Osram Lightify Device Firmware Updates?

Devices & Integrations Connected Things
1

Yes, I know, SmartThings doesn’t yet support OTA firmware updates yet.

My question here is, what’s the best way to go about updating the firmware on my bulbs?
Is it really a matter of deleting them from SmartThings, adding them back to their original base, updating the firmware, and then adding them back to SmartThings?

This is kind of a pain in the butt if that’s the case. I only have 4 bulbs, and I’m already not looking forward to that. I have a lot of Rule Machine rules set up using those bulbs, they’re connected to IFTTT rules, my amazon echo, etc, etc.

I’m going to be moving soon, and I can’t even imagine how much of a pain in the butt it will be when I have 3 or even 4 times that many bulbs.

It would be cool if the IDE had some sort of “hibernation” feature, where you could temporarily remove the device, add it to another system to perform the firmware updates, and then add it back in. I don’t really know how a lot of this stuff works, but I would imagine there would be a way to write code to remember it’s hardware address, allow you to temporarily delete it, do your firmware update, and then when you connected it back to the hub, it recognizes that hardware address and allowed you to re-add it without losing any settings, rules, dependencies, etc.

Or maybe just a disable device checkbox. It retains all of it’s dependencies, but again, works by allowing removal of device, and then once connected again, you uncheck the box, it finds the device by it’s hardware id and reconfigures it back into the system. I dunno.

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At present, yes, although we’ve been told they’re hoping to add OTA Zigbee updates in the future. No timeline though.

You can create a virtual switch and add it to each rule/routine which at least allows the rules to continue to exist when you delete the real device. But it’s still a lot of work.

I don’t know if @Sticks18 has any better ideas, he’s probably done the most work with these bulbs.

3

I did the update by adding them to the base. I never deleted them from ST. I re-added them back to ST, and everything worked as intended.

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4

Don’t remove the device or delete it from ST in the software. Just reset the bulbs using the on/off, pair them to Lightify, update, reset again and then do the Connect New Device (generic) in ST. It won’t find anything, but your bulbs should blink to let you know they rejoined the network. Every time I’ve done this the bulbs pair back as the same device. No need to update Rules or SmartApps.

From ST’s perspective the bulbs just lost their connection, which is common in these mesh networks.

If for some reason the bulbs connect as new devices, I think you can go into the IDE and copy the zigbee ID from the new device into its old identity, then delete the new device and that’ll work too.

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5

Oh okay, I didn’t realize you could do that. I know that they do some sort of configuration in the device handler code, but I’m still learning what a lot of that does. I was thinking that if you connected the bulbs to another base, that it would “re-configure” them and then when you try to add them back, you would have to start all over.

Okay, cool, I’ll give that a shot, thanks everyone!!

I was actually going to try this last night anyways, but my WEMO Link was taking FOREVER to do a firmware update, so I went to bed. Now I have my answer :slightly_smiling:

6

Thanks for the advice. I did the factory reset on the bulbs without deleting them… Connected them to my WEMO Link hub perfectly. However, no firmware update, I guess I’m on the latest version?

Osram doesn’t have any info on what the latest firmware version is so it’s hard to tell. Maybe I should have left them connected longer?

It said version 03

Screenshot_2016-02-25-07-14-38.png1440×2560 147 KB

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Hi Stick18
Is this method still the best/easiest way to update you Osram ST connected bulbs and has a better method appeared since?

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Unfortunately this is the only way to update the firmware on Osram products for now.

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Yup, that’s how I do it, though there’s never an update available. After the first couple times doing it, you pick it up pretty quick.

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What’s the benefit of updated firmware? What does the new do that the old doesn’t do? Thanks!!

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Generally… stability, reliability improvements and feature improvements are the reasons for firmware updates.

Though I don’t recall them ever specifying what the updates are for.

Would be nice if someone on here figured out the ZigBee commands needed to query the firmware version from the bulb to display it in ST. It’s probably just a matter of finding the right attribute? @sticks18?

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That is the theory, though as you observe OSRAM is not very forthcoming regarding information about the differences between firmware versions. The only information that I’ve seen about the more recent updates is that they’re now distributing Zigbee 3.0-compatible firmware.

If anybody is interested, last weekend I updated the firmware in a variety of OSRAM lights. I posted up the new firmware versions here - Osram Lightify (it works).

