I have issue with Philips Hue Motion Sensor and Xiaomi Aqara Temperature Humidity Sensors. My SmartThings hub is v3 with 000.035.00004 firmware.
If setting “Unsecure Rejoin” is disabled all my Xiaomi’s are working fine, BUT Hue Motion Sensor get’s offline and doesn’t get back online. Hub event list shows for Hue that “was not allowed to unsecure rejoin”.
Okay, then if I enable the “Unsecure Rejoin” Hue Motion Sensor will keep online and is able to rejoin if it goes offline for while, BUT now the all the Xiaomi’s sensors will start getting offline after few hours and may jump for while back and then back to offline where they stay most of the time.
I have only couple routers which are Osram bulbs, but those were disconnected during troubleshooting in order to avoid those having any role in this issue.
If I understood correctly that Unsecure Rejoin should fix exactly this kind of offline issues and it should not cause those, but in my case it fix that for Hue and causes those for Xiaomi…
Device handler for Xiaomi is [bspranger : Xiaomi Aqara Temperature Humidity Sensor] version 1.3 and for Hue it’s [bogdanalexe90 : Hue Motion Sensor] from year 2018.
My first suggestion, deal with the Xiaomi Aquara sensors as a one off. There’s MULTIPLE posts in the forum about how these devices behave (or rather don’t) and how to work around their quirks. In short they don’t like most repeaters - you’ll have to find some that work for you… Pick an article and start reading:
Now as to Philips Hue. Dropping? That means you have them joined directly to your ST hub? FIRST, I’d suggest using the Hue hub - for multiple reasons, not the least of which is the ability to use Hue advanced features, the ability to reset the devices and apply firmware (none of which you can do by default if they’re directly joined to ST…) Barring that, turn unsecure rejoin back on. (again - deal with the Xiaomi’s as a one off)
For Hue. Philips hue bulbs can join SmartThings and will WORK… BUT… you cannot reset the devices without a Hue hub, you cannot upgrade Hue device firmware without a hue hub, and there’s a whole host of offline capabilities and scene control for Hue that you don’t get without their hub / app) for those reasons, it’s RECCOMMENDED that you use use the Hue hub for Hue devices.
So with Hue devices, the official recommendation is getting the Hue hub, join the Hue devices there then add the Hue hub to SmartThings. It puts you in a more standard config (future issue avoidance) and will ‘just work.’
So by doing this, you could leave unsecure rejoin off and not worry about the Xiaomi’s But - that’s only half of your ultimate answer.
Now the Xiaomi stuff. What I mean by ‘one-off’ I ALWAYS try to get my configuration as close to default or best practice config as possible. In this case the Xiaomi devices are the non-default, misbehaving device, not your ST hub. They are also known to not communicate with the hub correctly through repeaters so they either need to connect directly to the hub or use repeaters that can work with Xiaomi devices. Multiple posts talk about building a repeater mesh specifically that works with Xiaomi’s. Personally, for me making them work is WAY more trouble than it’s worth and I wont use them (yes I know Xiaomi’s are ridiculously cheap) but my time is worth money and I don’t have time to continue to hand feed them. I’ll buy a better sensor and not have to mess with it. IF you choose to keep them you’ll eventually need to build a good repeating mesh and more than one of those posts have strategies to do that.
If this were all mine, I’d move the Hue to a Hue hub, join it to ST, dump the Xiaomi’s for some other brand of sensor to make that someone else’s problem, and get a couple extra Hue bulbs to replace the Osrams (Pre Sylvania Osram bulbs are horrid repeaters)
My second choice would be move Hue to its hub, and get a couple of Zigbee repeaters known to work with the Xiaomi devices.
Thanks for reply. I bought Hue bridge and pair it with Hue Motion Sensor and with one light bulb, because otherwise it was not possible to use app with Hue Motion Sensor only.
Then I add Hue bridge to SmartThings and I was able to see in SmartThings app the Hue Bridge and light bulb, but not the Hue Motion Sensor. Philips support service was not able to say that should Hue accessories be visible in SmartThings or not… I asked also from Samsung, but so far no response there yet.
The bulbs should always be used with the bridge for the reasons above.
However, the bridge does not expose the “accessories“ like sensors and switches to smartthings. It could, because quite a few of them are exposed to HomeKit, it just doesn’t. I’m not sure why. The integration was originally built by smartthings engineers, not hue engineers, and I don’t know if that made a difference.
There are a couple of options for the sensors. Since the sensors are not repeaters, you don’t run into the issues that you do with a directly connected bulb. That’s the good news.
A) if you just want to use the Hue motion sensor with smartthings and you’re not trying to also see it in the Hue app, then there is a community created DTH that will work with it. This is a popular method for use with the outdoor version of the sensor.
B) if you want to use the Hue motion sensor with the bridge and also use it with smartthings then there are a number of community developed options, although they all have some limitations.
If you happen to use iOS and you want to also use homebridge, you can bring your smartthings devices into HomeKit and use the sensors that way. But that’s a long way to go for an integration.
The sensors can be used to trigger an Amazon Alexa routine (not a smartthings routine) and you could have that turn on a virtual switch to act as a proxy for the sensor. That’s a lot easier to set up than homebridge and it works quite well in this direction. It does make you dependent on two different clouds (Amazon and smartthings) but it’s not a bad way to go. You don’t even need to have an echo device, just an Amazon account and the free Alexa app.
you can use IFTTT, although since that’s now only free for three applets, it’s not as appealing as it used to be. and again, two clouds.
if the use case allows, you can have the hue sensor turn on a specific Hue bulb via the hue bridge, and then use that bulb coming on as your trigger. This can work for some use cases, I did something similar at my own house for a while to turn on a desk lamp and then have that lamp coming on trigger the overhead light, but it won’t work for all use cases.
There is a community created custom code version which gives you access to information from a bridge connected sensor, but some people have reported it was not reliable for them. And, as you noted, you have to have at least one bulb on the bridge in order for it to work. You can talk to people using that method in the following thread:
That is really unfortunate. Hue sensors are just about useless in Hue bridge as you cant use them in SmartThings automations, and the Hue routines are very limited. As a sensor connected to SmartThings you can get information as temperature and light level from Hue movement sensors, while Phillips does not seem to bother.
