I had my V1 hub offline for awhile the other day and most of my GE bulbs let the network during that time. When I re-added them, some of them resumed their former identities but, not all. My assumption is that if they connect through a different repeater or without one when they used one before, they show up as a new device.
I hadnāt thought of thatā¦interesting theory.
Iāve noticed that the bulbs that drop off the most are almost always the same bulbs and all that do are closest to my hub; therefore, my router.
The bulbs furthest away have never once given issue. I have a detached garage thatās at least 50ft from my hub that has a link bulb as an outside light for exampleā¦never an issue.
My front porch light and 1 of 2 bulbs in my foyer are both within 5ft of my hub / router and give trouble every other month to every 3rd. month.
When I add them back nothing else changes. They keep their same physical location with other link bulbs in close proximity. 1 bulb in particular will never add back easily. I always have to do the IDE trick.
I guess what is Iām saying is I have not experienced any rhyme or reason.
I think there is more wifi interference than was previously thought in the 2.4 band. As a test I switched to 5ghz for a bit (which alienated my Ecobee3 because they donāt receive 5ghz) but couldnāt stick with it long enough to see if interference has a hand in bulb reliabilityā¦Iām betting it does in my environment.
I havenāt had random dropoffs in a long time. I think wifi interference is a big issue, though. Iāve made sure that my router is on the furthest channel (1) from my zigbee channel (24) and that may be why I donāt experience issues very often.
Yes, my issue is that I have so many neighbors that are on either 1, 6, or 11
Iām on 8 now and am.not sharing that channel with anyone, but there is bleed over of signals for those on neighboring channels.
At any rate moving off the 2.4 band entirely would be advantageousā¦darn you Ecobee3!
Any bulbs I have drop off actually change their ID. so I re add them as new bulbs and copy the ID from the new bulbs to the old ones so I donāt have to waste a hour deleting all the spartans so I can delete the bulb and re add it and then re add all the smartapps.
They really need to give us the ability to āREPLACEā a device instead of having to delete it and everything that looks at it.
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This is something that weāve asked over 2 years ago. The āhard-linkingā of Devices to SmartApps is discussed in many threads. Do a Search 
on āReplace Deviceā or something and see if you can find the most current Topic to contribute to.
In shortā¦ The ability to Replace a Device without first uninstalling all linked SmartApps would have the useful side-effect of making Hub to Hub migration a little lot easier.
In the meantime what I do is pair the new replacement device, name it the same as the one you are replacing but add the word New to the end of the name. Then go to smart app view for the bad device. open each smart app and deselect the bad device and select the new one. Then once the all the smart apps from the bad device are switched over you can remove the bad device. Last step is go and edit the name of the replacement device and just delete ānewā
HTH
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This is exactly what I do, as well.
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Itās much easier to do the IDE trick if not on a phone. Is there a reason you prefer this way instead?
Iām not sure I know what the IDE trick is
[quote=āgreg, post:50, topic:9181ā]
Iām not sure I know what the IDE trick is
[/quote]
Copy the device network ID from the new bulb occurrence and paste it over top the ID of the bulb that dropped off. You will have to delete the new bulb occurrence before you can paste itās ID elsewhereā¦so be sure to use notepad or something as not to lose the copy.
This takes just a minute or so and you donāt have to do any unassign / reassign crap.
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Wonāt that leave the ZigBee ID incorrect (i.e., the data will still reflect the ZigBee ID of the old Bulb?).
Funny you question thatā¦as I typed zigbee 1st.
1st of all that trick wasnāt my discovery. Kudos to whomever.
I canāt recall if I had to copy both zigbee ID and network ID last time I had to do this. Iām pretty sure it was just network ID. My thought was itās the network ID that fails not the zigbee ID? Iāve nothing to back that up at the moment as Iām at work.
Maybe Iāll test this tonight and make sureā¦orā¦I could just wait until it happens again lol
Am I just lucky that I have not (yet) seen any problems with the GE Link bulbs and Smartthings? I have seven of these, all in situations where no one will locally turn the lamps on/off other that the smartapps controlling them.
I got them all on sale for $7 each from the YMMV Target deal, and they are the cheapest part of my HA, with no issues so far.
only if you dont copy and paste that as well. but you dont need the zigbee id. I completely delete it as itās not used.
Iāve been steadily moving all of my links to lamps. Iāve never had a failure in a lamp and my lighting scenes have greatly improved in success rate.
unplug your hub for 2 hours, all the link bulbs will disconnect and not reconnect until you do it manually. This is a guaranteed way of causing the issue.
Also have a kid play with the light switch, the 5 3 second on-off reset cycles reported int he documentation is not truthful. if you rapid fire the lamp on-off-on-off you will trigger the repairing sequence and it will fall off your network.
Luckily I have only 4 of them when they were clearanced out at $9.00 each from a local store with all the wink stuff they stopped carrying. I will be changing them over to Osram Lightify bulbs as those are the most stable of any brand of bulb I have used. The other advantage of switching away from the GE bulbs is that you get bulb software updates from SmartThings on officially supported bulbs. GE Links will never get an update through a ST hub.
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Iād like to get three more of the BR30 style if on clearance somewhere or used. I see them for $16 and such, but Iām in the market for maybe $9 each at most, since the next usage is a ānice to haveā scenario. If anyone has that and wants to get rid of them, send a PM.
Many people seem to have issues with the GE Link bulbs disconnecting and dropping and it seems platform independent - Iāve seen complaints from both Wink and ST users. For what it is worth, Iāve used GE Link bulbs with my Wink hub since October or November of 2014 and theyāve been rock solid.
Iād like to add some to my SmartThings hub, but I do have one question though - is there a need to use a custom device type with the GE Link bulbs or does ST have a reliable device type already installed? Iāve currently got most of my GE Links on a Wink hub but I have some spares Iād like to put on my SmartThings v2 and may move the Wink bulbs over as well. I saw Drewbert34ās screenshot and noticed he is using a āMy GE Link Bulb v2ā device type and just wondered where he got it.
Give me a sec and Iāll update this post w/linkā¦
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