Hubitat is a great platform. Its not perfect, but it has a lot of positives. I have both Hubitat and ST.
Have you published a list of your devices you have on your Zigbee network? Both routing (line powered) and sleepy (battery) devices.
Are all your Zigbee devices going offline at the same time? If so, when this happens is your Zigbee radio details on the IDE for your Hub showing that its offline?
If only some of your Zigbee devices, is it the same ones repeatedly? I’m convinced for this situation there is a routing device that is either faulty or its the device that’s not compatible with the recent versions of firmware. If a powered routing device<->hub goes offline or wonky, it would stop repeating messages for all the child devices under it, and if the connection between the device and the wonky routing device is still responding, the child devices under its control won’t go looking for a new parent.
I have NONE of the Zigbee issues others have been reporting, so its puzzling what the issue is.
The devices that go offline are random almost always Smartthings branded, Securify Peanut Plugs, and Sengled bulbs all Zigbee, they go offline randomly in time and number, wired and battery powered alike, but the same devices go offline alternatingly. They are listed as OFFLINE on the IDE. Could be routing, that would make sense. They used to be the most reliable devices I had until the recent firmware updates 45.9 & 45.11
I use Ikea and Sengled Smart bulbs around our house.
I have either Ikea or Sonoff smart plugs scattered about the house as well, which act as repeaters and ensure the zigbee mesh is strong on both floors of our house (my SmartThings and Hubitat hubs are on the upper level in the center of the house).
I’ve not had any issues with either brand of bulbs during the recent upgrades (I’m part of the beta program, so I get the updates before they rolled out to the general public).
I have approx 140 devices with Smartthings. The bulbs that are failing (3 Sengleds) I use as guide and indicator lights, not for lightning (for example when somebody is in the front porch, garage doors are open, etc, different colors turn on, on a dedicated bulb socket). My house lights are controlled via Lutron wall switches so no need for smart bulbs for lightning. These are the only smart bulbs I use; everything else are plugs, motion sensors, valves, water sensors, open/close, temp sensors, etc. I would say my ZigBee network has to be strong, since I build it up starting from the basement where the hub is, with 2-3 wired ZigBee devices (also repeaters) per room and no more than 5-10 feet apart from the next ZigBee device.
I should also add everything was working perfectly for the last 3+ years. Very reliable until few weeks ago.
Since the release notes for the most recent platform update say specifically that they include a hot fix for a platform issue with zigbee from the previous release, I would say the problems people have been reporting are not just repeater issues.
Identified - Some users may experience issues with ZigBee functionality since our last hub firmware update. We are currently preparing a firmware release to resolve the issue, but in the meantime users can reboot their hubs to temporarily regain ZigBee functionality.
I’m glad to hear that you haven’t had any problems, but there was an acknowledged architecture issue with Zigbee recently that did affect a number of customers.
Since the update that was supposed to fix that Zigbee problem was released (the one covered by this thread), some customers who were previously affected said that not only were the problems not solved, in some cases they had gotten worse. So the current open question is whether that is also an architecture issue, or whether something else is going on for those individual customers.
We don’t know your house, so we have no idea how many rooms you mean. 2? 20?
I would say a good rule of thumb for repeaters is 1 for every 4-6 devices in a room. Some repeaters are better than others. For instance, the IKEA repeaters can only handle 6 child devices max due to limited memory.
The guys on the Inovelli forums are having issues on the current firmware for Blue 2-1 switches when mixed with Sengled bulbs. If the switch is acting as the nearby router, the bulbs keep falling off. Switching to another brand of bulb solves the issue. Inovelli is on the case and will fix the issue soon, just thought that was interesting note on Sengled. Perhaps they are more sensitive to timing than other brands.
I personally have 6+ Sengled Zigbee bulbs and have not had an issue on them on ST.
My problems seem to be fixed. Since Saturday the Ikea button, my Sharptools rules for me leaving, work flawless again.
