I've got two GE Link flood lights that light up my back yard, once I went from SmartThings to Hubitat over the weekend I reset the lights and Hubitat picked them both up right away and had control of them.
I created a few rules for sunset to sunrise with them in the mix, I was double checking them coming on and turning off automatically, which they did for 3 days, but on day 4 I noticed that one of them was stuck on.
Going into the Hubitat device console, I see that the light's "Last Activity" update is from a few days ago and it doesn't response to "on" or "off" requests. I see recent activity from the other light and I can control it, so that one is good.
What is the proper way to get Hubitat and the bulb linked up again? I'm sure I can all out remove the device from Hubitat, reset the bulb, re-add to Hubitat and then go through all my automations re-adding the light, but there must be a better way (hopefully?)
I went through the painful process the day before yesterday when Hubitat wouldn't see the change I made to a Hue bulb (moved to another room and renamed) and I ended up removing the hub itself and then had to spend an hour recreating all my automations again, so hopefully I can be taught a better method than the scorched earth method.
Both these bulbs are mounted right next to each other pointing different directions and are located about 25-30 feet from the hub with an outside wall in between.
The easiest way to reconnect a GE Link (or any Zigbee device) is to first NOT Remove it from Hubitat. When a Zigbee device rejoins a network, it will 'pop' right back into the device that already exists, thereby preventing the need to reconfigure any automations.
Try simply putting the Hubitat hub into Zigbee pairing mode... The GE Link bulb might just get rediscovered and start working. If not immediately, try power cycling the bulb while the HE hub is in pairing mode.
You could try resetting the bulb, using the somewhat tricky power on/off sequence for these bulbs. After the bulb resets, then start the Hubitat Zigbee pairing process, and the bulb will pop right back into the original Hubitat device.
Couple of questions/options for you to consider...
GE Link bulbs are notorious for dropping off the Zigbee network, and for being poor Zigbee HA repeaters. Have you considered replacing them with Sengled Zigbee bulbs? Sengled bulbs are low cost, reliable, and and designed to not be Zigbee repeaters. They work very well.
Another possible option would be to try pairing these GE Link bulbs to your Philips Hue bridge. I am not sure if these bulbs can be paired to the Hue bridge or not...but if they can, many users find troublesome Zigbee bulbs behave better when on a zigbee mesh of just other bulbs.
Do you have any Zigbee repeaters aside from the GE Link bulbs? What other Zigbee devices do you have paired with the Hubitat hub? Many users have found that by adding some decent quality zigbee repeaters (like the IKEA Tradfri outlets, Iris 3210-L outlets, Peanut Plug outlets, or Samsung/SmartThings outlets ), their zigbee devices function much better and do not have as many devices fall off the network.
Getting into Hubitat (and for that matter, previously getting into SmartThings) has me rethinking my actual devices. The GE Link bulbs were finicky at best through the Hue bridge, they'd drop and re-appear a lot. I didn't have my ST hub long enough to see the long term behavior of them connected to that, so yeah, I've definitely considered replacing these, I also want to replace my Wyze outlets and sensors because of lack of native/local support as well as my older Wemo light switches, which I can't get Hubitat to recognize at all.
One thing I've definitely gathered in the past week is that "repeaters definitely help", and I do have a 2 pack of Aeotec en route, but they aren't here yet. I was going to wait until they were here and repairing these lights, but my question was more a general question on the situation more than the actual bulbs themselves. Going through the process of dropping and adding my Hue bridge the other night was something I would love to avoid in the fututee
Most, if not all, Aeotec devices are Z-Wave, not Zigbee. Thus, the will not help with Zigbee bulbs like the GE Links.
If you want want to have Smart Bulbs directly paired to the Hubitat hub, my recommendation is the Sengled Zigbee bulbs, as these are not zigbee repeaters by design. They are readily available on Amazon and are very reasonably priced for both White and Color bulbs. One thing to know about these, however, is that they cannot be paired to a Philips Hue bridge. You will also need some decent Zigbee repeaters, like the ones I mentioned in my earlier post. If you're looking for a deal, you might like these Iris v2 outlets available on ebay from a reliable seller.
Note: These outlets work great as Zigbee repeaters for everything that is Zigbee standards compliant. Unfortunately, Xiaomi devices are NOT Zigbee standards compliant, and will have issues if they are used on the same network as the Iris outlets, as well as the Peanut outlets. Xiaomi devices only seem to play nicely with the IKEA Tradfri outlets as repeaters.
Also, if you want some other great Iris Zigbee devices, the same ebay seller has motion detectors, leak detectors, etc... all at a great price.
Ah dang it! I did order the wrong thing (they just got here).
Ah well, i'll hang on to these as my device list expands, I think sooner than later I'll replace my Schlage HomeKit doorlock with a z-wave version. I'm so over/out-of HomeKit at this point.
Thanks for all the rest of the help, I've got a bulb to un-pair and re-pair lol
