When you see this, you have issues. You need more stable repeaters in more locations. Any inCost greater than 2 or 3 is cause for alarm.
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I do have a couple of Z-Wave wall-mounted dimmers, where appropriate, where I don't have A19 sockets. They're Lutron Casetas, which I haven't even tried to migrate as I understand I'd need a Lutron bridge (even though they were natively supported by Wink). And, indeed, I have no neutral in the switch boxes, most of which are ceramic and go back to the original knob-and-tube wiring days, which is why I have the Casetas in the first place. Thanks for the tip re. Inovelli; I'll check that out, today.
Jeff
Thanks! That should give me a good start. Jeff
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When you said "plaster," that was my assumotion (my house is 100 years old and I understand--trying to update the electrical over time). 
Caseta only work with Wink because Lutron allowed them to license their proprietary protocol, something I'd say they're unlikely to do again with anyone else. The Pro Bridge is the solution here, though unfortunately a nearly $100 solution. If you otherwise like Caseta, that's certainly an option worth considering instead of the Z-Wave switches; otherwise, as I mentioned, the Inovelli dimmers (not switches) can work without a neutral and should be here soon. I preordered a while back, and mine were just boxed up for shipment a day or two ago.
As mentioned before, segregating problematic bulbs to their own network (a Hue Bridge or, with some effort, another Hubitat) is also a solution. It might be cheaper when you consider the cost of replacing the bulbs or switches. Unfortunately, then you'd have to make sure your second mesh is also strong (but if you have lots of bulbs everywhere, you may not need to worry about that network, and hopefully you have enough repeaters in the other).
Hope you find something that meets your needs, no matter which way you go!
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Jeff,
I started off with the GE Link bulbs on a Smartthings hub about the same time you bought your Links. The bulbs were better priced ($13) than the other options at the time. In the past few weeks I’ve been replacing all of my bulbs with Sengled RGB bulbs specifically because they are not repeaters. If/when needed, I’ll add repeaters that are always powered (such as a switched outlet) that provide a better mesh configuration. I learned this only by reading here on the community.
Where the getChildAndRouteInfo helped me was in the ‘Route Table Entry’ section. I found a non-functioning device was connected via another functioning device. As an example, if your ‘Den floor lamp’ is one of the devices not working, I’d look at the ‘Living room floor lamp’ since it connects to the mesh via it.
Also remember that Zigbee operates in the same frequency as 2.4 GHz wifi and can be susceptible to the noise created by some devices (i.e. fluorescent lights, microwaves, motors, etc.) and the cause could be outside of your mesh. In wifi I’ve seen a device like a florescent ballast start going bad and generating a LOT of RF noise making the radio signal unusable in it’s surrounding area. I now have a handheld spectrum analyzer to help me troubleshoot radio issues like this. But before I bought it, I would use a tablet or a phone (with the cell off) connected to the local wifi and watch the signal strength as I moved about the premises looking for areas that had a quick loss. I’m not suggesting that radio interference is likely the issue in your case, but it’s always a good idea to keep it in mind.
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(TL;DR: Also note those neighbor table entries showing age:7 with outCost:0; that's an indication they aren't useful for routing to the mesh)
The 'Neighbor Table Entry' section contains info from the most recent link status messages received from up to 16 routing nodes that the hub will consider using to transmit to your entire Zigbee mesh (as the 'first hop' of a single or multi-hop route). Even if you have more than 16 routing devices in your mesh, the hub can use only one of the 16 neighbors currently in its table to get to them. So it needs to track the 'best' neighbors to use based on link status exchanges it receives (and the frequency with which they are being updated). You can get an idea of how robust your mesh is (at least for a radius of one hop from the hub) by looking at the age and cost values in these entries.
