Zigbee issues

I never once have had any of my Iris motion or contact sensors drop. Apparently the Sylvania bulbs repeat fine for them. I was having trouble with my bulbs dropping off, which may have been due to weaker zigbee signal and 20 or so Hue on the Hue bridge in the middle of the house that created a gap in repeaters. I ended up placing most of the repeaters upstairs, since the lights are in the ceiling I figure theyā€™re closer.

Nameā€™s Robert :wink:

2 Likes

@azz710

Very long thread to parse through and I apologize in advance if I missed some important information. Youā€™re getting a lot of advice, and it is probably confusing, and some of it may be conflicting. I completely understand how your patience is wearing thin at this point. A couple of truths youā€™ll simply need to come to grips with.

  1. GE Link lights are not reliable
  2. The antenna inside a Wink hub is physically larger than the antenna inside a Hubitat Elevation hub.
  3. Having 50 lights with no mains powered repeaters other than light bulbs is a problem if every bulb canā€™t get a strong signal back to the coordinator (hub). The limit for Zigbee direct to the coordinator is 32 on HE.
  4. Zigbee meshes automatically adjust routes over time. You must wait for it to stabilize before making changes. Moving the hub before itā€™s had a chance to do that is going to throw a wrench in the works.
  5. If youā€™re looking for a good Zigbee outlet, Sinope is going to have them available soon. All the other current Sinope products are officially compatible, and you should expect these to be too.
  6. When looking for compatible products, first consult the compatible devices list here. You can sort by protocol and device type to help find what youā€™re looking for.
3 Likes

OK, but they were reliable with the Wink hub, Wink 2 hub and Link hub. Meanwhile, despite the conventional wisdom, after I moved the HE C-5 upstairs, the entire mesh started working properly, the kitchen included (though I didn't try to add back the nine lamps in the problematic chandelier). Now, the same groups of lamps are becoming unresponsive as before. In other words, as the mesh connections matured, things got worse, not better. The smart plugs I plan to use as repeaters arrive on Monday, and I'll report back then unless I have some sort of breakthrough in the meantime. Yes, I know all about the compatibility list but, remember, I've had this set-up since August, 2014. And I did have non-lamp repeaters of a sort, in the form of several Quirky/GE Outlink outlets but, of course, they're not supported by Hubitat, alas. I'll check-out Sinope as you say. As for wrenches, since I was happy with Wink, my wrench was when Flextronics sold the company to will.i.am, a hip hop artist from LA, who has let the platform die. Both platforms have their plusses and minuses, which is natural, but as Iā€™ve written hundreds of thousands of lines of code in IBM mainframe Assembly Language, I keep finding myself itching to do this myself. Ah, well.

Did I call you Bert?

My GE Link lights were not reliable for me years ago when I used them with Wink. I clearly remember waking up at 2am with the lights on full bright and 0 control of them. The 2nd time happened...my partner was ready to murder me so...

I had ~12 GE Links with Wink Hub 1. Their reliability was off-and-on. They would be fine for months, and then all of sudden, half of them would stop responding to commands.

After several reset cycles, I replaced them with non-smart Philips LED bulbs and Caseta in-wall dimmers.

1 Like

That's me. :laughing: (I kind of did this to myself with this username...)

As for the bulbs, most Zigbee bulbs are indeed bad repeaters--you've read a lot about it in this thread, but you can find countless others on both this forum and others. It's possible other Zigbee controllers are able to do some magic to make them behave better, but I've heard people who know a lot more than I ever will say they don't see how that is possible. It may be different from what you've seen on other platforms, but it's definitely the reality here--and on many others.

If you're happy keeping them on Wink, that's fine; but if you're looking to stay on Hubitat (or really most comparable platforms), segregating them onto a separate network with something like a different Hubitat hub or a Hue Bridge (cheaper and a bit easier to set up) are two good options if you don't feel like using switches instead (not a bad idea if you don't need bulbs for color control, lack of neutrals, etc.). Unfortunate perhaps, but just the way it is. :confused: I think you're aware of all the other options at this point.

3 Likes

You addressed Robert as Bert in an opening to one of your earlier posts. Honest mistake given his username. :wink:

1 Like

These appear to be wifi outlets, not zigbee. The manual for these states:
A Wi-FiĀ® network connection with a router using WPA-PSK security. No actual mention of wireless protocol other than that. Only zigbee outlets and other continuously powered zigbee devices act as repeaters.

I had some Quirky Outlinks they were Zigbee and always fell off the network. But I never had a Wink maybe there was a firmware update to fix some issues. The Quirky stuff was just bad in my experience. Link Bulbs, Tapt, and Outlinks.

2 Likes

As @azz710 states, they're definitely zigbee. And truly horrible repeaters. In fact, they themselves fall off the network regularly. When I switched from Wink to Hubitat, I tossed the three I had, and replaced them with Securifi Peanuts.

I have two zigbee networks. One with Lightify bulbs, Sengled bulbs, a LeakSmart Valve, 5 Peanuts, 1 Iris outlet, and 2 Samsung SmartThings outlets. It has been rock stable. The second zigbee network has Ikea Tradfri outlets/repeaters (total of 8) and ~30 Xiaomi Aqara sensors. Also rock stable.

Iā€™m currently planning to get a second HE for just switches, repeaters, motion sensors, and contact sensors. Then the Sylvania bulbs can duke it out on the main hub. Or vise versa, havenā€™t decided yet. I have about 50 Sylvania rgbw bulbs (assortment of recessed, BR30, and A-19) and 55 zigbee end devices, plus the z-wave and Hue integrated stuff. I donā€™t have problems with dropped devices, just not as fast as it should be and have RM rebooting it daily. Plus Iā€™m running out of things to tinker with, sooo

Ah. The second UserID threw me off

Nope, they're Zigbee. GE makes WiFi and Z-Wave outlets, but these Outlinks were Quirky products, simply using the GE name.

1 Like

I'm surprised that they won't join to the hub. They won't join as a device?

1 Like

The Outlinks were a poor product (or maybe the firmware was crap) - even with Wink Hubs. Mine used to fall off the mesh routinely.

oh well, never mind then.

Also, Quirky went out of the "IoT" business in June 2015, when Wink was sold to Flextronics in lieu of $15 million that Quirky owed Flextronics. All the GE/Quirky products (and pure Quirky products) were orphaned at that time and haven't had firmware updates etc.

This included:

  1. GE/Quirky Outlink outlets
  2. Quirky Tapt switches
  3. GE/Quirky Link bulbs
  4. Quirky Overflow leak sensors
  5. Quirky Tripper contact sensors

Wink had patches dating back to Wink Hub 1 to deal with firmware/protocol inadequacies. This is why the Quirky and GE/Quirky products tend to not work reliably with other zigbee hubs.

It's not a pleasant reality to deal with, as I encountered and @azz710 did . And the tendency is to blame the new hub, but knowing a little bit of history can place some of this in perspective. These products date back to 2014, when not everything that was supposed to be ZHA 1.2 compliant, was in fact, truly compliant.

3 Likes

Perhaps the name gives us a clue to the companies problems

1 Like