Unreliability with Hue Color Bulbs paired directly to Hubitat

Hey all -- I have finally moved all of my bulbs off of SmartThings and Hue and onto Hubitat. I reset and repaired my Hue bulbs to Hubitat (using a Hue Dimmer remote) and they paired up nicely. I did have to select Generic Zigbee RGBW to get them to work.

The unreliability I find is that I find that sometimes commands are missed (by the bulbs) I guess. Like I activate a scene with 3 Hue color bulbs. One might not turn on at all. Or it may turn on but have the wrong level. Or it may not change color so it'll be set to the old color.

Is there a device driver I can use for them? Perhaps one that will just send the commands multiple times to the bulbs?

The Hue White/Lux bulbs don't seem to have any issue like that, nor do my other Zigbee bulbs. (Ikea, some GE and other random types.)

Thanks!

It's generally a good idea not to pair the HUE bulbs or any other zigbee bulbs (except seglend brand) directly to any hub as they are horrible repeaters. Seglend brand bulbs specifically DO NOT repeat by design to alleviate this.

If you pair your HUE bridge (assuming you have one) with HE and then control it there you should find more reliable operation as well as improved performance with other zigbee devices in your home (assuming again that you have any).

If you are planning to or need to leave them paired to HE directly, make sure you are using a zigbee channel with minimal WiFi interference and the more zigbee repeaters (AC Powered Zigbee Devices (not bulbs) will also help.

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I will say that my hue e12 bulb works great wit Hubitat. I have a Osram Zigbee Plug-In Outlet inbetween the hub and it though. That made a big difference for me...
Range seems to be lesser than ST and causes some migration confusion / headaches.

Yeah I understand that stuff -- I do not believe it is an issue in my case. I have maybe 40 bulbs and about 20 other Zigbee devices (motion sensors, contact sensors, etc.) paired directly to Hubitat now -- and all work reliably except the 6 or 7 color bulbs I have. One of the color bulbs is about 5 feet from the Hubitat hub itself and exhibits the same issue as the ones in other rooms.

And when I say unreliable, they are mostly reliable -- just maybe do the odd things about 10% of the time.

Oh interesting -- you're using Hue Color bulbs? I have a mix of Gen 1 and Gen 3 and they both seem to exhibit the same exact issue. Which driver are you using?

I'm new to Hue so I'm ignorant as to it's generation.
I'm using the Generic Zigbee RGBW Bulb driver.

They all look the same -- so it's hard to tell. If you just bought them then they will be Gen 3 (which are a bit brighter and have a wider color gamut capability.)

Ok -- yeah I'm using the same driver as you. It's odd to think it could be interference as all my other Zigbee devices work reliable even the non color bulbs that are just a few feet away from the color bulbs. Perhaps I just need to adjust my routines to send the command multiple times to the color bulbs.

I only have one.
It might be just as @halfrican.ak and even @mike.maxwell have said that the bulbs aren't great repeaters according to zigbee standards. I think they relay Hue commands well to eachother as that's what they're meant to do.

I have no bulbs acting as repeaters. At least that I can imagine, since there's no way to visualize the mesh.

Every Hue Bulb I've paired to HE has caused issues in the lab and in production at one point in time or another.
By issues, meaning a flat out refusal to forward reports to the Hub for devices which were unfortunate enough to select one of them as a parent.
It's some what hit and miss for sensors, it's a killer for a zigbee lock I have in the lab.
If these are working for you, fantastic, if you start loosing sensor/device events, then look here first...

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Ok good tip -- I still have the Hue hub, so I can repair all the Philips bulbs to that if things start to take a turn for the worse.

I'm lucky everything in the front of the house is z-wave...
I guess if I have to buy a bridge in the future I'll also have to figure out how to un-pair the one bulb I have from HE.
Such a pain they made it painful to do so.
Should just be able to flash the bulb like a 5 year old until it goes into pairing mode again...

I don't think you have to reset the bulb (other than removing it from HE) to get it to re-pair with the HUE bridge if your zigbee channel on HE is one of the supported ZLL channels that HUE uses 11,15,20,25. If your HE zigbee is on another channel then you will have to use a Hue Dimmer to do the reset unless you can find a lutron connected pico remote somewhere or are lucky enough to have one.

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I moved all my Hue bulbs back to the Hue bridge with similar issue you are having. Random bulb dropped off the HE network once in a while as well.
With the Hue integration with HE. Not a single problem so far.

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Yeah for me I just used the Hue Dimmer remote to reset all my Zigbee bulbs (of various brands) to move them to Hubitat. The Hue Dimmer remote is the way to go -- those are still relatively inexpensive. The Zigbee Pico remote is discontinued and the prices are stupid expensive.

With the search on the hub you want to pair to enabled, just power cycle the bulb first, then hold the hue dimmer up to the bulb (or near) and hold down on and off at the same time. It'll flash a few times and kind of dim then get bright solidly and it should be paired to the new hub.

Thanks @Navat604 and everyone for the feedback -- you guys have convinced me to move all Philips bulbs back to the Hue Hub.

@mike.maxwell is this just a issue with hue or does osram lamps have the same issue? I have quite a few but that's the only ZigBee devices that I have.

Osram, Hue, GE link have all not played well with my zigbee lock.
The Osram blocked joining a Lowes zigbee sensor.
Note there may be others, this is not something that I've been explicitly testing and tracking.
This mainly came up during LCM development when I had 6 or so zigbee bulbs on line. I would issue a command to the zigbee lock, nothing, activate the zigbee lock manually, nothing. Unscrew all the damn bukbs and it's happy world again.
Unfortunatly the osrams aren't zll, so they won't run on the Hue bridge, at least V1 anyway.

If the only zigbee devices you have are bulbs you are probably fine, they seem to route for each other just peachy.

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Good to know thanks. I don't have any more plans for ZigBee devices (there isn't many devices ZigBee in the UK). But I do have 2 smarthings fobs which I forgot about, I use these for the guests. Is there any way of proving if these route to the hub or via the lights and if so find out if they have issues?

Side note does the hub support ZigBee V3?

An XBee and XCTU will allow you to see the routes and verify signal quality. You'll get a powerful repeater in the process too.

no it doesn't, V3 is complete backwards compatible, and personally I have no interest in scanning a QR code every time I need to pair a V3 device.