When the hub gets one of these messages (routing nodes send them on a regular basis like a heartbeat, even if they have no other traffic-- broadcast every 2 seconds until a bi-directional link is established, then every 16 seconds), the 'age' counter gets reset, otherwise when a reporting interval expires the age field gets incremented. This way the hub can tell when a neighbor's entry is 'stale' should it go offline or possibly its transmissions fail due to interference or network congestion. New entries start at age 0 (and have a 'probation' period where they are allowed a few intervals to provide a cost metric; if they age past three without doing so, their outCost gets set to '0'-- a signal to the hub that they aren't playing along and won't be useful nodes for routing).
Established neighbor table entries get their age counter reset to 3 each time they exchange a message with the hub-- you can see this happen if you refresh the ChildandRouteInfo page. If you see the age increment past 6, that threshold is an indication to not use that 'stale' neighbor anymore... and its outCost gets set to 0; Normally low cost routes are better but 0 is a flag to not use that neighbor for routing. Instead the hub must use a multi-hop route through one of the other neighbors in its table (that hopefully will have the 'stale neighbor' as a viable entry in its own neighbor table-- otherwise the stale neighbor and its child devices may be stranded).
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Excellent info. Post bookmarked!
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Bill,
OK. After replacing the obviously bad Link lamp this morning, I'm still having groups of lamps dropping out. I just tried to add back my 9 chandelier lamps, and when I did so that knocked out the bathroom lamps and the bedroom lamps. Having been unable to find any zigbee in-wall outlets, I just ordered a couple of Sylvania zigbee plug in switched outlets, to use as repeaters, and ordered a bunch of Sengled- and Sylvania Smart lamps and, next week, I'll bite the bullet, haul up my foldable ladder to bridge the hole, and replace all 9 lamps in the chandelier, at least. Being seventy two and teetering on a 2x8 laid across the horizontal surface of the foldable ladder isn't terribly safe, so as I did when I installed the Link lamps in 2014, I will enlist the help of a friend. What a pain! Thanks again, Jeff
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Jeff,
One of the things I didn't mention, as it didn't occur to me when posting, is that I've had 3 of 13 GE Link bulbs (that were all purchased at the same time) go bad in the last 2 months. 2 had intermittent issues coming on after years of reliable service on a Smartthings hub and would need to be reset by flipping off the manual light switch for a little while and the last one was misbehaving as a repeater. I'm wondering if the Link bulbs are reaching a point to where they are failing in general?
Note - the first 2 GE Link bulbs failed while still on Smartthings so I'm sure it was unrelated to my recent switch to Habitat.
I've only had three out of about fifty go bad over the years, myself, but I expect you're right that they're just wearing out, possibly due to the condensation issue. Have you seen that, incidentally? I actually saw the first droplets in a Link lamp back in 2014, reported it to Wink, and they told me it was a known issue but not a worry as the guts were potted and waterproof. I have only two Sengled Element four-packs on order and will replace eight of the nine lamps in the chandelier, and replace the ninth with one of the Sylvania Smarts (Osram Lightify, rebranded) on order, just in case a repeater in the fixture would be advantageous. They're all 2700° K. warm white, and all 800 lumens, so there shouldn't be any visible difference. The only issue I'm going to have is that one of the hand-blown Lalique glass shades has an opening which is a bit small, so I had to remove the globe from one of the original Links to get the shade to fit, and I'll have to do the same with one of the Sengleds, I guess. I was wary of Sengled, as I said in the original post, as they're not repeaters, but I've had not one problem with any of the four I already have, so I think they'll do just fine as long as I keep a sprinkling of repeaters scattered around in strategic locations.
Jeff
I might suggest that the 9-lamp chandelier may not be a good use-case for smart bulbs, if your main requirement is dimming. I would consider just choosing a nice A19 dimmable LED of your preferred temperature, and control them all with a single in-wall smart dimmer. If color or CT is a requirement, then I guess smart bulbs is your only option. But 9 individually controllable bulbs, they are going to get out of sync at some point, and that would just look...wrong.
Plus getting up there to swap them out is, as you have noted, something you really only want to do once.
