I'm curious about when and where to use Zigbee light group communication. Scenario:
Living room has nine lights named exactly as you would imagine, LR NW, LR N, LR NE... you get the idea.
Sometimes I want to talk to all of them: So I have a group named LR All with all 9 lights. Usually when we want to tune colors, most of our scenes do the lighting in layers so LR North is 3 lights, LR Center is 3 lights, you get the idea.
Does Zigbee have a problem with a light being in two different light groups? Is stacking the groups the right way? For example, right now LR All is a group of the LR North, LR Center, LR South groups...
What's the best practice here? What's most effective? Am I overlooking an even better config?
I've tried a few different ways and while they all usually work, none of them seem to be ideal.
These are Sylvania Smart+ bulbs FYI, ranging from 4 feet to the hub to about 14 feet, 5 feet away from each other in a grid.
I would recommend updating the firmware on them if you haven't. It made a big difference in reliability for me, and the lightify gateway is usually about $15 on Amazon.
I have a lot of light groups like you have described and no issues.
Before I dive in: I assume bulbs themselves have some limit to the number of groups they can be in, but I'm not sure what the maximum number of "entries" in their group table (or however this is stored) is. For Zigbee bulbs, this is usually how it works--if you have group broadcasting enabled, Hubitat tells the bulb itself that it's in a certain group, then sends one command that all those bulbs should hear and obey. Again, I assume a bulb can only store so many IDs, but I'm guessing that limit is much larger than you would run into in the real world (I've never gone beyond about 3 or 4 myself; I'd be surprised if the limit were not at least several times this).
With this in mind, my advice for Zigbee groups would be to avoid "nesting" them. If you have bulbs A and B that you want to be in Group 1 and you also have some Group 2 that includes A, B, and some other bulbs C and D, I'd recommend individually selecting bulbs A, B, C, and D for Group 2 rather than selecting Group 1 plus C and D. The reasoning: if you individually select all the Zigbee bulbs, Hubitat can create a group for them (a Group 2 device that would send one group broadcast to all these bulbs). If you have a group selected inside a group, it will group the "raw" Zigbee devices that it can (C and D) but will then have to send a separate command to the Group 1 device, which it turns out is also a Zigbee group that will send its own message. That's two commands instead of one; the problem would obviously get bigger with more nesting (this particular example probably isn't enough to be problematic, but Zigbee bulbs on Hubitat are so finnicky for me I'd sacrifice a few clicks to avoid this risk regardless).
I actually did do this for my All Downstairs Lights group. Around 40 zigbee bulbs in the group, plus dimmers and switches all shut off within 1-2 seconds. btw, the bulbs transition time is set to 1.5 seconds, because for whatever reason they seem to be more reliable with the longer transition and are much easier to dim with a button controller.
Is there a way to check the firmware version from Hubitat? The reason I ask is that these are only about 18 months old and when I got them I actually called in and confirmed the firmware version on each of these by serial number and they were the newest version at the time--the version not susceptible to the widely reported relay problems. (reasonable effort given it was nearly $1k in lights and they were being hardwired)
Last I heard there's been zero firmware releases since then... and this business unit doesn't exist any more, so while I don't object to $15 it sounds like it would be a waste.
See my other post where I replied to you on the firmware version#. If you don't have either a smartthings hub or lightify, I'm not sure how to check, sorry
What light are you using? The only one I know of that doesn’t seem to be still available is the recessed high output rgbw. Either way, I have never seen a Sylvania light shipped with anything but the original firmware. The only lights I know of that haven’t had any updates are the ones that say Osram on them instead of Smart+, but those are also the ones that caused mesh issues.
EDIT: I just realized that you probably meant the entity responsible for the cloud implementation. For whatever reason, probably due to commercial application, the Lightify gateway and cloud remained in Osram control after spinning off the consumer light division (LEDvance). LEDvance is still producing lights and bringing new products to market, but do not have ownership of the cloud implementation. It is possible to download the bulb firmware from their website and someone else here may know another way to install it, but probably not for $15. I have brand new Flex XL light strips, recessed lights, and A19 rgbws that still came with firmware that is 3 or 4 years old, so I wouldn’t expect your lights to be different.