Have you checked to see that your devices and automations are running locally? Or are you just assuming since its all ‘stock st’ that they are running locally? Because even stock stuff and things within the market place doesnt always run locally. Thats why its such a joke.
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The Cree Bulb device handler does not run locally, even on the v2 hub. That’s the primary reason I switched to that other device handler. You can see which devices are actually running locally by going to: following links:
https://graph.api.smartthings.com/localDevice/list
I’m pretty sure that the Button Controller SmartApp doesn’t run locally either, but you can check that by going to:
https://graph.api.smartthings.com/localInstalledSmartApp/list
Well that is probably a good question, all I can say is that the IDE shows me a list of devices running locally and all are there but it also says there are 3 pages however when I change to any page it is the exact same list so that is already somewhat suspicious. I just checked the local SmartApps and I am not seeing anything currently but I know I have seen Smart Lighting on there before so not sure why it doesn’t show now. I find it hard to believe that I have nothing running locally unless they recently broke that since I have a lot of stock device handlers and stock SmartApps.
I guess my main point though is that I do not see the same issues as you are reporting and I have not seen anyone else with a v2 hub reporting the same issue so regardless of whether it is running locally or not something seems to be different. I will note that I use my Amazon Echo to control my lights more than automation, especially on the fixtures where the Cree bulbs are but I do have 1 sunset automation and it works 90% of the time. This is a routine so I would definitely expect that to run locally.
I’d be really surprised if all your Cree Bulbs are showing up on that local device list. I also have 3 pages and they all show the same list, but if I change my Cree bulbs to the default device handler, they drop off the list.
If nothing is showing on your local app list, you probably don’t have anything running locally, but it’s easy enough to test. All you have to do is remove the network cable from your hub and see what still works.
Hey Kevin,
Catching up on things, send me a PM with all the details you can provide and I’ll get this over to engineering to dig through logs.
@slagle should these two pages work? I notice there’s no way to find them through the UI, and there’s some bugs with pagination as well as many of my (90%+) “local” smart apps are not shown. So not sure if someone somehow landed on them and they aren’t supposed to be used or not 
https://graph.api.smartthings.com/localDevice/list1
https://graph.api.smartthings.com/localInstalledSmartApp/list1
If these are supposed to work, I’ll alert support
They are what they are right now. We haven’t surfaced them as a link because they’re not ready.
Cool, thanks Tim… figured i’d ask rather than bother support for a known unsupported page. It’ll be great to have it work 
I’m in a unique situation where I need as much to run locally as possible. I’m out in the country with sat internet (4-5 second round trip time), so cloud based automations aren’t very real time. A page like this will help me see what automations i have that i should consider for moving to local automations.
On an unrelated note… I attempted to move all my Rule Machine rules to local rules, and some of the local run rules were just damn annoying. I had one setup for turning on an exhaust fan when humidity > X, but I’d get push notifications every time it executed (regardless if it turned on the fan). I just want it to happen without a plethora of notices when it evaluates.
Still in the same boat here for the most part. I’ve quit logging cause it got annoying to have to keep the google doc always open. Every time I walk though the house I have partial failures with cree bulbs. I am like so close to trying to sell all these bulbs and go Hue. I dont do all these complicated routines everyone else does so I’m about ready to just go to something that works more relliable. I like lights turning on when I get home, off when I leave, and some timer based stuff. Thats about all I do, and either ST or Cree is failing me. I’d love to know which cause I’ve so far spent about $1600 on all this and it just barely work. Getting very frustrated thats for sure.
I used to energetically recommend ST to people, loved showing off the neat stuff I could see or do, now I always preface it with 'well its having issues right now 
’ Which sucks and I cant recommend it anymore. It went from even considering setting it up for my Dad, to well, jumping ship. At this point I just hope Tim gets something back from the zigbee guys for me… Id just like to know where the problem is, and can I do anything to correct it
Boy, do I hear that! A couple of points on your situation:
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Have you considered moving the Cree bulbs over to the Hue hub/bridge? That works, and it may improve your reliability. Just reset the bulb (1 s on, 2 sec off, three times) and pair it with the Hue hub. I just did it this weekend with 8 (9?) bulbs and that seems to be working better.
