New Advanced Zigbee Bulb Drivers - 2.2.5

Are there any suggestions on what to look for to see if the new "Advanced" bulb drivers are appropriate for use? For example, I just changed the driver on one of my ERIA Extended Color Bulbs from Generic RBGW to the Advanced RGBW and the new driver appears to perform well.

They are suitable as a replacement for any of the corresponding "Generic Zigbee..." light drivers. The default fingerprint/driver selection on pairing was moved to these drivers for at least the specific bulbs in the release notes, but staff have indicated that they are suitable for any bulb that doesn't already have a dedicated driver (e.g., Sengled--though I actually still prefer the Advanced or Generic drivers over the Sengled ones even here, with the expectation that some features may not work, something you might find with some particular bulbs too).

Personally, I don't have a lot of directly paired bulbs anymore, but so far the Advanced drivers seem to work a lot better for me than the Generic drivers, so I'd probably recommend them unless you have a reason not to try them. As usual, hit "Configure" after you save with the new driver--the Advanced drivers run some tests on the bulb (you may notice them turn on for a bit) as part of running this command, so it's particularly important for these drivers.

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Great info. I was just about to try them. I can give a warning instead of hearing," Ummm, Honey?" from the other side of the house. :smiley:

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I switched over all of my cheap Home Depot Zigbee CT bulbs. They were working great before so curious if I will notice difference. I like additional Preferences on Device Page.

Well that was fun.
I decided to upgrade all my Sengled Classics to the new Advanced driver.
My living room lights refused to come on at all. When I did turn them on manually my WebCore piston, which gangs them into a virtual dimmer, took a beating; the light started randomly changing levels like a disco and it was unstopable.
I put both lights back to the Sengled driver and it took a bit but I finally got back control.
I then changed just one driver of the pair and it refused to turn on or off under piston control.
Another group which is treated as just a switch seems to be ok so far.
I'll test the bedroom ones later, they run the same code as the living room. If they go nuts there is definitely an issue.
EDIT:
Kitchen nook and sink refused to even come on, they are treated as dimmers. Back to the Sengled driver as well.

I hadn't really looked at these drivers too much as I only have a few bulbs and they have been working fine.

I notice the drivers are very specific...for a Sengled color bulb that I use in both CT and RGB modes, does choosing one of the other restrict you to the driver mode?

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No need to choose: there's an "advanced" analog for each generic, and here RBGW is color plus CT, so that should be what you want for those bulbs. (Actually, Hubitat doesn't officially recommend them in this case since there are dedicated drivers for the Sengleds, but I happen to like the Generic/Advanced driver behavior better.)

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It is absolutely imperative when switching both to and from these drivers that configure is run after the driver change is saved.
These drivers implement a very different and non compatable reporting configuration with all other similar drivers.
If this is not done your bulb will not operate properly.

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Funny...on my Sengled RGBW, the testing ends Blue and the bulb sits there on. Weird experience. I would have expected it to turn the light off when testing was complete. Does my experience sound normal for this? The light appears to be controllable, behaving normally.

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Oh man, have I heard that WAY too much regarding home automation... :wink:

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I assume it's normal. All of my Sengleds did the same thing and are functioning as they should.

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Thanks for confirming.

And wait, didn't I just do a "Um, honey..." ? :wink:

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It's the test routine, so you know it's good...

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Thanks all for the great information. As with everything in home automation, I suspect the community will discover some โ€œunusual behavior โ€œ with a device or two!

Yes! This seems to be the driver I've been waiting for; the Lightify bulbs I have so far cautiously transitioned seem to be working perfectly. A few more rooms to do over the next day or so to be sure, but so far so very very good.

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As I'm a X-mas convert to HE I am still getting used to the Device buttons we didn't have in ST.
I didn't know what the Config tile did until now. :wink:
Is there a doc on the proper prcedures for things like driver changes?

I seem to remember a lot of ST DTHs actually exposing "Configure" as a tile on the device page, but it's been so long that my memory is hazy at this point. :slight_smile: Basically, it's a good idea to hit "Configure" any time you switch drivers. You will rarely see anything happen (except maybe in the logs) as a result, but for Zigbee and Z-Wave devices it normally sends configuration to the device--or because that sounds like an unhelpful and circular explanation, basically helps the device report as expected to the hub (for Z-Wave, often in the form of of Z-Wave parameters being set to certain values; for Zigbee, usually the hub binding to certain clusters so the device notifies the hub of attribute changes...and probably more than I know, which is not much for Zigbee; for all kinds of devices, occasionally some internal "state" variables or whatnot getting initialized or reset).

Some devices (e.g., lots of LAN devices I know of) don't implement this command, so don't panic if you don't see it. But you'll probably see it for any Zigbee device and almost any Z-Wave device, and unless you have a good reason not to, I'd hit it after saving the device with the new driver any time you change it.

Good to know, I moved over about 60 devices but never hit Config until I had the Advanced Zigbee issue; I'll do that from now on.
ST IDE gives you no real way to issue any commands except lok at events and a few parms.
HE is so much nicer as you can send command for level/refresh/on/off/yada yada.

you only need to do this if you manually change drivers after device inclusion completes.
The Configure command from the driver selected at inclusion is run during the inclusion process.

Well my EcoSmart CT bulbs seemed to take really well. Seems to respond as good or slightly better as before.

Though my Gledopto RGB+CCT LED strip was not having it. I made sure to configure afterwards as well. It would respond well to some commands, but I was changing colors on the RGB Lights, and then set a color temp of 6500 which should have changed it to the CT side, and it kept the strip red.

Also I noticed I set the on and off ramp time to ASAP, and it still would take a second or two to ramp on and off. Although, the color and level ramp time changed instant (I set everything to ASAP to test the responsiveness). The on and off slow ramp has been the behavior before even on the generic drivers.