Zigbee devices keep going unresponsive

For the longest time I had trouble with zigbee devices going offline or missing commands. It has been suggested that many zigbee bulbs act a repeaters, and poor ones at that. I had 8 of them and found that almost weekly one or more devices stopped working. Rebooting the hub sometimes worked, or times I had to re-join them. I finally decided to get rid of those bulbs and replaced them with Sengled. These are non repeating zigbee bulbs. I have had them installed for a little over two weeks and all the random drop offs and missed commands have stopped. Before I had a bunch of GE-Link and Cree bulbs both known for poor repeating.

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What brand of zigbee bulbs do you have paired to the hub?

@an39511

zigbee bulbs act a repeaters,

@Ryan780

What brand of zigbee bulbs do you have paired to the hub?

For months I've had one Sylvania Lightify RGBW strip, on unswitched power, and two GE Link bulbs, on switched power (range hood), but very rarely turned off (and definitely not turned off when this issue arises). They worked fine for years on Wink. They worked fine, until recently, on Hubitat.

Within the last month, I added a Singled Smart LED Multicolor, in a lamp, also never switched off. I've considered that to be the source of the problem, since things were stable prior to adding it, but picked that bulb because it doesn't repeat.

Shouldn't I see the hub logs post something when trying to turn devices on or off ... or does it only log after (if) the bulb responds? The silence in the log made me suspect the hub wasn't even trying to turn them on.

No, the log will log things as they happen. If the hub tried to turn something on but it doesn't happen, that usually won't be logged unless debug logging is on.

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Okay. Should it happen again, I'll try to raise logging to debug on these devices.

Thanks.

It's the GE Link bulbs. Not worth the headache. Replace them with Sengled

While I can agree that's the consensus (plenty of discussion about it), I can't help but wonder why these two GE bulbs worked fine, for years, with Wink, alongside my Sylvania LED strip, and both also worked fine, for months, with Hubitat ... until I added the Sengled bulb to the mix (which I really don't think created this issue but the timing is certainly hard to ignore).

Or is it a simple matter that the GE bulbs and Sylvania Lightify were fine with each other until they began 'competing' with the new Sengled bulb?

I can easily remove the GE Link bulbs from the mix. I'll either unpair them or just temp swap them with dumb bulbs.

The Sylvania Lightify RGBW strip is less easy to get rid of ... given it's location and use as an LED strip, so hopefully they and my Sengled work well together.

Plus all these motion and contact sensors due here next week ... :slight_smile:

No, the Sengled don't repeat Zigbee signals at all. Zigbee frequently changes it's routes to find what is determined by the protocol to be the strongest signal path back to the controller (your hub). It's just a matter of time before things blow up when they are routing through bulbs.

How Wink handles it differently is unknown to me, but you're on Hubitat now. Wink is struggling. Even though mine is unplugged, I still get the outage notifications. Cloud sucks for critical devices. Best to make the changes that will work best with Hubitat. They're no expensive since you're only talking about a few bulbs. In the end, you're going to have an incredibly stable and robust system the you can pretty well automate anything. No selling of your personal data, not cloud outages, fast and reliable as long as you don't use bulbs that route. Add powered repeaters like the IKEA Trådfri outlets. They're inexpensive and will give you a very healthy Zigbee mesh for you non-routing Sengled bulbs.

This exactly.

@mareksoon
I, too, moved to Hubitat from Wink.

My experience on Wink was the opposite of yours. My Lightify bulbs would fall off every 2-3 months, and a LeakSmart valve would fall off every 1-2 weeks.

One of the first things I added were a number of zigbee outlets that function as repeaters. My zigbee mesh has been rock solid for the five months I've been on Hubitat. Nothing has fallen off. And I have added a number of non-repeating zigbee end-devices (sensors) since moving to HE.

You may run into trouble still with that one. One option that @mike.maxwell (the father of our HE drivers) does, is to separate all the bulbs and LED drivers to another HE hub. They're on sale for just $75 right now. That seems to keep the other Zigbee battery devices like motion and contact sensors very happy, with no bulbs or LED drivers they're trying to route through. That would let you also get inexpensive bulbs like the IKEA Trådfri bulbs and add them to the other hub without them trying to route the Zigbee battery devices (and failing miserably at it). I do this similar thing, but with a Hue bridge for all my bulbs. Works like a charm. Very stable, and no devices drop. I have repeaters too though, so it's not enough just to have the bulbs off the hub. The battery devices don't route, so they need something like the aforementioned IKEA Outlets to route through. Unlike the IKEA bulbs, the Outlets are Zigbee 3.0 and do a nice job of routing for a low cost. They're not that strong, so get a few (depends on a lot of factors. House size for one), but they're really low cost and do the job.

Unfortunately, the lower cost Hue Bridge option isn't going to work for you, since you have a Sylvania Lightify (OSRAM) LED driver and it's not compatible with the Hue Bridge. I would take advantage of the sale price and order another Hubitat hub personally. Or just try it and see if it's a problem. I like to spend the money to avoid problems, but some people don't mind the temporary frustration and prefer the wait and see approach. All personal choice.

Now that you mention IKEA, I do have their hub in the mix, but not connected in any way to Hubitat.

When I get the money to replace the three IKEA bulbs on the IKEA hub, I plan to eliminate that, too. I'd consider pairing the IKEA bulbs directly with Hubitat but they're RGB and apparently aren't support in Hubitat yet (I think due to the way they address colors).