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Jeff,
I'd not seen moisture in a bulb until you posted a photo in this thread. 1 of my GE Link bulbs was even outside on the ceiling of the front porch and it's never had that issue.
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Jon,
In 2014, it was my only good option, and the installation of those nine Link lamps was not for the sake of home automation but, rather, because I wanted to get rid of nine inaccessible 60-watt incandescent bulbs and replace them with something more efficient and long-lasting. The fact that wink offered a hub and two lamps for $30 was a pretty good incentive, as was the $13 per lamp price, which was lower than any dimmable dumb LED lamp on the market at the time. Plus, all of my light switch boxes have only series loops and no neutral wire as the house was built in 1900, and Lutron hadn't introduced the cassetta line yet. And remember that, in the Wink system, after the bugs were ironed out, my setup was stable. In any case, I may not have to change them out after all as I have a new hypothesis. Today, I replaced one of the old Link lamps in a sconce downstairs which had clearly failed hard with a new Link lamp, as I have a number of unused backups. I then went around and factory reset every single lamp which had become unresponsive, which was three in the living room, two in the front hall, one in the den, seven in the kitchen, three in the pantry, two in the bathroom, four in the master bedroom, and nine in the chandelier. All were detected properly under their old identities and with their chosen properties but, by the end of the day, all of them had gone offline again except for the one that I replaced in that front hall sconce. Tomorrow, I'm going to take one group, The kitchen, perhaps, and delete them all from HE, factory reset them, add them as new, and see how long they remain controllable. If they do, I'm going to assume that there is a problem with Zigbee mesh management in the hub software which affects mainly Link lamps. In that case, I'll go around and do this for all of the lights which keep dropping out. I'll report back when I'm done with the experiment.
Jeff
The Wink hub launched with support for Lutron. The Clear Connect radio was built in.
We must remember that Wink partnered with GE and Home Depot at launch. I will guess that GE and Wink spent a great deal of time making the Link bulbs "work" with the Wink hub. When you have a close relationship you can do all sorts of special things to force something to work that would otherwise be unusable. GE abandoned Link bulbs fairly quickly and I think for good reason.
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Another option, is to use a second HE hub dedicated just to lamps. I have done this with the over abundance of OSRAM lamps and strips that I have. They are on their own hub, and can repeat for each other, and work very well. This option is much less expensive than replacing lamps or switches / dimmers. I use HubConnect to share the lamps to my main hub.
I only have lamps for my ZigBee and 3 different types of buttons + a XBEE so my only repeaters are the lamps and if a button event gets missed I'm not that fussed at the moment. But I still have drop outs but only with the 4 Philips hue lamps I have (rest are osram) when this happens a shut down of the hub wait for a minute or so and power back up seems to correct them.
I have a 9 bulb chandelier with Sylvania rgbw bulbs. With zigbee group messaging it turns on/off/dims and changes color just as smooth as using a dimmer with regular bulbs. I will admit it is 6 feet from the hub.
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Actually, GE's involvement was a $50 million investment. The development and manufacturing were the responsibility of Quirky. Whatever you I think might be a good reason, these lamps worked fine for over five years.
Alas, the dropouts continue, and following the same pattern. My current hunch is that mesh communication has little or nothing to do with this issue. Right now, my HE C-5 is in the living room. I will now move it upstairs to the master bedroom where four of The chronic dropout lamps reside and see if that increases the stability of at least their connection. If it doesn't, I will continue to assume that the problem has something to do with Hubitat vs. Link lamps, specifically. I'm sorely tempted to unplug the HE and plug in the Wink hub to see if the latter can deal with the mesh as well as it used to. I still want to migrate to HE, but let's just say my enthusiasm is starting to wear thin.
The lamps did work well when connected with the Wink hub. They don't work as well when they don't have a Wink hub to connect to. I abandoned Wink in 2015 but still have a couple of Link bulbs connected to a Hue bridge. They fall off quite regularly and so I have them in places that aren't critical. The rest are in a drawer with other unuseful devices,
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