Ok. I switched from wink and I have not had the same experience that many of you have had so I am reaching out for help.
I’ve had my HE C5 in use for most of a year and it’s been hit or miss with the automations.
I have 53 Leviton zwave switches. 45 are dimmers the rest are switches.
Here are the main frustration points
If I combine a switch and a dimmer into any automation it’s hit or miss when it executes. Usually the switches trigger and the dimmers about 2 minutes later. Sometimes at the same time. I use Alexa voice commands. Based on input from others I converted the action to start based on the state of a virtual switch and that’s how I get so-so performance. Without the vswitches it’s a no go.
I have 1 of the new Philips outdoor motion and lux sensors. It works for 5 days or so and then stops updating.
My locks are all quickset. They work about half the time.
I have 18 hue color bulbs that work great except in any automation for color change. It either works but never stops after the predicate condition becomes false or it does not work at all.
I am deleting all my automations today and reading all the switches. I would like ideas on how to best set up this HE so it works. Alexa integration is paramount. If HE isn’t the device for that ok. I thought it was.
There are no network issues or interference so let’s. It waste time here. I ran this on wink for 5+ years with no issues except when they had an outage.
All I want is my lights to come on at dusk based on a lux level, my doors to lock at a specific time and my automations to actually run when the virtual switch flips.
What I do is -
Create an automation that dims lights and locks doors when a virtual switch comes on
The voice command I assign to Alexa flips the virtual switch. That seemed to be the best way to keep all processing on the hub. However results are still mixed.
@danpirro Don't delete your automations yet. Start with your hardware.
1: Check your z-wave table for ghosts. If present, remove.
2: Get those hue bulbs off your zigbee mesh. They are ZLL based zigbee and don't repeat well or messenger well. They should be isolated on their own hub. Recommend either a hue bridge or another hubitat with hub mesh enabled.
3: Go to settings, click download at the bottom and save to your pc. then go to yourhubip:8081 and do a soft reset and restore from the backup you made to your pc. This will ensure a clean database if corruption is present.
Once you've gotten those licked, we can move on to your alexa integration (which can be done
through built in apps)
Make sure that your switches use no encryption. If so, un pair and re pair without. The only thing that will want encryption are locks and garage door. If after your z-wave cleanup you still have problems with locking, install Reliable Lock app from HPM,,,
Are you using any other zigbee devices (other than your hue bulbs, and depending on the answer to my question below, that may or may not be relevant)?
Are thse bulbs paired directly to the hub? Or paired to a hue bridge, linked to hubitat through the Hue integration (which is LAN-based)?
Respectfully, it sounds to me like you could absolutely be having issues due to z-wave and/or zigbee network problems. Possibly originating in the devices themselves, or possibly the structure/stability of the mesh networks.
I would not consider further discussion on the above points to be a waste of time, even if things seemed stable with Wink.
Because you have a C5 (and not a C7), you might need an external secondary controller (like a USB z-wave dongle and PC Controller) to determine if you have ghosts or stranded nodes and eliminate them.
Been so long, I forgot about that for ghost nodes. But I do know that I needed an external secondary controller to find my stranded nodes (and then remove them). I created the stranded nodes by force-removing z-wave devices.
This in my opinion is likely a very large part of your issues. If you search the forums for Leviton you will find LOTS of people that start their post saying "my Leviton doesn't _________" and give a list of things like the switches not reporting their current states, not turning on and off, and so on.
I think it helps to do the firmware updates that are available for some of these devices, but even then I consider these problematic devices. (you can search the forums or the internet for which devices have updates and what firmware level is current)
I do think the others in this thread have some good recommendations regarding healthy Zwave mesh, ghost devices, and so on. But it would not surprise me that the issues won't away until you update these to other brands.
I made a virtual switch that turns on the lights I want and shared that with Alexa. Turning off is near instant. Turning on still has a stupid delay of between 5 and 10 seconds. Which leads me to my next question… when I manipulate dimmers, do I turn them on and then set the level? That’s what I have now. Or do I just set the level?
so the bulbs on the dimmers are dumb bulbs. all my hue are outside... and when the virtual switch comes on it does the bulbs individually.
HOWEVER - after letting it sit as suggested overnight it seems much better. If I try and do two commands within say 10 seconds it still delays but i really dont do that.
Try setting them up in a group and see if that fixes it. As a group the messaging is broadcast to the group instead of one at a time which causes the popcorning