... or I may keep them if they live well alongside everything else. My kids use the third-part disco app to pulse the lights in their rooms to the music picked up on their phone mic.

Also, to simplify things, I do have to toss my Zwave sensors when the Zigbee ones get here (they've been hit or miss on events showing in Hubitat), and maybe replace my Zwave GE fan controls with Caseta, leaving me with only Caseta and Zigbee devices.

Replacing the two GE Link bulbs isn't a huge expense, but I hope I can keep the Sylvania Lightify RGBW given it's location, need for an LED strip, and original cost.

EDIT: ... and now that I read about the second hub, yeah, that may be something I need to look into, especially after these incoming Iris sensors get here.

And this is the next one. I'll send you to this doc (READ IT VERY WELL) it will solve your problems: How to Build a Solid Zigbee Mesh - Hubitat Documentation
Also a couple of reminders with this guide:

  1. keeping all hubs on at the same time = trouble
  2. Bulbs on zigbee with other devices = trouble
  3. Wifi and zigbee could be trouble
  4. Not enough repeaters = trouble

Never compare a network from one hub to another, because the networks chooses it's repeaters every day, so it's the situation is different every time.

Keep the IKEA bulbs. Someday @mike.maxwell with get them working on HE. He has quite a pile of device to go through, so that's why they're not getting much love I think. I have one. They are actually the CIE XY color space, and HE needs to translate that to use them. That's what the Hue engineers did for their bridge. I use mine on the bridge and have Google Assistant Relay change it's color. I relegated it to a hallway light and replaced it with a Hue bulb (I'm not that much into the color bulbs). I have Google Assistant Relay set it to the lowest level in orange late at night, and then just white during the day.

The IKEA hub doesn't route, since it's a controller. Keep it around for bulb updates if you want. Z-Wave of course isn't going to be an interference issue with Zigbee, but they need their own routers too. So if you're getting rid of a mains powered Z-Wave device that is routing for some battery powered Z-Wave devices, be sure to add in some Z-Wave repeaters in its place.

What did you mean by this one? I have two HE hubs right next to each other, and a Hue bridge right next to that. No problem. Those are three separate Zigbee networks all on different channels. (13, 20 and 25).

Yeah, ok. But you are an advanced user... And take notice of channels. A starter might not notice that and have two or three hubs ruining each others networks and then ask why it all keep falling apart... It can work, but in the beginning I would advice people to disable the old hub(s). Especially when joining and pairing devices.

Ok I get what you meant now. Just wanted to clarify because the statement sounds counter to my advice to get another HE hub :wink::joy:

While I’ve heard of devices jumping back to a previous controller with Z-wave (probably because they were not excluded from it), it’s not something I’ve heard of happening with Zigbee as far as I can recall. When you put a Zigbee device in pairing mode, the previous pairing is immediately dumped.

Point taken on the channel conflicts though. But probably best to just learn that you need to have two Zigbee controllers within range of each other on different channels.

This pretty much confirms everything is going through one of the Link bulbs:

Neighbor Table Entry
[RHL, 6337], LQI:247, age:4, inCost:3, outCost:3
[Desk Light, 88FE], LQI:239, age:4, inCost:5, outCost:7
[RHR, C1BB], LQI:254, age:4, inCost:1, outCost:7

Route Table Entry
status:Active, age:64, routeRecordState:0, concentratorType:None, [Desk Light, 88FE] via [RHR, C1BB]
status:Active, age:64, routeRecordState:0, concentratorType:None, [Nightstand, 2C3B] via [RHR, C1BB]
status:Active, age:64, routeRecordState:0, concentratorType:None, [RHL, 6337] via [RHL, 6337]
status:Active, age:64, routeRecordState:0, concentratorType:None, [RHR, C1BB] via [RHL, 6337]

RHL and RHR are the Link bulbs.
Desk Light is the Sylvania Lightify RGBW LED strip.
Nightstand is my new Sengled.

Although they've given me no trouble (that I've noticed), until recently, I'm starting the process to remove the Link bulbs and replace them with Sengled, although since I'm determined to have 4000K, that means I need the more expensive RGBW bulbs over the softwhite or daylight (I know my Link bulbs were 2700K, but they were the last softwhite bulbs I had).

Thanks everyone who helped ... both here and privately.

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I have a lot of OSRAM Lightify lamps and strips, and they were causing problems with my Iris motion and contact sensors, causing them to drop off and not respond. I added a Hubitat hub just for these because another hub was less expensive than replacing all the strips and lamps. I use HubConnect to share the devices between hubs, and it works very well. I also have repeaters connected to both hubs to extend both the Zigbee networks. Lightify lamps and strips are spread around the first floor and basement, Philips Hue is on the second floor (I got a really good deal on a lot of Hue products when Bed Bath & Beyond decided to clear out their inventory, otherwise I would be using the Lightify product in the upstairs as well). I like that I can keep, and add to (depending on deals one can find on lamps and accessories) because HA product can become very expensive.

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Ive gone a different direction and decided to dump Iris V1 instead of adding a second hub that just seems messy and overkill.

It's not the Iris V1 that's the problem, it's the ZLL bulbs. As a general rule, Zigbee HA devices should never be on the same mesh network as ZLL repeaters. It just causes problems in your mesh eventually. You're going to see problems with all ZHA devices if you have ZLL bulbs on the network also, not just Iris v1 devices.