I switched from primarily using Home Assistant to Hubitat a few months ago. The problem I keep having is pretty simple but I can't figure out what the problem is.
I have two lights on either side of my front door on my porch wired to a single switch. Then, I have one single light fixture beside my garage (I have floodlights as well but this isn't one of them). At sunset, I want these lights to toggle on and to toggle back off at sunrise. The front porch ones are Sengled Zigbee color changing bulbs and there is a centralite zigbee plug acting as a repeater right on the inside of the wall the lights are mounted on - maybe 7 feet away in a straight line. The other bulb is a Kasa color changing bulb that has lived outside since I bought it years ago and has never had an issue.
If I set a rule in Rule Machine to turn them all on and set them to 2700K and 100% brightness, Porch 2 and the Garage Side Light turn on correctly but Porch 1 always fails to turn on - I've experimented with adding delays but it always fails. Asking a smart assistant to turn it on works immediately, as does using the Hubitat app. Setting the rule to simply toggle the lights results in all lights coming on at the correct time but now Garage Side Light comes on at 50% brightness and Red. Again, this can easily be changed via voice assistant or Hubitat app.
Does anyone have any idea why this is happening? Everything is updated, I've written and rewritten this simple function as a Basic Rule, Rule Machine, and Rule Machine Legacy and it consistently does one of these two things.
I should also mention that at sunset, two lights in a hallway come on as well as a smart outlet. Is it possible that turning on 6 devices at once is too much for Hubitat to handle? Any other ideas? Thanks very much in advance!!!
Just to be clear, the one that is having problem is a Sengled color bulb? Assuming so (or really either way), what driver are you using for it? Hubitat has built-in Sengled drivers (a now-recommended one and a "legacy" driver), and some people prefer the "Generic Zigbee..." (or "Advanced...," but I wouldn't recommend that driver for these as not all features work with them) drivers instead. Particularly if Hubitat didn't choose the right driver on pairing and you had to change--but it can't hurt to do regardless--you may want to hit "Configure" on the device page to see if it helps. You won't see anything visibly happen in most cases, but it will ensure the device is configured to report correctly back to the hub.
And that brings me to my next question: does the problematic bulb accurately report device state back to the hub? Some apps may care about this, and certainly Rule Machine with a "Toggle" action would--it won't toggle correctly if the current state is reporting back correctly (toggle isn't a standard command; an app normally just reads the current state and sends an "on" or "off" as needed). A "Configure," again, may help with this if not. Another driver may work better, but the Sengled ones should work and I'd start there if you don't have a reason not to.
Too much for your Zigbee network, maybe. You could try spacing these commands out a bit (easy with a delay or wait in Rule Machine). If all devices are being set to the same thing, you could also use the Groups and Scenes app to make a group, and then either enable Zigbee Group Broadcasting (one message for the entire group instead of one per bulb) or enable the metering option (spaces commands out by the specified number of millseconds; try something like 70 or 100 to start).
You could also make a scene, but Hubitat doesn't support group broadcasting for scenes per se (unless the scene uses a group device, which would mean that all devices in that group are set to the same settings--as opposed to Hue, for example, which I find rock solid and uses on-device scene tables with group broadcasting to make this fast and reliable), and I can't remember if it supports metering or not, but that is something you can try--but again nothing you couldn't basically do yourself in a rule, either.
since you're always turning it on to a specific setting, have you tried creating a scene with the devices then activating the scene at sunset?
I had this problem with 3 Hue bulbs linked to hubitat via Hue bridge. Tried everything to no avail. In the end I simply replaced the bulb that was out of step with a new one and no further problems.
Two bulbs are having problems. If I set the bulbs to turn on to 100%, the Garage Side Light turns on Red regardless of what it was before and regardless of the fact that the Rule doesn't do anything to the color - only turns it on and sets brightness. If I rewrite the Rule to set the lights to 100% and to 2700K, then Porch 1 fails to turn on.
Porch 1 is a Sengled Color Element Plus bulb using the Sengled Color Element Plus driver. The Garage Side Light is a Kasa WiFi bulb.
Status is reported correctly on both and both can be easily controlled through the Hubitat app, browser interface, or a linked smart assistant.
I've tried adding delays and it doesn't seem to have an effect on the problem.
A few folks here have mentioned using groups and scenes. I will give that a try and report back!
Thanks for your response and suggestions!
