Hi All, I’m a Wink user who was shafted a few weeks ago, so I switched everything to Hubitat before Wink let us all know they’re “graciously extending” their advertised as free service for the foreseeable future. Anyway, most things have been smooth for me, but I’ve run into a few glitches.
- I’ve created groups and scenes to come on at night, and when I go to bed I have a group that accounts for all upstairs or all downstairs lights. When I turn the group off (I have it set as a scene in the dashboard so it’s a simple on/off), sometimes not all of the lights turn off. We have a mixture of Zwave and Zigbee GE bulbs - I believe it’s only a few bulbs that sometimes don’t work. I did tick the option to not send group messaging, and that seems to have fixed the problem. I think I changed that option over the last weekend or on Monday.
But that leads to another problem that may or may not be related...
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Yesterday (Wednesday) I noticed that some Zigbee GE Bulbs in my office started randomly turning on. There’s no event listed in the log, and I can generally turn the light off without issue. I had several of those lights turn back on after I turned them off.
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I also added some iris motion sensors on Monday as you all recommended in different places in these forums and they’ve been totally wonky. Disconnect rather easily and not very reliable, so I don’t have any motion rules set up with them yet.
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I ordered a Zigbee repeater switch to possibly help with all of this?
I thought I’d reach out to you all and get your thoughts as to what may be causing this. I am positive there are no automations behind the scenes causing lights to turn on as I don’t have many automations created yet... still trying to get a handle on the whole system before I add that stuff.
Thanks for whatever advice you can offer!
Gratefully,
Seth
Hey Seth. Welcome to the community. I've had this with some bulbs in the past as well. Two things can cause this. The first is the wrong driver. Unless there is a specific driver for the bulb it's usually the generic. Might want to double check the driver for the bulbs.
Since you mentioned that your iris motions are falling off line, though, I wonder if it's just a mesh issue. Classic sign that you might need a few repeaters around there. The second thing. If you have any powered zigbee mains that you can move over, that would be optimal.
Also there are to documents that are helpful.
https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=How_to_Build_a_Solid_Zigbee_Mesh
https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=How_to_Build_a_Solid_Z-Wave_Mesh
Hope this helps. I'm confident you'll be happy with Hubitat once you get migrated. Just hang in there. The rabbit hole is calling.
I had to agree with @april.brandt ...she knows her stuff. Adding some repeaters will help tremendously. Also do you know what channel your zigbee is setup on? Do you have any WiFi or other devices that use the 2.4GHz range?
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This document might be particularly helpful, specifically the note about Zigbee bulbs at the end. April can tell you all about Cree bulbs, but I'm pretty sure the GE bulbs are also high on the same "naughty list." There isn't a good solution here besides replacing the bulbs or keeping them on a separate network (a Hue Bridge or second Hubitat are two things that would work, though with the Cree bulbs I still had bad luck with the second Hubitat--Hue works great). If the cause, this would only explain the Zigbee device issues, but it's definitely worth knowing.
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I too will agree with @april.brandt, she is the Queen of the mesh. I also have 2 of the old GE-Link bulbs which will never be connected to my system again, mine are the really old ones which came with the original Wink Hub when it was released. They have always been a bit flaky with Wink, Smartthings and now Hubitat. When your repeater arrives and you get it all installed, there might not be an instant 100% correction of all of your issues. The ZigBee mesh will take time to align or heal or whatever the correct term is. You can turn off the ZigBee radio for 30 minutes to help get your repeaters found by the child devices. After everything is in place the best advice I have, is to run the getChildAndRouteInfo one time just to see if all of your repeaters are recognized and then don’t run it again for a few days or even a week. The mesh takes time.
This is a good idea, but I don't recommend turning off the radio. I recommend turning off the hub. The reason is while that radio is off, you have errors screaming at you that your radio is not found. The reasoning is to also give your hub a refresh when doing this. So, upon booting up again, your database gets checked, and integrity is confirmed heading off any problems there. AND your hub isn't sitting and processing the errors of a lost zigbee radio. It's a win win. Nothing is going to really work well with the radio off anyway, so to head off any problems that may arise, I FEEL it's best to turn off the hub and get a fresh start to build that zigbee mesh. It's not wrong to turn it off. I just feel like you're inviting trouble to your doorstep when you could take that opportunity to freshen the database as well as the zigbee mesh. That's the only thing I'd change about the instructions.
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Thanks, everyone. I ended up removing the batteries from the motion sensors, and that seems to have stopped the lights from going haywire. Whether it's related or not I don't know. I ordered a repeater, so we'll see what happens. I'll post an update after I get it connected. I really appreciate all of the support and advice here!
My Zigbee is channel 20, and we do have a baby monitor and cordless telephones.
Wait ..
what? what device models do you have? There ARE some known issues with certain switches and bulbs. Be specific.
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He doesn’t mention which version. Hopefully V2, not V1 or 3. I’ve not had a single problem with any of my V2 sensors, but all of my lights are on their own HE by themselves.
Yah and remember there were some bulbs that would flash off and on if they had the wrong driver? Happened to me. I wonder if that's the issue? Certainly not the motion sensors. More likely the driver, but I never got a response from him. Oh well. Party at Seth's house, the lights are strobin'.
The Iris V3 are great, I have a dozen or so of them. But yea, avoid the V1.
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I believe I got the v3 Iris sensors: IL07 (in Hubitat it says 1117-S). The bulbs are GE Link Light Bulbs I bought from Home Depot with the Wink Hub 1. Sorry for the delay in responding - I have 3 little kids and a puppy - hands are pretty full.
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Sounds like the bulbs are probably the troublesome ones which @nibyak was referring. I would suggest replacing them with Sengled, or going with in-wall dimmers. Jasco just released new Zigbee 3.0 dimmers and switches which are being sold under the “Enbrighten” name. They will also act as repeaters for your other Zigbee devices.
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Yeah, the problem is I've invested quite a lot of money in bulbs. Plus our switches and plates are all almond instead of white, so finding switches has proven to be frustrating and more expensive. I'll see what the repeater does when I get it setup tomorrow.
I just changed the plates. They’re cheap.
The repeaters are unlikely to help as by the sounds of it you have the worse lamps going. The only way to keep them is the move them to a separate hub or hue bridge and isolated them. Then put repeaters on you other hub for your end devices.
Wink had issues with theses lamps too, but they made work around's that effected the rest of the system to get them working. That's not going to happen on hubitat and I'm glad for it, they don't make fixes for rubbish products that will reduce the power of HE or make everyone's elses system unstable.
If you want to continue using them then you must isolated them on their own mesh network so that they can't interfere with the rest of your system. Bad lamps have poor repeater's and small memory's so they can't handle anything other than their own message's by isolating them gives them the best chance of working.
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Since I’m new to all of this with HE, can you tell me if I were to get a Hue hub, could the Link bulbs work with Hue bulbs simultaneously, or would that also create issues. So far the Link bulbs have worked 95% of the time with other Zigbee devices, but I’m having issues with the motions sensors, and I’d like to try to get those working.
Yes, the bulbs seem to have no problems repeating for other bulbs. It’s when you mix in an end device like a motion or contact sensor. Then the bulbs are a problem.
I often see “refurbished” Hue hub for around $50 on Amazon. The Hue Integration with Hubitat is very good. It pretty well acts like the bulbs are directly connected, even though they’re on another bridge.
Thanks; I really appreciate the advice!
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