Cree bulbs not recognized anymore and showing offline for some bulbs

Hi everyone,

New to SmartThings and IoT in general. I had my Cree Connected bulbs connected for a short while. It was a pain had to do it one at a time on the socket closest to my Samsung hub - STH-ETH-250.

I’m not sure if this is related, but I changed my Wi-Fi password recently but don’t know if the problem existed prior to that. I already had issues where some bulbs are reporting to be offline in the Samsung Android app (newer version, not classic) even though I can turn them on using Alexa. Should the app display the correct status? I even selected the bulb(s) and it says disconnected. Can’t control it via the app at all.

Also should my bulbs suddenly lose connection? I don’t mind resetting them and adding them back but if it keeps occurring, it will be a pain. I tried repairing z-wave network. Seems to have corrected some bulbs but messed up others.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Still new too all of this.

Thanks.

Hi Kevin - welcome to the ST community. I’m much more a n00b than many here, so I expect you’ll get some more helpful responses than mine. That having been said, I’ve had some similar headaches to yours and thought I’d try to weigh in. First off, Cree bulbs speak Zigbee, not Z-Wave, so there’s that. They also seem to be a little less robust than some competitors (I run a mix of Cree, LIFX and Samsung and the Cree bulbs tend to be more finicky than the others). My first suspicion would be WiFi - at least, that’s what the culprit has turned out to be for me. Have you changed anything radio related recently? Maybe added a cordless phone or moved your WiFi router or added more IoT gear? (Or maybe your neighbor(s) have added something that’s stepping on your WiFi signal?) Maybe try changing the channel on your router and see if it helps. If you do find the Cree bulbs are somehow at fault, I’d reach out to them - my experience with their customer service was beyond excellent - I had a power fluctuation during a storm last winter that sent several of my Cree bulbs into a questionable state - I reached out to Cree for help and they replaced them all with no argument or hassle whatsoever. Great service.

Thanks for the reply. There’s nothing new that was added recently in my house at least. I’ll try changing the channel to see if it helps and will reach out to Cree if all else fails.