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What’s your Zigbee mesh look like? Without something like XCTU, of course, you really can’t know. But, I just got one of the xSticks and that software, did a scan, and was very surprised to find that OSRAM bulbs appear not to repeat. If you’re relying on bulbs to talk to each other, that may not be happening.
I’ll post up more details once I’ve had a chance to do more analysis, but today I found that my “mesh” was the ST hub and a Zigbee outlet in my garage way on the end of the house. 30-odd Zigbee devices (lights and sensors), and just a few were actually talking to more than one node.
I added two more of those Zigbee outlets (picked up 3 for 2 at Lowes last week) and now I’ve got something that looks waaaaay more like a mesh. Most bulbs are connected to at least two and in most cases 3-4 repeaters now.
In theory, anyway, that could have a big impact on the reliability of these things. Might be worth a look for you, too.
@chickwebb everything I’m seeing on the Cree Connected bulbs is that they each act as a Zigbee mesh repeater, it is even in the documentation on Smartthings. Personally, I’m about ready to dump these bulbs and transition to a zwave bulb setup, but unfortunately the ‘best’ alternative I see out there is still twice the cost per bulb of the Cree Connected. What I don’t understand is that I did have a period of time in summer 2015 where my Cree bulbs were working flawlessly without issue, its only towards the end of 2015 through present where I’ve have partial failures and responsiveness issues.
@chickwebb I have done a lot here already. But first point, hue hub/bridge. Well if I have to buy a $200 bridge to get this basic functionality to work, then why do I need ST? I only want/need very basic automation, and gaps could be filled with my recently purchased echo. I do like motion lights now, when they work… But over all I’ve not went down the road of Hue mostly to continue to support openness of ST. If I have to use Hue, I will probably dump most of this.
ZIgbee mesh. Ok heres the thing, I shouldn’t have to be a zigbee pro to make ST work. Beyond that, I have bought now 1 ST smartoutlet and 4 iris smart outlets. I have them dotted almost light of sight around my house. I have 1 floor, mostly open floor plan, and you can line of sight from the hub all the way around my house, minus 1 room which has to go though 1 wall. But this also doesnt explain why 2 bulbs in the same room as the hub, 10 feet away 0 things between them, both exibxit these issues. So if its mesh issues, then why at the point where it should be the strongest still be having issues? Add to that the fact that none of my other zigbee devices have this issue? My motion sensors so far have 0 issues with connectivity, now the cree’s they control thats different. My iris contact sensors work flawlessly. The smartoutlets are 100% reliable. Osram lightify rgbw strips and rgb gardenspots have been I’d say 95-99% reliable.
@reacean comments echo mine. Mid 2015 when I first started this, I had 0 issues. So much so I convinced friends to dump ge link bulbs for cree’s cause of the light quality. Its funny when friends with ge link bulbs saying they are more reliable than the cree’s now.
I would love to see an official statement on what are zigbee repeaters as well. Because the blanket statement of ‘most devices that are plugged in are’ seems not true. I’ve researched this for weeks. It’s all hearsay and conjecture at this point. @chickwebb you are the first I’ve seen say that the osram’s aren’t repeaters. Are you running the basic a19 bulbs or the led strips/gardenspots type of devices that have zigbee control boxes? Some say that the cree’s are repeaters some say not. The most I can find is that line of ‘most devices that are plugged in are’. I may start another thread on this subject to see if we can get something more definite.
At this point I have to guess its the device handler that is the issue. This all worked for a period of time without any hitches. That was when I decided to go deeper down the rabbit hole. Once I saw the basic functionality working with 2-3 bulbs.
