I have 4 Cree lights (porch, garage, deck, and patio) and a SmartThings plug (laundry area...twin tube fluorescent overhead) connected over Zigbee to my HE (the rest of the lighting is all Hue, connected through its hub, and control from the HE dashboard works fine). Everything was working fine in 2.2.0.132, but the 2.2.1.113 (and .115) updates seem to have broken things. Now, on the dashboard, if I try to manually toggle any of these devices, I get an hourglass and...nothing.
I tried reverting to 2.2.0.132 (and restoring the db, and then rebooting), but the problem persists. I've shutdown the HE, pulled power, waited 30 seconds, and it doesn't help. The latest history from any of the devices is a switch off on 2020-06-06 at 01:23:06 EDT, which would have been a voice command to Alexa to turn off "dog lights". I have morning routines to turn the patio/deck on when my wife wakes up during the week, and off after sunrise, but those weren't triggered or logged Monday morning either.
The 5 devices had previously been on a Wink hub, but since I moved over, they've been working better than they ever had before. I just cannot get them to respond now, even after a revert/restore.
Avoid adding Zigbee lightbulbs to your hub in combination with other Zigbee devices, since the lightbulbs will try to act as routers, but unfortunately they only perform this role properly with other lightbulbs. The exception we have found are Sengled Zigbee lightbulbs, which do not try to take on the role of repeating other Zigbee devices. Zigbee light bulbs do not have issues routing among themselves, therefore a good alternative is a separate Zigbee network via a compatible bridge such as the Philips Hub Bridge, or a second Hubitat Elevation hub with only Zigbee lightbulbs paired to it.
Several forum posts and threads about these and a few other problematic bulbs, though there are few directly-paired bulbs I'd trust regardless:
many more you can find with a search on both here and other forums
People usually don't like to hear this, which is why I'm trying so hard to prove with multiple sources above that I'm not crazy for saying this. The bad news is that this is the truth regardless and very frequently the source of these problems. The good news is that you already have a Hue Bridge. My suggestion would be to pair the Cree bulbs to the Hue Bridge, keep the ST plug on Hubitat, and consider adding other repeaters (like the ST plug or many others--just not bulbs) on Hubitat if you need them for the range or number of devices you have. The Cree bulbs work great on a Hue Bridge, and you already know Hubitat has an integration that works well for these.
My guess is that when you move these off of Hubitat, everything else (just your ST plug, I suppose, unless there are more devices you didn't mention) on your Zigbee network will work well again. So...mixed news, but hope it's at least helpful!
I'm going to admit, I really, really, really wanted to disagree with you and prove you wrong. But I went ahead, and flipped all four hard switches for the Cree bulbs, and gave it a few minutes. Then I tried to use the dashboard to turn on the laundry area, and... I can't disagree with you. Flipping a switch on one of the Cree bulbs showed no change in the ability to control it, but the laundry area (which I purchased the plug solely to help with reliability of the back-of-house Crees) still worked.
I'm torn on attaching the Crees to the Hue hub, since I did that initially several years ago, didn't like it, and got the Wink. Which was...spotty. I'm also at a little over 30 Hue bulbs right now (or will be, if I get a ladder for the chandelier in the foyer).
I was kinda thrilled when everything seemed to Just Work with the HE. Now I'm kinda bummed that it stopped working with the latest firmware, even though I understand that it's the bulbs themselves that are the most likely culprit, thanks to the links you provided. Now I'm trying to figure out where I could put another bulb to repeat for those problematic lights (had to actually move them to the powder room to initially pair).
I noticed that people said the Sengled bulbs are specifically not repeaters (from the Sylvania/Osram RGBW Bulbs link). Think they'd do any better? Another plug in the garage to act as a repeater won't be an issue, as the lighting in there is pure motion-activated on the fixture itself, if the Sengleds needed one.
Aside from my admittedly massive investment in Hue gear, I'm not really wed to anything in particular. I basically bought the Cree bulbs because they were relatively cheap, and if someone decided to walk with one of them, I wouldn't really shed much of a tear over it.
But, definitely, thank you for providing something concrete I could test to convince my own stubborn self...
Bulbs are terrible repeaters. I had 10 crees and it tore my mesh apart. Sengled will do right by you. They're economical as well. You'll be happy with them.
