Aqara gateway if needed, but one cannot.
Wow grab me a couple. I just have them directly in Hubitat myself. I think a set of mine went bad not had time to look at them just tried to unplug them and plug them back up been cold and nasty outside. The lights are nice though and have a good look to them and for that price I would have them all around my house for sure. Great find for sure.
You might as well just get a separate HE for them. It would be less hassle, and maybe cheaper than trying to find new controllers for all 5. I have a couple of the newer ones and they are brighter than I expected, a pleasant surprise. Those are the older SOC that everyone complains about, but for the price; Why not?
So I was having trouble finding the sets with the drivers and Zigbee module included to use the expansion sets I bought. I was at client today, near one of only two Lowe’s anywhere in the greater Toronto area that showed inventory, so thought I would try. Glad I did. Their inventory showed only one available, but two were on the shelf.
They rang up at just $12 CAD each!
Seems to work fine with the Generic Zigbee RGB Light driver. Is that what you guys are using too? I found that I just can’t change between entering a Hue value and using Set Color. Has to be one or the other, or they become unresponsive until I power cycle them. Same experience anyone?
I have 5 of these outside around my garden. I moved them back to the ST hub after a few months on HE. They dropped off my Zigbee network too often on HE. I use WebCore and refresh them once every hour on ST and use Hubconnect to bring them back to HE. Been like this for close to a year with no issue.
Also you can update the firmware on ST I think.
Good find, when I had that older version they didn't work well with xiaomi. FCCID= ~IQHOME, the newer FCCID of LDO-AETHER seem to be fine with my xiaomi devices. I've had to exchange 3 sets, thank God for the 2 year warranty