This right here is why I keep thinking the device handler. Say I hit ‘good night’ routine. This does 2 things. Put home in night mode, and turns off all devices. Zwave no issues. Smart outlets no issues. Osram 95% of the time no issues. Cree bulbs, less than 10% turn off. They will say ‘off’ in the app. Go into a thing, hit refresh once, slider goes from 0% to 99%, hit refresh again, device now shows right status of it being on, tap and it turns off. Now… as another test, i go into a device that is reporting ‘off’ touch icon to turn it on, nothing, but it now shows on, tap again, nothing but now shows off but is still on. This uncontrollable state is also the same if you try to turn things off from the room view. I have to hit refresh on the thing before i can reliably control it. I also show that I have the old looking device handler thing view for all my cree bulbs. And that changes. I’ve seen it change from the new to the old view 3 times in the last month. Never going back to the new look much longer than a day. So is this tied to the DH? Am I on an old shard that has buggy DH for cree? Who knows…
At this point I just hope @slagle can get some answers for me from the zigbee team. If they come back and say, upgrade from v1 to v2 hub and it WILL work then ok no problem. I havent went to v2 because of no documented ‘value add’ on my end. I still dont think its a zigbee mesh as a whole issue for me, just one device handler…
Yeah, that’s what everybody says. Before I got my xStick and starting getting actual data I moved all of my Cree bulbs to the Hue hub/bridge, so I can’t confirm. But I’ll move one back just to test. I’ll do the same with one of my GE Links and report back.
@KevinH, I certainly feel your pain, and, yeah, if all you want is lights and you’re willing to stick with the ones that work with their hub, the Hue solution works very well. But you’ve already touched on some of the functionality that you can’t do with Hue, so…
With respect to the unreliability, I’m loath to pin it on Cree, given all of the problems that the ST platform has been having. A lot of what you’re seeing sounds like stuff getting lost in the cloud, which (still) seems to be very much an issue. One thing you can try, if you haven’t already, is to change the DTH for the Cree bulbs to the “SmartPower Dimming Switch”. That works, and runs local. It might help.
So emailed support and opened a ticket for this since its been 3 days without any response yet. #216578.
At this point I really am getting tired of it. Last day or so its bee moderately more reliable. My bedroom lamps have worked turning on most the time, but after 5mins, i can see now that one of them is still on at least. Kitchen bar, 1 of 2 always has an issue, never the same one. So its not like a bulb issue cause its never the same one.
I could be wrong but it just doesnt seem like anything is getting better around here. Simple automation of offically supported devices should not be a problem. Sure, interference, but at this point I dont know what else I can do to give this a better chance than what it already has. The issue just doesnt seem to lie within my own home…and Im ready to rip it all out. I’ve put a stay on any purchasing of new devices cause at this point I dont know if Ill continue down this road.
@KevinH I have basically this same experience, and it has also given me pause in moving forward with more of the Cree Bulbs. I’m running a v1 hub as well, so changing device types to run locally isn’t an option, either. Its a real pain to have one of the most affordable smart bulbs just unusable like this. Even within a span of minutes, I can have a bulb respond correctly, then fail to respond, and vice versa. Worse yet, the platform has been flip flopping between showing the device in its actual on/off/level state and whatever was my last ‘request’ (which, may have been ignored). It doesn’t seem to matter if I send commands through the Android app, Smart Tiles, Alexa, or Harmony either.
I have been silently watching this thread for about 2 weeks now. I am on a version 2 hub, my problems aren’t as Extreme as what you described.
However I have a bunch of Philips Hue bulbs as well as a single Cree bulb. I rarely use the cree bulb, as it is on a physical switch that is rarely on.
I have problems with my Philips Hue bulbs where a SmartThings routine will only turn off three of four bulbs randomly. I don’t think this is exclusive to zigbee implementations as many of my SmartThings zigbee devices work flawlessly. I have a lot of Z-Wave devices that are always flawless. However, I actually do question the reliability of real time zigbee devices because the ones that do work frequently are ones that are on an infrequent polling like a motion detector or a temperature sensor.
