W00T!!! I'm stoked--I'm def all ears on this one. 
Ah - this makes sense now. Just added a fifth zigbee device to a switch off rule and wondered it wasn't working. As they are all in the same room, I think I will take the group route. Interestingly, I have not had an issue on the reverse rule that switches everything on.
My HE group of 8 sengled recessed lights + 2 sengled lamp bulbs appears to be working okay with Zigbee messaging turned on. This is on a C-5.
Zigbee group messaging in Group is the best solution for this, at least with respect to Zigbee devices. A single command turns on all of those lights. Use is wherever you can. I wish Z-Wave had a comparable capability. Lutron has a method for this, and it works very well also (phantom button actuated scenes).
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@bravenel Do you think this might be addressed in a 2.2.5.xxx patch or is it likely to be 2.2.6 or later? I'm def interested in testing things to see if it helps the issues I've been seeing.
Thanks!
2.2.5 is done. We are still investigating, but there will be optional metering for both Group and Scene in 2.2.6. And, maybe for SAR -- depending on what we discover in our testing. The metering is easy to do, but may not be the ultimate solution.
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Seems like if there needs to be command queueing it should be on the device subsystem side, not individual apps?
Wouldn't it be better if app developers didn't have to worry about it? Consider a situation where groups and SAR fire at the same time?
All things I'm sure y'all have already thought of and are looking at. Just thinking out loud I guess.
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I have a RM where if my Alarm is activated, I turn on almost every light inside my house, and outside my house (so bad guys can't hide in the dark). I was using a simple ON command with a list of 25+ lights. I just switched it to a single Group. Regardless of the radio issues, It is probably not good for my houses electrical system, and therefore the devices, to turn on every switch at the same time.
- I have most of my stuff on dimmers now.
- They don't seem to react "instantly" in any case.
So, there doesn't seem to be a real-world issue with inrush currents all hitting at the same time.
I'm also very surprised that this could be happening.
Routinely, I turn on 5-7 devices at a time, and I haven't noticed any issues.
(Both from Simple Automation and Rule Machine).
If this is really an issue, it must be happening under certain unique circumstances.
I have several automations that run and use groups to turn pretty much everything on or off.
Things that run when I wake up, when I go to sleep, when I leave home, when I get back, etc. They adjust pretty much every light in my house.
Those have never been perfect. They got better in the 2.2.3-2.2.4 timeframe--then took a marked turn for the worse in 2.2.5.
However, even some much more simple things--like adjusting 5-6 of my outdoor lights at sunset/sunrise. Those started failing to be reliable in 2.2.5 on my C7.
Or, adjusting the LEDs on my 8 Inovelli switches--those rarely seem to work the first time through on 2.2.5 now (they were working fine most all the time on 2.2.4).
So, something seems to be bottling up the traffic. Now that I have a ZWave Toolbox (kinda limited in function--but I can see some stuff), I am seeing what appear to be routing failures and drops now which seems to tell me that something is overloaded and unable to respond as expected when there's a lot of simultaneous activity.
yes agreed i only see problems with devices on the edge of my mesh ie gate sensor, and outdoors lights with other devices at the same time.. i believe the device may have a long response time and then trigger a route change which in conjuction with other devices firing causes a delay or sometimes failure..
i'm seeing much the same issue. I have about a dozen inovelli dimmers/switches where I set the led color based on the mode. Its done in rule machine in one statement and I have been starting to see several of them fail setting the color randomly on the change
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Same here. When I update all my Inovelli switch LEDs at once, some often fail. It is odd how sometimes it works perfectly, and others it fails miserably. Most of the time, the end result is somewhere between those.
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I have 11 IKEA blinds controlled by HE. Made a rule to open them at sunrise and close them at sunset. It was hit and miss. Some would respond some days and some would respond other days. After a helpful user here suggested the radio was getting overloaded with commands, I made 4 rules, each opening or closing a particular set of blinds then a minute later another rule would run to open or close another set of blinds. That corrected the issue.
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you could still do it in your one rule.. just put some delays between the devices.
The Ikea blinds are zigbee, you should be able to create a group of them with zigbee group messaging enabled, this will control them all at once.
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Is this problem solved in the latest release? I add 300ms delay and sometimes I can still observe misses.
I'm still seeing this same issue sometimes with 2.2.6 and zwave. I've moved all my switches to a group, added metering with a 250ms delay, and still see hit and miss with some switches getting missed. It was more consistent with individual commands with a manual delay between commands
Same here.
