I have about 18 Sengled RGB bulbs on my Hunitat. To facilitate simple on and off in the house they are spread over a few different smart switches so that my family can turn the group on and off easy. And to automate turnning them on and off I just toggle the smart switch to turn the set off.
The problem I have is that sometimes when I turn the switch on to activate the group some of them turn on, but sometimes some turn on and off. I can usally resolve by manually toggling the switch off and back on again and it will turn on.
Anyone experience this and have a potential resolution? I could add a virtual switch to trigger the bulbs indivdually vs the smart switch but hoping the smart switch can be reliable as it is easy to control manually.
I'm pretty sure Sengleds just turn on if the power is physically cut and restored, so I'm not sure why you're seeing something different. What driver are you using for these on Hubitat? The new "Advanced Zigbee..." family of drivers has options for this, but I don't think they work with Sengled bulbs (this option, I mean; the drivers seem to work fine for me otherwise). Maybe the switch is bleeding a bit of power through when "off" and it's confusing the bulbs. I had this happen to me with a HomeSeer switch; the fluorescent light it was attached to still glew a bit when off, which was the result of this behavior that is apparently normal and common with some smart switches (even ones that use a neutral, like these).
That being said, what kind of Z-Wave switch is this? Even if it's not the above issue, does it have a way to disable local control (or the relay)? This would let you keep the smart bulbs always powered and use the switch as basically a hardwired button device, so you could send on/off commands to the bulbs via the hub while leaving the actual power to the bulbs always on, which also gives you the advantage that they don't effectively become dumb bulbs when they're off (so you can turn them in from anything, not just the switch--which might also work around this problem). This is what most people here would recommended if possible.
I'm using the Sengled Element Plus driver for all the bulbs. I thought it was preferred? Hadn't thought about the Zigbee driver. Any downside to just switching?
The switches are a little mixed...I have the following across the devices (below).
Ge Enbrighten Zwave Switch
Inovelli Red Dimmer
I think another GE older Zwave Plus switch
It seems to happen across all of the switches.
Where does the relay disable feature show up? I wasn't aware of that feature but would work.
I'm not familiar with current GE switches; they may or may not have a way to do this. I know the Inovelli Red Series does. If you're using Inovelli's custom drivers (or mine), there is a preference in the driver to disable local control (which is what I'm talking about, though you may also wish to disable remote control, depending on whether you want to be able to still control the switch or dimmer via Z-Wave...you probably don't, but I still normally don't disable this because I just know not to do that). For the dimmer, they also have a "smart bulb mode" parameter you can enable, which will keep the dimmer at 100% (technically Z-Wave level 99) whenever the switch is on, generally helpful to prevent accidents. You'd then respond to Z-Wave Central Scene events on the hub, which get parsed into button events. For example, a single tap up is "button 1 pushed," and you can use that in an automation that turns the lights on. (The rest of the event names and numbers depend on the driver you're using; Inovelli's uses these in a bit...unexpected ways, IMHO, but it does give you access to all events, whereas Hubitat's maxes out a double taps.)
As for the bulb drivers, the Sengled ones should be fine and are probably the recommended ones for these devices. I just happen to not like them. I don't think all of the "Advanced Zigbee RGBW Bulb" (and similar) features work with them, but I happen to prefer the behavior of these drivers otherwise. This is unlikely to affect your situation with the wall switch, however, since you aren't using the "Advanced..." drivers and they are the only ones that might do anything at all when the bulbs are powered on after what is effectively a power loss (using a physical switch).
I hadn't thought about disconnecting the relay. I do have some inovelli red switches I could swap in, but is there any advantage to doing that vs. wire lights always on and just use a cheap lutron pico with automation to control?
It may be against code in some areas (or something you'd prefer not to do regardless), but hardwiring line to load at the switch would also effectively give you the same setup, sans, of course, any possibility of ever disabling the "feature" via software. (Or, perhaps more problematically, even the air gap.) In that case, you could respond to the "on"/"off" events from the switch or the scene/button events (if the GE ones send these like Inovelli do); I've always preferred the latter approach (and it's all that's possible on some with local control disabled), but some people like the former.
Are you aware of any switches outside of inovelli that support the disable local relay control? It seems it would be preferable to have a real switch there so curious if there are multiple options.
I know Zooz, or at least ones with newer firmware do (anything you'd purchase new nowadays, or anything recently in at least the last couple years should be updateable). HomeSeer is a notable one I know that doesn't. Some GE might be able to, but I don't know of any that can (though I don't know their entire line). Others may have to comment if they are familiar with more brands.
I'll second that. This turn off with power restore was added with a driver update across all sengled drivers that I believe was at the request of a corporate purchase or something like that. People experiencing issues like yours is why the previous Sengled drivers were added back as "legacy". I don't know that there is any difference other than the "off" when power is restored for the new drivers. The Generic zigbee drivers should also be safe to use as the Generic zigbee rgbw drivers are what I use with mine.
Some people find the generic driver works better. There’s no harm in trying both and seeing which one you prefer. Just remember to hit “configure “ on the driver page after changing drivers.
I don't think all of the "Advanced Zigbee RGBW Bulb" (and similar) features work with them, but I happen to prefer the behavior of these drivers otherwise. This is unlikely to affect your situation with the wall switch, however, since you aren't using the "Advanced..." drivers and they are the only ones that might do anything at all when the bulbs are powered on after what is effectively a power loss (using a physical switch).