I am Not sure if its a smart things problem or not but I have had relative frequent problems with the Philips Hue Bridge integration to the point where sometimes I can’t even control any of my Hue bulbs.
The biggest problem I have is that it’s not consistent when things work or when they don’t work.
I can’t blame smart things entirely because there are times when I can’t control the hue bulbs from their native app either.
It’s more frequent that things work then they don’t but it’s just frustrating when they don’t work.
Odd that you have hue problems, they are usually the one you hear the least amount of complaints from. But working with support now. Going down the script i think but understand what support has to do. So i’ve now moved 2 troublesome lamps here into my office. Its lit up like a runway in here. But they were the only easy lamps I could move.
I thought maybe its timing but not thinking so. I feel its a bit of a lost state issue or something. Cause if I go in and hit refresh on the device, most of the time the bulb will then control just fine. But say i open the app and just tap the lamp from the room view or something, nothing. Go into the detail view of the bulb, hit refresh, slider goes from 0% to 100% then i can control the bulb.
Support did reply with this “As for Cree Bulbs acting as repeaters, the official word from my end is yes they do act as repeaters. What I do not know is if they repeat the ZLL or the ZHL profiles.”
Which then confuses the heck out of me. I have a bread crumb trail from my hub all around with either cree bulbs or zigbee smartoutlets. Outlet in every room, almost line of sight to each other considering open floor plan. And then theres cree bulbs in the same room. So outlet controls 100% of the time without any issue. 2 bulbs in same room 10ft away from outlet one of two will fail a lot…like more than it works. Same with these 2 bulbs here in my office where the hub is.
I really dont want to have to go to all zwave switches or smart outlets. There are a lot of places where it doesnt make sense, for either cost or just the device itself. Like the one light on my steps going to the bonus room. That is a 3 way switch so thats like 75 dollars to use a zwave switch instead of a 15 dollar connected bulb.
Oh well Ill still work with support but I have a feeling nothing is going to come to this since I already got “I do not suspect the device type because our crees in the office function well with that device type and we have not had any other complaints about this.” Being in a similar support roll before myself, that is a good line for ‘we cant reproduce so the issue is on your end’. Been there done that…
As I continue to dig further into my why lights are not as responsive as I’d like, and looking at my live logging, I did come across this post about Zigbee devices:
The (maybe?) relevant information that caught my eye was:
0104 = profile Id or version of Zigbee. Usually is 0104 for Home Automation or C05E for ZLL
If this is true, then looking at my logging, I’m seeing all my bulbs report in as C05E, or in other words, Zigbee Light Link profile and not ZHA profile. What I don’t know is how to use this information to further troubleshoot or attempt to remedy the failures to respond.
Unrelated, I’ve also found that through Amazon Echo, On/Off Commands often go ignored, but Set commands to set dimming level (even to 0% or 100%) are functioning near flawlessly. I don’t want to say perfectly, because I haven’t been testing it long enough, but its reliable enough to raise an eyebrow.
Yea the Cree’s are ZLL according to support either saying it officially or by accident. In my support thread they called out ZLL. And with them also saying that the Cree’s will repeat… that still doesn’t seem to make my setup any better. I have 15 or so bulbs dotted around the house. I also have smart outlets dotted along with them. Still my Cree’s still dont work reliably.
And I am now in the part of support where they are going down the script. I’ve been asked to move things closer to the hub. Did that, no major difference. Sitting 10ft away in the same room, still had failures. So now its been ‘can you remove and re-add the device to see if that helps’. All that combined with ‘our bulbs here in the office are not having any issues and no other reports’. Having been in support for many years myself… thats code for ‘your problem not ours’. So I am starting to look at my options. Either osram bulbs, zwave switches…or dump it all and go hue and kick ST to the curb.
An update on my efforts to suss this out, and some info/data in my post on this thread - What’s a cheap zigbee repeater?. Might be of interest to people following this conversation.