Over the past week or so, all of my Sengled Element Classic bulbs have been turning "on" at some point overnight. I say "on" in quotes because the device details page says the switch state is "on", but the light bulb itself is still off (not emitting light). For some reason, the driver thinks the bulb is on.
A few observations:
it only seems to happen in the very early morning hours (~1am-5am)
it happens to all my Sengled Element Classic bulbs using the Sengled Element Classic driver, but they don't all turn on at the same time
any given bulb does not turn on at the same time each day
these bulbs are used in a group, along with another dimmer; it is ONLY these bulbs that are being turned "on", not the whole group, and yet the device page states that these bulbs are only "in use by" the group
as a test, I moved half of these bulbs back to the "Generic Zigbee Bulb" driver, and they no longer have the phantom turn-ons
nothing in the logs indicates what may be turning these on; the only log entry is that the bulb switch is on (and again, the bulb itself is not emitting light, just the device switch status says "on")
edit to add: for the bulbs I switched back to the generic driver, I do so while the bulb was in its "phantom on" state (switch status on but bulb physically off). When I swapped the driver, then hit save, then hit configure, the switch status immediately updated itself to "off"
Anyone have any ideas? I'm at a loss. I really like the "prestaging" for the Sengled bulbs, but this problem is driving me nuts and throws off some of my automations that look at which lights/groups are currently on/off.
Thnx for this post! BINGO! It is good to know I am not the only person seeing ghosts . . .
I have been chasing a similar issue now for a couple of weeks - see my post below. In my case, the symptoms are slightly different: Not all of my Sengleds have been behaving like this, only some and in some groups, and it happens throughout the days, and not just at night. I will try the Generic Zigbee Bulb driver as well, and post back here.
This is one of the reasons I stopped using this driver for my Sylvania lights. I really liked having the level prestaging, but lights started showing up in the dashboard as on and like you said, clearly weren't on. I also started noticing issues with them reporting level correctly as well, which hadn't been an issue, because their proper level reporting was the main reason I originally switched to using them. I also didn't like that they would ramp down all the way to off, which was really annoying, and something the generic driver doesn't do. I didn't pursue the issue since the drivers were made for the Sengled bulbs, not Sylvania.
@andrewL My ghost lights have been resolved! I changed all the Sengleds to Generic Zigbee Bulbs, and have not seen any issues since. I will wait for the updated Sengled driver, or just stick with the generic . . .
Was there ever any resolution or conclusion to this, other than to use the Generic Zigbee driver? I have had the same thing happen to me where my Sengled Element Classic bulbs (used in a group, for what it's worth) sometimes spuriously ends up in an "on" state even though the bulb is visibly off. Hitting "refresh" on the device doesn't help and still results in the bulb switch state showing as "on".
Mine (worked for months) fine with Zigbee group messaging turned on. One of the recent 2.2.2.x broke it and I had to turn off zigbee group messaging or only ever ended up with 3 out of 8 bulbs on. Turned off ZGM and although they don’t all come on at exact instant it’s better than not having them come on at all.
Example: group kitchen - 8 lights. ZGM on, 3 lights come on. ZGM off, they all come one. The ZGM was nice - when it worked, as now they kind of pop on 2-3 at a time over 2 seconds.
It may be that the bulbs were directly connected to the hub, or a particular repeater before, and the update caused the mesh to reconfigure. My guess is this is at least partly due to the fact that the Sengleds don't repeat for each other, making more work for other devices in the mesh that do repeat. I know that my Sengleds don't respond as a group as smoothly as my Sylvania or Hue lights.
That's a reasonable theory, however in my case all my devices are Sengled bulbs or battery powered motion sensors, so I have no repeaters -- every device is a direct endpoint of the hub. The bulb that I noticed in that state was also one of the closest to the hub. Not a big deal, I'll just continue to use the generic bulb driver!
I imagine that you did hit "configure" on the device page after switching to the Sengled driver. Just in case you didn't know, you have to hit configure when you change from one driver to any other driver.
Also, just curious about how your battery life is on your motion sensors without any repeaters?
You know, that's a good question. I'm a first time HE user (moving from ST) and started with the C7 hub just recently, and believe that it picked the Sengled drivers for me when I did the initial inclusion. Based on forum posts, recently I have been hitting configure after switching drivers to set up any device state that the driver expects.
Battery life isn't bad, but it really depends on the device. The ST multipurpose sensor I'm using on my garage door needs replacing more often than I would like (around 6-7 months if I had to hazard a guess, but I honestly haven't been keeping track).
If you start noticing batteries draining faster than normal, a couple of the SmartThings outlets (2018) work very well and repeat for around 10 devices each.
