I have a bunch of OSRAM Lightify RGBW bulbs and dimming switches. I’m using adamoutler’s Lightify Dimming Switch Zigbee device handler, which is associated with the bulbs by their device network IDs. Every few days, one or two of the bulbs randomly changes its ID, which means I can still control the bulb via the SmartThings app but not via the physical switch (until I log into the IDE and update the network ID, losing wife approval points each time). I’ve confirmed it’s the bulb whose ID changes, not the ID in the device handler, because I saved all the device info in the IDE and compared it after it happened again. Has anyone else experienced this before? Any recommendations?
Very strange, and I’m sure very frustrating.
I suggest you ask your question in the thread where you got the device type handler, maybe people there will have an idea.
I wouldn’t know where to start on an issue about bulbs changing IDs. They are likely disconnecting and reconnecting but why?
Isn’t the ZigBee ID different than the device network ID? The one that keeps changing is the 4-digit hexadecimal ID.
1 Like
Yes it is. That does happen from time to time. It’s happened to me twice in a year with 18 bulbs.
1 Like
I was thinking about modifying the device handler to access the bulbs by ZigBee ID but it looks like the commands are sent in the form “st cmd 0x networkID…” so that’s not an option. I guess the solution is to either prevent the bulbs from changing their network IDs or create some automatic process that periodically scans the bulbs and updates the dimmers accordingly.
I read that ZigBee devices should be added to the network starting with the devices closest to the hub and moving outward. Unfortunately, I read this after I had already added everything in a less than optimal order. Do you think this would cause devices to momentarily go offline and reconnect, acquiring a different network ID? I would redo the mesh network if not for the fact that I have a fairly complex amount of automation involved and I don’t want to risk breaking that now. Is there a function similar to the Repair Z-Wave Network utility?
First, I apologize for any confusion about the two different types of IDs. I use text to speech technology and I wasn’t listening as closely as I should’ve been. My bad.
As far as the network, it’s true that the best advice for initial setup is moving outwards. You can heal the network at any time, however, and once you’ve fixed it once it should be all right until you add or relocate another device.
As you mentioned, for Z wave you update all the address tables by running the Z wave repair utility.
For zigbee, just take the hub off power (including removing any batteries) and leave it off power for at least 15 minutes while leaving all of your other zigbee devices on power.
This will cause the other devices to go into “panic mode” when they can’t find the hub.
Then when you put the hub back on power all of the other devices will rebuild their individual neighbor tables.
This can take a little while, so you may not see efficiency improvements until the next day. 
After repairing both the Z-Wave and ZigBee networks, the device network IDs still continue to change randomly. For now, I think my solution will have to be to have the physical switch operate a virtual bulb that groups the real ones, since the virtual bulbs’ IDs don’t change. This means lighting control will depend on cloud connectivity, which I was hoping to avoid, but at this point my internet connection’s uptime is far more consistent than the device network IDs.
Oh wait, I just remembered the physical switch’s device handler requires the devices it controls to have endpoint IDs, which the virtual bulbs do not have. I guess I’ll have to use Smart Lighting automations.
Did you ever find a solution to this problem? I’m having the exact same issue. changing ID’s on the bulbs every few days causes them to not work with the switch.
I moved all the bulbs back to the Lightify gateway where they work consistently and now all my automation is done on a computer running Home Assistant. I just use the SmartThings hub as an interface to control miscellaneous Zigbee/Z-Wave devices. It took a bit of reading and trial and error but I am much happier handling all the logic with Home Assistant, especially with the addition of AppDaemon. Very little of my setup is dependent on the cloud, it’s easier to debug issues and manage the config in version control, and I can integrate it with just about anything.
1 Like