Not Philips Hue BUT ST have crippled my Outdoor sensor - ANSWER, it was out of range!

Anyone else noticed that their Hue Outdoor sensor becomes offline in Smartthings after a few hours?

I suspect a recent Philips update is cutting Zigbee communications with the sensor, as soon as I reset the sensor it works again for a few hours on ST then becomes ‘offline’, however if I leave as a Hue controlled device, it remains solidly online.

I’m sure that’s very frustrating. :rage: Based just on reports in this forum, I don’t think it’s a Phillips hue issue. There are many many reports of different Zigbee devices from different brands, even smartthings brand, going off-line. And there hasn’t been any change in the behavior of the Phillips hue sensors with other Zigbee coordinators, including an Amazon echo device with a zigbee hub inside. :thinking:

Smartthings has made multiple changes both to how their hubs handle Zigbee and to the cloud just in the last six weeks. So my guess is it’s most likely to be one of those things, again, you’ll see a lot of posts about Zigbee devices of other brands going offline in the forum.

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Strange that ST are tinkering around, as it looks like they’re withdrawing from smart things (they’ve stopped selling sensors and plugs).

They have made the decision that they are going to stop selling and supporting smartthings branded Home Automation hardware, but they are making deals with new partners to offer what are essentially clones of those devices. Aeotec is the partner for North America and Europe. Smartthings is going to continue to offer the app and the cloud platform, which is exactly why they’re doing the tinkering. :thinking:

Official announcement:

An Update Regarding our Hardware

That’s interesting, thanks.

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I’m not sure how Philips would have crippled it? If it is connected directly to a SmartThings hub, and not the Hue bridge, then Philips has no idea it exists. AFAIK sensors connected to the Hue bridge don’t show up in SmartThings via the Hue integration.

They don’t through the official integration. There is some community developed code which attempts to read the heartbeat log in the hue bridge and respond to sensor events that way, but It’s one of those things that works for some people and doesn’t for others.

If you use homebridge, then you can bring everything into Homekit and work with it that way, but that requires a lot of technical skill and isn’t for everybody.

FAQ: Hue accessory devices with smartthings? (2019)

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I’ve used a community device specification to add the Hue Outdoors Sensor as a Smart things device, rather than a Hue device, I’d assumed it was Philips as I could see they’ve updated their Hub on the 17th of April.

They updated the Hue hub, but not the sensor, and the Hue hub and the sensor are not talking to each other if you have the sensor joined to the smartthings Zigbee network. A Zigbee device can only belong to one network at a time, it’s either the Hue or the smartthings hub, but not both.

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Also, smartthings updated their Zigbee on April 14, and they also do a lot of undocumented changes.

https://status.smartthings.com/

Its back on the Hue hub now - and as its getting to fairer weather I’ve put the ST motion sensor in the shed alongside it - I use Homekit, but prefer Smart things announcing on Echo devices, and really liking ST scheduler for automations, so different behaviour at night - I’ve got IFTTT integration, triggering an SMS service to txt me that someone is in the shed when I’m away from the property.

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Must admit, I was mistaken thinking that ST was talking to Hue bridge and using it to Zigbee onto the sensor, and that it was Hue which was severing the link. But you’re right, ST has its own Zigbee (I’m using their Zigbee plugs, doh!). So title is wrong, ST is crippling it, strange as you’d expect it to either work or not, and not simply start working then stop after a few hours. I might try again tomorrow, but use ST to repair Zigbee network and see if it fixes the ‘offline’ issue.

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Hi there,

I’m having the same problem with some of my Hue Indoor Motion Sensors.
I have some of them still correctly working while others started loosing the connection with the V3 Hub some weeks ago.
What I found is that the non-working ones seems to have an upgraded version of the firmware, the 0x42006BB7, while the working ones are using the 0x420049E0.
Could it be the reason for the malfunctioning?
Could it have a solution by a modification of the device handlers?

I’m starting to wonder if its a range issue, my sensor is in the shed, and I had assumed that it was a Hue issue, however yesterday I put a ST sensor in the shed, and this morning, that one is also appearing offline, whereas it was solidly connected indoors.

I also assumed that it was using the Zigbee network of Hue, or is it using a seperate ST Zigbee network?

Could be that ST runs some periodic check for weaker signals, and culls those connections? As initially it is all connected ok for a few hours (so not a weak signal initially).

The Hue bridge forms one Zigbee network with devices that are connected to it. The SmartThings hub forms an entirely different Zigbee network with devices that are connected to it. Devices on each network repeat only for devices connected to that network. The two coordinators communicate with each other over the local Ethernet LAN, not by Zigbee.

Sort of. Each Zigbee device checks in with its own coordinator periodically, usually once an hour. Miss too many of these, and the SmartThings cloud will mark the device “offline” as part of the ST “device health” protocol.

Strong WiFi signals can drown out Zigbee, causing check ins to be missed, so sometimes periodic loss isn’t because of range, it’s because of WiFi traffic nearby.

You might find the FAQ on range helpful. Start with post 11 in that thread (this link will take you directly there). Read that, then go up to the top and read the whole thread. :sunglasses:

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Thanks, this is very interesting information, I did try to research before posting my speculative post this morning, but couldn’t easily find the information. I might look to move my ST Hub to be closer, I also have a wifi mesh in the house, which might not be helping, I did recently update my zigbee channel subsequently to reading post here about the channel frequencies and avoiding a clash (can avoid my own wifi channel, but perhaps not my neighbours’).

I now believe it was a range issue!! My assumptions about ST piggy backing on Huw zigbee network being wrong, I moved my hub closer to the shed, and suddenly the ST motion sensor I have in the shed is back ‘online’, next I will put the Hue motion sensor back in the shed, and see if it remains online.

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