1 Like
13

What hub are you using to update the FW of the bulbs? I’m using the WEMO hub as that’s what I originally got with my Osram bulbs, and it only gives me a 2 digit code for the FW. Last time I had mine connected, it just said version 03, as you can see in my screenshot above. But the FW versions you have in your linked post show an 8 digit code.

I only have A19 TW’s btw.

The lightify gateway is $33 on amazon, but kind of a large expense just to update the firmware of my bulbs.

It looks like it’s $48 for a gateway and a bulb (starter kit), maybe I’ll get that since the bulbs are normally $25 so I feel like I’m saving money and I could always use another bulb. lol

14

The Lightify hub is the only one at this time. Samsung may at some point support OTA firmware updates for some/all devices, but not yet. The process for resetting, pairing, updating, resetting, and re-pairing is well documented in other thread here, so I won’t repeat that.

I don’t think that the “03” you’re seeing in the WeMo app has anything to do with the actual firmware version. There’s no “03” in either the old or new version strings for the A19 firmware that I recently saw in the Lightify app. Perhaps that’s specific to the WeMo hub.

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I’m using WEMO, not Wink, and I’ve used it to perform Firmware updates before, I’m pretty familiar with the update process, mainly when I first bought my bulbs. Which is why I’m wondering where the 03 is coming from. I guess I will order the Lightify hub and bulb combo since I’ll probably use it a few times in the future as I really like these Osram bulbs.

EDIT: Okay, ordered. Same Day shipping with Amazon for free! And it comes with the lightify hub and 1 osram a19 tunable bulb for $53, so I guess it’s not a total rip off as I’ve paid $30 for just a bulb before.

16

Everything is now up to date, used the Lightify gateway, took forever to upgrade 8 bulbs, but got them done. Now that they support default brightness / color for power on in the lightify app, I’m going to work on querying the level control and color control clusters of the bulb via Zigbee commands to see if I can write to / find the on color and on level attributes. (different from the 0x0011 OnLevel attribute, which is something else).

If the Lightify hub is just using Zigbee commands to set those defaults, then there’s no reason we can’t replicate that using Zigbee commands in a device type.

It’s too bad I don’t have any sort of tech to do some sort of “packet sniffing” on the lightify hub to see what it’s sending.

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17

As you may have discovered/heard, you’ll lose those defaults as soon as you reset the bulb in order to re-pair it with ST, so the approach that you’re suggesting is probably the only way we’ll be able to effect similar in the ST environment. Good luck! I’d definitely by interested in “fixing” the new default on those RT56 TW units; wife really doesn’t like the 4k color they come up in if she forgets and hits the switch.

18

Yeah, hopefully it’s as easy as finding the right attribute and value to send and that’s it. Nothing fancy.

Here’s what I’m wondering. I don’t technically “hard reset” the bulbs when I add them back to ST.

My routine is, unplug the ST hub
Alternate power to bulbs On for 5 seconds off for 5 seconds (5 cycles)
Connect bulbs to Lightify Gateway
Update firmware, do whatever
Delete bulb from Lightify App
Unplug Lightify Gateway
Plug in ST Hub
Run a search for a new device in ST for a few minutes, eventually all the bulbs automatically reconnect

I don’t do the hard reset to remove them from Lightify to move them back to ST, I just delete them from the app. I wonder if you just delete them, if the default is retained. Or if upon deletion, the lightify app resets them.

Unless you know, I’ll test tonight.

Though, in either case, will be nice to have the ability to set those settings via ST.

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I think that deleting them from the Lightify app is essentially a reset. It would have to be, right? Otherwise, how would the bulb know to try to pair with a network when it was next powered up? You followed the same sequence as I did and my experience was that the defaults set while the bulb was paired with the Lightify hub were lost. Damn them!

I agree, if you can figure out how to get the DTH to set those register values in the EEPROM, that would be great.

1 Like
20

Could the OSRAM Lightify REST API be used to integrate the gateway into SmartThings for firmware updates and default programming?

https://us.lightify-api.org/

I personally would only want this integration to enable firmware upgrades. I wouldn’t want to use their gateway for everyday use since it would add significant latency since the Lightify gateway and SmartThings hub has to communicate over the cloud using the REST API.