Hey folks, I've purchased a couple of Graywind zigbee shades and installed them in the house. They work properly with the zigbee remote controller, and I can pair them with my hubitat, but they don't seem to work with the hubitat commands. When I send a command using the command buttons, the status updates to closing or opening, but nothing happens.
Beyond the built in generic driver, I've also tried the following:
Yoolax Window Blinds driver by mwerline
Tuya - Graywind Roller Blind by iholand
IKEA Window Blinds by a4refillpad
I think part of the problem is that this is a newer controller (ZF31) than some of the older blinds. That said, I've seen references to people getting these to work, including one person who just paired/un-paired/repaired using the generic driver.
I'm also experiencing weird behavior with Hubitat Package Manager: it won't install any packages, it just hangs there. And I've got 8 copies of dashboard under my apps.
I'm getting increasingly concerned this thing needs a hard reset, but I don't want to go through all that pain of rebuilding if it's not actually going to help
I've contacted Graywind, and we've walked through their process top to bottom, and they don't believe it's an issue with the blinds but might be a hub issue (and, considering the remote works properly, that seems to be a strong possibility).
I also went ahead and soft reset the hub, and restored a backup, just to see if that could fix things.
All my older ZF21 shades work perfectly with hubitat and the Ikea driver. The most recent set of shades I ordered only had the newer ZF31 shades as an option, which graywind said would work the same... I can pair but no commands work in hubitat. Shades work fine with the remote also..
No, I never did, but you having the same problem is a good additional data point. I put in a support ticket forever ago, and they punted me back to Hubitat...but also wanted to know what the resolution was. So I'll see if I can revive that.
Ugh that's a bummer. I specifically asked about hubitat compatibility before signing off on the order with the newer motors.
I definitely don't have the background to figure out a driver for this. I'm not sure if these motors are being widely used enough yet for anyone to develop one..
Well, I think you have a case to return them and get your money back given that they don't work as discussed. Which would be a bummer, as I think they are really well built and designed shades.
Maybe send in your own support ticket, and that will help move things forward?
I'm not really qualified to diagnose the driver either, but I've got a buddy/coworker that's a wiz in industrial control systems. This isn't exactly the same thing, but maybe he can helpout poking around.
Yes, this information uniquely identifies the device.
It uses the standard Zigbee Window Covering cluster, so should work with the inbuilt Generic Zigbee shade driver... Should work also with this custom driver as example :
Can you elaborate what is the exact problem, please?
If you use the linked above custom driver and enable the "debugOutput" preference, what is in the live logs when you operate the blinds using the remote?
Ya I really like them otherwise. The zf21 shades have worked flawlessly throughout my house over the past year. I've got 18 or so.
The zf31 motors and remote seem like a nice upgrade. The remote is easier to work with and the motors seem quieter/faster. The documentation for the Alexa integration looks more user friendly than the older version also (I've only used them with hubitat though).
Hopefully we can get the driver situation figured out. Fortunately the shades were for the last room in our house and I wasn't planning on much automations with them other than daily opening/closing so it's not the end of the world to be using the remote for now. My other rooms have more automations with the shades controlled by various smart switches.
I messaged Graywind back on Amazon so we'll see what they say. Prior to ordering they also assured me that they were working on a solution to control zf21 and zf31 shades with a single remote. My concern with them phasing out the old motors was that if I need a replacement I'll need to use separate remotes for a single room or convert all my motors.
Initially I still wasn't getting anywhere with the yoolax driver. I'd try to configure but none of the device state variables would populate. Then it finally started working after re-pairing a couple times.
The yoolax driver has some idiosyncrasies where it reports the level as percent closed rather than open. And shows a level of 100 and state of "open" when the shade is completely closed. I switched back to the Ikea driver and things were working great for a bit. I think I have more of a ZigBee network issue maybe because the shade stopped responding shortly afterwards and I wasn't able to configure the other shade in the room. I'll try moving my hub later to confirm. Glad to see the drivers work though.
Re-paired using the Ikea driver with the hub in the same room as the shades and was able to configure and operate everything normally. I was even able to move my hub back to the original location afterwards too. I'll probably add a repeater in that room later for stability but working fine for now.
I tried to re-pair, but I can't get it to work, I even moved the hub into the same room to see if that helped at all.
Just to be clear, to set the shade into paring move, are you holding down the button for 6 seconds and does it's little jog routine twice? I removing the pairing of your remote first?
This is baffling me at this point. I can pair it, but that's it.
You know what's funny, about 15 minutes ago, it just started working. I had moved the hub, repaired, and nothing worked. Then sometimes after, I went to show my son how it wasn't working....and the damn thing worked perfectly.
Also weird behavior is that to get these to work in my automatons, I need to send a close command (or open) wait a second, then send a percent open/close. And then they go. But if I don't do that, it just stares at me.
It's all very odd, but I have it working, so I'm not touching a damned thing.
That is odd. My automations all work normally now.
I did have one of the newer shades "fall off" and stop responding a couple days ago. Most likely a ZigBee mesh issue though since I moved my hub back to the other side of the house.
I moved one of my ZigBee smart plugs into the room. I had to completely remove the shade from hubitat and then add it back to get it working properly.
It might be a pain to redo your automations, but maybe try doing a fresh pairing with the hub?
On a whim, I just went in and checked....and now it's working 100%
I'm going to say it's an act of god, and move on I guess. If there's one thing I did that might have actually had an impact, it was having the hub in the room when pairing.
But, either way...thanks for posting about you challenges, because if you hadn't I'd have probably let this sit a while. And because I could get this work, I dusted off a bunch of other things that had stalled.
Edit: I should note, I had already extended my mesh into the room with a couple of light bulbs. Which makes the behavior even stranger.
If you're considering these: besides this, it's really a good shade and a great value for the dollar. Also, the ability to configure it to my exact specifications was nice. I'd totally buy them again. I would recommend that you get one bluetooth controller with your order, just in the event something goes wrong. They do pre-pair it with the shades your order, which is a small but nice detail.
Which bulbs? Most ZigBee bulbs make pretty poor repeaters and can actually hurt your mesh as devices try to route through them. I've only used sengled because they're explicitly NOT repeaters.
I was debating picking up another inovelli blue dimmer switch to use as the switch in the room with the new shades if my smart plugs didn't solve things.
