Hi,
First of all thanks to this community for being so helpful in the past. Iāve been able to solve a lot of my issues because of this community, and for that Iām thankful.
One nagging problem remains (almost everything else works miraculously well - for months!). I have 6 GE Link BR30 bulbs in my basement, kind of far from my ST v2 hub on the 1st floor. My basic setup is to pair these bulbs to ST, then pair a Lutron Connected Bulb Remote to ST (after installing workmonkās device handler), then pair the Lutron remote to the bulbs. I absolutely believe in the necessity of physical switches for light operation, though I use Alexa/Echo for most control of ST devices (āAlexa, dim theater to 1%ā is fantastic). I always want a reliable fall-back method, and thatās the physical switch for me. The Lutron remote is the best one so far IMHO, as itās ergonomically nice and fits into traditional wall plates. Itās just too bad ST doesnāt support it officially yet.
The lack of official support means a bit of a workaround to get this all to work. Hereās the issue:
The GE Link Zigbee bulbs do all pair with my ST hub from their basement location. Sometimes it takes a few tries, but eventually they do. I donāt have any Zigbee devices as repeaters between the hub and basement.
The Lutron remote pairs fine to ST as well. However, when I then go to to pair to my bulbs, it āstealsā the bulbs, so they can no longer communicate with ST, and now only with the remote.
Hereās the thing though - this āstealingā doesnāt happen if all the devices are near the ST hub when I do the pairing. Itās almost like if the GE Link bulbs canāt directly talk to to the ST hub, the Lutron remote steals them. Or if the Lutron remote canāt directly talk to the hub when pairing with the bulb, it steals them (puts it on some different Z-wave frequency, I guess).
So to get around this, I took my ST hub down to the basement, did all the setup and pairings, which all worked, no stealing, then took the hub back upstairs. I know this is not ābest practiceā, since I effectively set it all up then changed the topology of the mesh.
But⦠it worked!
For a couple months anyway, until I finally had an outage that took out my ST hub for 12 hours. When it came back online, all GE Links in the basement stopped talking to both my hub and the Lutron remote. Removing just one of them from ST actually got all the other ones back online (odd?), but none of them will talk to the remote.
Any ideas on what happened?
Iām sure official support of the Lutron remote would go a long way to addressing this, but Iād like to deal with this now. Iām guessing that when the Zigbee GE Links went into āpanicā mode, they couldnāt re-find any device or hub. When the hub came back online, maybe the one bulb that acted as the ārepeaterā had some malfunction, and nothing connected?
Hence, Iām thinking of putting some more Zigbee devices in the pathway to my basement. Like Smartthings electrical outlets.
- Is this reasonable?
- Do you think something else is going on?
- Do you strongly disagree with my approach of moving the hub down to do all the pairings, then moving the hub back up? If only the Lutron remote were officially supported, none of this would be an issue, as - like I said - I can eventually pair each of the bulbs with the ST hub even when ST hub is on 1st floor and bulbs in basement⦠itās that I canāt then pair the Lutron remote without it stealing my bulbs.
- Should I use my Hue Bridge (v1) as the Zigbee hub instead for the GE Links because it has a stronger antenna than the ST? Does it? I have no idea.
I should mention that I have a Philips Hue bulb on the second floor, pretty far away from the ST, that was also set up in a similar way (I paired it, and a Lutron remote, near the ST hub on the 1st floor, then moved it upstairs). It works fine, even after multiple 12 hour āblackoutsā (hub going down). I wonder whatās different there. Maybe itās just closer overall to the hub (it is, in fact - itās one floor up, but less of a ways down the home length-wise), or maybe itās because itās a Hue bulb?
Finally, I really do wish smart home companies prioritized physical switches. Most of us only see the phone functionality as an initial novelty. For every day use, we need voice control and physical controls. I find it unfathomable why companies havenāt prioritized nice physical switches that work the way light controls have worked for decadesā¦
Many thanks in advance!
Rishi