So I'm going to ask this question again. I switched from Smartthings to Hubitat for many reasons, but before I did I checked whether my extensive collection of Lightify GU10s and LED strips would be supported on the Hubitat platform. They appeared to be on the list, so I went for it.
They are less than reliable on Hubitat, as it turns out, which is super disappointing especially as they are supported. Here are the problems I have, and as yet no one has come up with sensible alternative bulbs or any support in response to other people's questions as far as I can tell. The stock response seems to be 'yeah, we know they're rubbish' which doesn't strike me as cutting it:
Bulbs either don't turn on, don't take level or temperature commands or just drop off the network. They don't obey Group or Motion Lighting instructions but ALWAYS obey instructions issued directly from the device on the webpage. How can that be? How can that be down to the bulb and not the hub / code? This suggests that some kind of command optimisation is taking place, but other than 'Enable On / Off Optimisation' which is Off in all cases, I can't see anywhere that this can be set. What am I missing? How can I force the instruction to the bulb without ditching Groups completely and just doing everything laboriously in Rules, perhaps.
To be fair to you guys the Lightify bulbs were a bit odd on Smartthings to start with but once I had disabled Command Optimisation on Webcore I had zero problems with commands being carried out. Every single one was carried out every single time.
So @mike.maxwell and @bravenel I LOVE this platform, but what can I do? I have apparently supported devices that don't perform consistently and no real answers. Please help!
the reason the lightify's are unreliable is because they repeat poorly. This causes issues in the mesh. I have several sets as they are also my favorites. I have them on a separate hub with other troublesome bulbs. They work great when they're not trying to interfere with the day to day business at hand. I know that you might not want to hear that, but any bulb that tries to repeat is going to cause issues. If you search it out, there are plenty of posts defining this. Also, no environment is equal. Every person will have a different experience with equipment. I use the lightify integration as well for some of my bulbs. it works well. It is uncertain if this will be a permanent fix as lightify is not responding to requests for local hub access or to release their hidden secrets. Time will tell.
I moved my sylvania/osram gardenspots to my zigbee2mqtt install just for grins the other day to see if they would work, and watched (in real time, because I have access to more of the underlying zigbee data on that system) most of the zigbee mesh die - node by node - as the osrams would accept routed packets and then throw them in the trash and not route them (presumably due to routing table memory limitations).
I would not let a routing sylvania/osram device on my main zigbee network for any price. Either get a dedicated hub for them (Hubitat, lightify, other), or replace them with something else. ASAP.
I did. And the second hub is connected through hubconnect. And a lot of people do this. If you still have your smartthings hub, you can connect it to hubitat and keep those lights on line through that connected to HE. I like the lightifys. I have a bunch of the leds. I also moved my cree bulbs to that secondary hub. Those were the bane of my existence, Crees. If you have a lightify bridge, set it up or spend the 9 bucks on one. it's worth setting it up until at least 2021 when they turn off the cloud server for it. then I'd maybe move on to something else as your environment grows. That's my plan I'm not sure how I'm going to use my second hub yet completely, but there is a lot of experience around here in the "hub club" that can recommend a working environment using hubconnect. I still have some things connected to smartthings, but cloud sevices, so the physical hub is no longer plugged in.
I find that they repeat really well for themselves and for ZLL bulbs though. I have my Sylvania stuff and Cree bulbs on a Conbee created Zigbee network and they respond instantly and they never drop a message. Just have to be tactical.
yeah i have the same, not had a issue "YET" but importantly i only have lamps on the hub I also have a few osram buttons which work but i hardly ever use them. The rest is z-wave, I am planning on adding more zigbee stuff though and when i do i will be buying more hubs and putting my zwave stuff and zigbee LL stuff on one and all my zigbee 3.0 and z-wave plus on the other. It seems like a no brainer to do that to me. Im hoping the C7 comes out by then and i'll buy 4, 2 for me 2 for my inlaws who are currently using a lightify hub .
Probably so. I haven't tested that. I don't have any other zigbee bulbs.
Mine are sequestered onto their own zigbee mesh, and there they will stay until I find some other outdoor landscape/pathway lighting that is more well behaved (if I ever do).
I have somewhere over 50 Sylvania Smart+ RGBW bulbs (A19, BR30, RT6, Flex XL, and Garden Spots) on their own Hubitat hub (using HubConnect) with a four GE in-wall zigbee switches/dimmers,12 GE Z-wave plus Dimmer/switches, and 4 First Alert ZCombo detectors. I also have Alexa integration and the HubConnect server on this hub with 2 Homebridge instances, SmartThings, and the remote Hubitat instance. I have no issues and they always work without having to send commands twice or any other shenanigans. Zigbee channel is 25.
My other Hubitat hub has all of the 17 motion, 6 contact, 30 button controllers (my wife insisted on these, but 99.9% of the time just tells Alexa), 4 Samsung outlets, 4 Sylvania outlets, 4 more GE Zigbee Dimmers, and 2 Zigbee locks, as well as Hue integration for 21 bulbs and light strips (mixed groups are much faster this way, btw). Zigbee channel is 19, because I keep SmartThings around for bulb updates and misbehaving devices like Peanut plugs, and can’t change it from channel 20.
