Problem discovering *second* zigbee device

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#1

Last night I registered my first Zigbee device to my brand-new HE (a Sylvania Smart+ bulb). It's in a socket in the kitchen wall, about 20 feet from the HE through 2 walls in this old house. It was discovered fine, I can put a tile for it on dashboards, it responds to commands; everything nice and easy!

So today I put a second bulb (identical bulb) in a lamp in the living room—maybe 15 feet from the HE and through only one wall. My belief is that neither of these bulbs should have any range issues.

This second bulb went through the flash each primary color thing when it turned on. Then I went to my devices page on the HE web interface and said discover Zigbee devices (and clicked the button to start discovery). It went through the full 60 seconds and didn't find my new bulb. I tried a few more times, no luck. Finally I went over to the bulb and power-cycled it 5 times, which as I understand it is the factory reset procedure for these bulbs. After that I immediately tried discovery again. No luck.

Any ideas? I do have two more unopened bulbs of this type, I suppose I could try a different one. I haven't tried rebooting the HE, but I don't see that being recommended for problems much. Any way to get more information? I can try pairing it in a lamp in the same room with the hub (I note that that's explicitly recommended against in a number of places, though).

#2

Yes it always recommended to pair devices in their original location but you have to do what you have to do.

I would move it closer to get it paired. When you move it back to its real location afterwards there is a chance that it will be too far from the hub to talk directly to the hub but in your case I don’t think so. If it becomes unresponsive it’s a good indication that you need additional repeaters. If you already have repeaters than you just need to wait for it to find a new route. Or you can disable the zigbee radio for 15 minutes and then re-enable it. The 15 min duration will cause the zigbee devices to go into panic mode and start their search for a route back to the hub.

Edit. I don’t have any of the bulbs you have, but zigbee devices typically will flash the bulb power a few times to indicate when it gets reset properly. Did this happen when you cycled the power five times?

#3

Yes, the bulb runs through the three primary colors and then white each time I turn it on.

And, I moved it to a lamp in the same room with the hub, call it 15 feet of clear air, no walls or even furniture in the way, and it still doesn't connect.

Does it matter whether the hub is in discovery mode when the bulb is powered on? Do both orders work? From when the bulb is turned on, how long can it be discovered? Forever, or does it time out at that end too I've tried most but I think not all possible orderings and haven't had it connect yet. I think I'm about to try it on yet another bulb. (Well; as soon as this cat gets out of my lap.)

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#4

Third bulb paired right up, and remained paired when I moved it out to the living room where it belongs (when powered on there it did not go through the three-color display, just went right to the last setting it had had)

So, something maybe wrong with the second bulb. I'll have to read the "factory reset" protocol more carefully, because I think I followed it and it didn't change anything. But I can return it as defective in the worst case I guess.

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#5

I just saw a post from @bcopeland the other day that says start discover on the hub first and then on the device. I believe I have done it both ways though.

I’m glad you got the third bulb to pair. The second one might not be defective. Sometimes devices are just grumpier than others.

#6

Just be aware that some of your bulbs may be ZLL based and make horrible repeaters within a zigbee mesh. If you put other zigbee devices in your mesh and they start to route through these bulbs your mesh will continually drop stuff. (just a good thing to watch out with bulbs)

#7

All four bulbs (2 in service, 1 I couldn't pair, one I haven't opened yet) are from the same batch, they're Sylvania / Ledvance if I'm reading this right. There are only the 2 (that are currently powered) Zigbee things in my whole setup. I know to worry about mesh (and adding repeaters) if distances get bigger or I get a lot more units, though.

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#8

Actually having repeaters doesn’t solve it. You don’t want the bulbs on the same network at all. The general rule of thumb is to pair them to a hue bridge (and and use coco hue) or another Hubitat and use hub mesh but don’t put any other zigbee devices on with them) that way you keep the networks separate.

#9

well...not planning on having very many Zigbee devices, just bulbs for places where there's no switch or something. My current guess is fewer than half a dozen. We'll just see how that goes, because I really don't want that level of overhead for half a dozen bulbs!

[ETA: The document here on building a stable Zigbee mesh, How to Build a Solid Zigbee Mesh - Hubitat Documentation, does seem to say that Zigbee bulbs are okay repeaters for other Zigbee bulbs; and that's all I have or am planning to have.]

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