I'm trying to create a rule that refreshes some of these buggy shades but I noticed it's missing the "Refresh" capability, even though it has the refresh command. Since this is a built in driver, what's the process for making this change?
In RM, use the "Run Custom Action" option. For the "Select capability of action device" option, select either "Window Shade" or "Window Blind" (I don't know which one Smartwings falls under).
Then for the "Select custom command" option, select "refresh".
Something that I should be aware of, as a SmartWings novice? I just installed a ZigBee shade last weekend and have not yet noticed any bad behavior.
These shades aren't buggy. Refreshing device state isn't required when a zigbee network is functioning optimally.
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Well, I've had 8 of them for more than a year now. They're on top floor and the hub is in the basement, so as you can imagine chances are they would prefer to connect via a repeater rather than directly.
Right now, maybe 1 out of 10 times, one of them either doesn't open / close at all or doesn't report the correct status. This is after I started replacing some old zigbee switches that were working fine, but which I suspected were bad repeaters. It's been better now, and I can live with this rather than dump every zigbee repeater in the house just to make my shades more reliable. Oh and I also bought a bunch of zigbee outlets and that seem to have improved reliability.
I agree that it might not be the shades' fault, but I also couldn't figure out who the culprit was.
BTW - never had any issues with Z-wave devices and I have quite a few.
I’ve noticed there are a number of motor options (zigbee, zwave, matter) for smartwings shades.
Are zigbee the preferred choice?
I got all my shades with zigbee and I regret spending a bit more for z-wave version. I have all sorts of issues - open/close commands being dropped, shades dropping out of the network randomly (maybe once a year or less). You can work around these issues, but it can get annoying sometimes. Sure it might all work perfectly fine for you, depending on distance from the hub and what repeaters you have, but it's a coin toss.
They're charging me $56 now for the z-wave module if I want to replace it.
So you’d recommend zigbee, or regret ‘not’ spending more for zwave? I’m planning to use the plug in version for a doorwall on my 3-season porch, and that 4th season here in MN is pretty cold.
Curious if anyone has thoughts on Matter?
SwitchBot, Aqara and Tuya Zigbee shades are confirmed to be working via their respective brand Matter bridges and a community developed Matter Bridge driver for Hubitat.
But typically, the direct connection to HE should be more reliable- less points of failure.
I was wondering the same thing about the refresh. The zigbee shades only report battery when a command is sent or received. The only way I can figure out how to poll the battery is to send a command like stop position change which then updates the battery, Would be nice to poll the battery without having to send an actual command.
If I understand the previous comment "Refreshing device state isn't required when a zigbee network is functioning optimally." - should my shades be updating their battery levels without receiving or sending commands? Thanks.