Weird thing about this was, my lighting in my house and relevant automations all worked. Only the devices and rules I had for my garage in my backyard stopped working. So I guess it might have been a routing issue, but since I changed to Zigbee at the start of this year and added repeaters in my backyard I didn’t have a single issue. Since it’s all fine again now, I don’t think it’s a repeater device issue that occurred. Don’t know if there was another update last Saturday, but either way since then all issues seem te be resolved.
Is that for the repeater product ikea sells or used to sell (seems some regions have a redesigned version, others not available) or does that apply to the outlets as well?
I can’t find my reference. I remember noting it because I have the Ikea plug in outlets. But it made sense because their products were really just to support their blinds and such.
It’s up to each manufacturer how many zigbee children a specific repeater can adopt. Since it requires more memory for more children, many limit the number. 4 to 6 is typical for a smart plug. I’ve seen as few as 3. Some, like the original SmartThings brand smart plug, can handle 7. The newer model handles 12, IIRC. Hubs themselves are typically 32 or 64 for direct adoption. So it just varies a lot.
The device that Ikea calls “repeater,” as opposed to their smart plugs, is sold for use with their blinds. It has a different issue: it’s a lower transmission power than their other devices. No idea why, but it tends to have a more limited range as well as supporting only a few children.
That confirms my previous experience with Ikea Tradfri plugs, they do fail from time to time compared to other brands. I eventually replaced them but I think for the price its fine specially if they are used for minor tasks.
It is interesting that you say that because I came across another forum yesterday (I can’t remember which one) where the received opinion was that IKEA Outlets were rather poor repeaters and the IKEA Repeater was a really good piece of kit and the one to go for. Users have reported it handling as many as 14 children. There may, of course, be more than one version out there.
I sent my information a few minutes ago and provided access. I received a confirmation email, too.
My problem is not as bad as others with my hub going offline zero to two times a day the past couple months. My log in my iPhone ST app only goes back to Monday Nov 14, so there isn’t much information there.
Fortunately for me, it’s mainly been an annoyance and I haven’t seen any automations fail or random activations of devices happen. But the instability is concerning.
I am also experiencing the same problems, having to restart the hub 2 to 4 times a day. I reset the hub from scratch this week. It didn’t solve the problem. The problems still persist. The Hub is crashing, blue light offline and routines and automations are delayed or not executed. Support needs to improve the Hub memory issue. Optimize Hub Memory . Show the devices that are hurting the hub’s performance. Smartthings needs to improve on this. Hub memory full or nearly full need to fix this and also optimize hub memory so it stops crashing.
Is this maybe the reason my Ver2 Hub has been disconnections and reconnecting multiple time s a day? Just started this recently, have been using it with the same devices for over a year with no real issues, now all of the sudden I’m having many disconnected and reconnects per day.
I have auto update turned on.
Yes, very likely that’s the reason. It’s been like this for almost a month now. They are still “monitoring” the situation.
Personally I just got a Hubitat Elevation Hub running in parallel but independent, to transfer some “critical” devices from ST and try to mitigate the instability of my ST automations. The UI is not as polished as ST (looks like menus from the 90’s) but cosmetics apart, so far it is reliable, fast and has many more options to tinker with. I see a lot of potential there.
Thanks for the reply, glad to know not just a hardware issue… fingers crossed on either a roll back or the bugs patched.
I hate to think what it would be like changing hubs with 24 devices with multiple different brands.
This is becoming much. My hub has a solid green light. Worked amazing for 4 years. Last 7 days what a mess. Thing going offline and online by themselves. Cant turn lights on or off. Rules dont work. Internet is up and sooid evrything else works in the house tv/computers/phone but this hub is just dead and when it does work its it and miss. I live in Toronto. Does anyone else know whats going on.
So the current open question is whether that is also an architecture issue, or whether something else is going on for those individual customers. 