I will say that all of my Sylvania lights are the newer ones, and the Osram labeled ones had a different SOC, different behavior, different firmware. If you have the newer Smart+ ones, make sure they are updated to 102428 firmware
If your ZHA traffic is low enough that the routing tables don't fill up, then you're fine. It all depends on # of devices actively routing through the osram devices at the same time, and how many packets they send.
But I have quite a lot of ZHA traffic on that mesh, that greatly exacerbates the issue. I'm telling you, I did it 5-6 times. I can literally watch the zigbee traffic die in the Osram repeaters as it flows to them once they reach their tipping point. Zigbee2mqtt does an active route and lqi discovery to make a zigbee mesh map,. that sends a lot of traffic through the mesh which further compounds the routing issues.
Then once the routing table is out of memory and packets start to drop, devices start re-sending packets making the issue even worse as there are now even more packets being sent (and dropped).
It isn't speculation that the osrams are the problem, the data proves it is. All of my gardenspots are on the newest firmware, as verified a few days ago.
So good luck if you add more ZHA devices. This is a well known issue with osram/sylvania ZHA devices, not something I came up with.
When I point this out, people usually go "yeah, yeah, it's just a word", but in their descriptions, I really do read that they are misconstruing what it really means to "support a device" versus just listing it as "compatible". Bottom line is, the Hubitat team supports Hubitat, not every device under the sun or the minute ways in which they interact with Hubitat. As you can see, they do care, but there just simply isn't enough people to "support" every device brand and type. So they instead try various devices they physically get their hands on where appropriate, determine which driver works, and if needed create a functional driver. Do they work with the manufacturer's devices just the same or always as well as the manufacturer originally designed them? Sometimes, but not always. Should Hubitat spend their time making sure every single one does? Hell no [my opinion]! The manufacturer's wouldn't do that for them either unless it meant the sale of thousands more of their devices.
OSRAM is throwing in the towel in a year. Someone in the forum said Sylvania hasn't said they are going to as well, but that just seems a lack of communication on their part. They don't have a hub, bridge or gateway of their own, so the fact that Sylvania has not communicated to their average "normal" {i.e. non-home automation geek) customer yet whether or not their investments are going to be worthless (to those that will not ever use a hub like HE or ST), is just poor customer service, pandemic or not.
You've got the right answers here. Either isolate them to a separate HE hub is going to be your best bet if you have a large number of Sylvania/OSRAM bulbs, or if you already own the OSRAM gateway you can use @adamkempenich 's app to bridge that (keeping in mind it is going to be retired in a year and Adam is still working on a solutions for that, if one is even going to be possible). If you own a ST hub, you can use HubConnect or Hub Link/Send Hub Events to use your Sylvania bulbs on the ST hub and control them from HE.
I like how they look. They get WAY too bright, in my opinion though, so I never run them above 5% brightness.
Color looks pretty good on them (although color selection in hubitat doesn't work right with them - at least it doesn't with my 4 sets of them - the color specified in Hubitat is not the color shown on the end device). Color selection worked fine in Home Assistant though.
Can you share a photo? I have three strings I picked up a few months ago on clearance, and one more waiting for me in Oregon next time I visit my folks. The Garden Spots are so unique, I'm not sure how I should integrate them with my existing lights, but I know I want to set them up soon since the ground has finally thawed here.
Will do as soon as I get them re-paired. Got lazy when I removed them from my main mesh (my clobber test) and haven't added them back to the segregated mesh yet. I'll get that done this weekend and take a pic!
I wasn't directing this towards you in any way. I appreciate what you have shared and believe what you are saying. I had everything on one hub before; now the lights are on their own hub, with a few GE dimmers that seem to work well with them and I have no issues with this setup. I just put this out there to say that this works well for me. It took 6 months for me to finally break down and get a second hub, but it was so worth it. The price of the hub is nothing compared to replacing the lights with Hue (which are great, but not 4X better) or Sengled (which don't work near as smooth as the Sylvania for me), not to mention the fact that I no longer have to babysit the hub to make sure it keeps working. They just work.
Oops. Sorry if that came across aggressively on my part! I didn't mean it that way.
I always appreciate people sharing their experience, and I'm glad your is working well! I always say - if it works, it works.
I was really hoping that with my gardenspots being on the very edge of my property that I would get lucky and not very many things would route through them, and I would be fine. In my case I think I have TOO MANY routing devices for that to work, as the neighboring routers all wanted to bring the gardenspots to the party (which is what they are designed to do).
I still think that if I had FEWER routing devices on the edge of my property where the gardenspots are, fewer things would try to make a route through them, and I would be fine.
Oh well. Anyway, back to work. And thanks again for the extra data point!
The light doesn't diffuse well and is blinding when looking down. I plan to move mine from the walkway to right in front of the house, to the left and right of the porch,and mount them to a couple pvc trim boards so they don't get buried by mulch. Then maybe I can turn them up.
.
