I have 8 of these bulbs which were solid on my SmartThings system but will not stay connected to my C-7, Platform Version 2.3.7.144. I know they are repeaters and that's a problem but is there a fix? I bought Sengled BR30s to replace them in case there is no fix for the Sylvania repeaters.
My first goal is to keep what I have and make it work.
Next choice is to replace just the Sylvania bulbs with the Sengled bulbs.
Is there any hope for the current C7 with Sylvania bulbs to be solid? Is DHCP the culprit?
Let us know how many of these bulbs you have and if they're in cans with metal trim rings.
Also please list the FCC ID of the bulbs it's written on the neck of the bulbs The newer ones are fine I owned a bunch of these. The newer ones have the word aether in the FCC id.
And in the United States they will not hook up to hue that's only available in Europe I believe.
You could also get a lightify hub I think they're about 10 bucks now on eBay and there's a lightify integration into hubitat.
You either want a second hubitat with just the zigbee 1.2 bulbs onit and share it via hub mesh or a hue bridge. (Both are 100% local) If you put them into a mixed environment on the same mesh with ZHA devices (sensors and whatnot) you will have issues as they don't play well together as ZLL 1.2 makes horrible repeater/messengers. The exception to this is Sengled as they don't repeat or Zigbee 3.0.
Those are the ones to avoid. The newer ones (aether) work great, but the ones labeled IQHome are problematic. I don’t know how you kept them working on ST, because I couldn’t. They dropped all off all the time. Keeping them on their own mesh didn’t help either.
I second what Ken said. First of the bulbs are the older troublesome ones, and the metal ring on the can isn't doing you any favors, and is likely blocking the already weak signal from these bulbs.
Hue is expensive, but their latest zigbee 3.0 bulbs are solid on HE. Alternatively you can look for Sylvania recessed rgbw downlights, which is what I have, 14 of them, mostly well behaved. There are monthly occasions where a bulb needs to have power cut to wake it up and start responding again. These come with plastic trim rings which shouldn't affect the radio signal and have a newer chip inside.
@Rxich since I already have brand new Sengled bulbs to replace the Sylvania, I will probably just go that route.
Thank you all for the responses!
Side question, hope it's not blasphemy, I also bought an Echo 4th gen with Zigbee. Will that hub work any better with the Sylvania bulbs? Meaning, is it a problem with the Sylvania bulbs being repeaters or are the Sylvania bulbs problematic for just Hubitat?
One is a $50 fix and the other is a $300+ fix.
It's a good question. I would assume they won't function any better on an Echo hub, since it's the zigbee chip in the Osram bulbs that is problematic. They have been known to actively lose packets. With that said, don't tell anyone that I still have 4 recessed rgbw Osram lights that work just fine. I also have 16 other Sylvania ones, and numerous GE zigbee dimmers and a couple Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 dongles to help them out.
Update: The Echo Gen 4 with Zigbee has been working flawlessly for a couple days now. Every troublesome Sylvania bulb is responding as they should. The only thing I see so far is the Alexa app sometimes reports a bulb as "non-responsive" but the bulb itself still works properly.
I'll report back next week but I'm very happy with the Echo right now. A $50 fix beats a $300+ fix all day and twice on Sunday.