They'll definitely do better in this regard since they don't repeat, but honestly, I've had bad luck with all directly-paired Zigbee bulbs on Hubitat. I experimented with the "bulb-only hub" you may have read about above as an alternative to a Hue Bridge. I went back to the Hue Bridge because I didn't find this to work well. Bulbs sometimes needed the command to be sent twice for everything to work, among other issues--one of which is that the Crees still managed to stop working on this network (it wasn't just a Cree network; I had Hue bulbs and a couple others on there, too--maybe they're extra-sensitive?). Most people say this should be fine, so maybe I was just unlucky.
I'm not sure what you didn't like about them on the Hue Bridge, but since you already have one, that would be my recommendation. (The only issue is that they won't support Hue-only features like default power on state and Siri/HomeKit.) It sounds like you also have other bulbs on that network, so maybe that bigger mesh would help you reach that farthest, problematic bulb, too. However, if you're not using the ST plug for anything, simply removing it from your network so this hub only does bulbs (on the Zigbee side; Z-Wave and whatever else won't matter) should work, too--then you'll effectively be doing that "bulb-only hub" thing some people do with a second hub. But your idea of replacing them with Sengled would also theoretically work (as long as the range is fine; since these don't repeat, only the ST plug would be there to help you with that). But, again, I'm not sure I'd recommend either of these last two options. Still, since you have the hardware to try out at least two of these three possibilities, I suppose you don't have much to lose...and even if you try the third way, Sengleds are pretty cheap.
(Some people will also tell you to explore smart switches/dimmers instead, so I'll throw that out there, too. Almost all of these are Z-Wave. But many people can't use them if they're in an older house with shallow boxes, no neutral wire in the box, renting, or if they want the features only a bulb can provide, like color/color temperature control.)
You could also try the Inovelli iLumin bulbs - those are Z-Wave. I have some but have not installed any yet.
In terms of the smart switches - There are a few smart dimmers/switches that don't require neutral - Inovelli has some but may require a bypass if the load is under 25 watts, GE Enbrighten does too but I don't think they are LED compatible.
Well, based on feedback, I'm going to try the Sengled bulbs. I found a 4 pack on the Big A that, after a 15% coupon, work out to under $9/bulb, even after taxes have been applied. Since I plan to add more non-bulb devices soon (I really want to start doing presence detection since both myself and my wife are bad about turning off our offices), I'm hoping the distances between the front & back of the house won't be an issue (the HE is near the front, due to where my network drop on the main level is). Worst case, I put them back on the Hue hub when I have the time.
I'd considered switches, but so far I've managed to avoid doing electrical work specifically for HA, just swapping out bulbs (and saving the originals for if we ever sell this place). Wasn't too thrilled doing it in the X-10 days, so I'm reluctant to do it now. That'll probably change in the future, but for now I'd rather keep the screwdrivers for low voltage work.
Just be aware that Sengled bulbs will not work on a Philips Hue bridge. Sengled bulbs are Zigbee HA only, and I believe Hue requires Zigbee LL.
I have about 9 Sengled bulbs paired directly to my Hubitat hub and they have worked flawlessly for my for about 2 years. I do have about 8 Iris 3210-L Zigbee outlets spread throughout the house as Zigbee repeaters. These also help with a whole bunch of Iris v2 Contact and Motion sensors. Very stable for me. I also use Lutron Caseta for all of my light switches, dimmers, and fan controllers. If you ever decide to replace your switches, I highly recommend taking a look at Lutron. 100% reliable and very fast performance. For me, much more reliable and faster than my pretty old Z-Wave switches and dimmers.
As a followup... the Sengleds arrived today while I was at work (yay "essential"). This evening I installed them, and it was painless. Literally were discovered faster than the Cree ones ever were (and didn't need to be paired in the powder room then moved). The "hardest" part was realizing in the Amazon Echo Skill that I had to click the list of devices to then add them to the list exposed to Alexa, and I chalk that up to only having done the initial setup and not having added anything since.
There are some dome/"boob" lights that I've been debating how to automate, and these bulbs may be the way I do it. I even know where I can place more repeater plugs (circulating dog water bowls we unplug when the reservoir runs down and they start making noise, and my 3D printer, which I want to add a smoke detector to for unattended runs), so even that's taken care of in terms of ensuring a decent mesh.
Thanks for the help, and providing enough info to convince me that my initial "this should still just work" belief was wrong. You guys rock.
The bad news is that this is the truth regardless and very frequently the source of these problems. The good news is that you already have a Hue Bridge. My suggestion would be to pair the Cree bulbs to the Hue Bridge, keep the ST plug on Hubitat, and consider adding other repeaters (like the ST plug or many others--just not bulbs) on Hubitat if you need them for the range or number of devices you have. The Cree bulbs work great on a Hue Bridge, and you already know Hubitat has an integration that works well for these.
