Belkins Wemo bulbs. Equally as bad.if not worst. I probably have to reset them more then the GE.
That is what I said earlier. There should be a option once paired to set the bulbs to turn on at full brightness or the last known state after a power cycle. That would fix the problem 100%
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There will be a range of features and prices, but the second most popular accessory in the Apple Store is a $29 plain white 2 m charging cable. It’s a different business model. 
That actually wouldn’t fix the problem 100%. If the power goes out at 7:00pm, when you have your bedroom lights turned on, and then the power is restored at 3am when you are asleep, the bulbs would still turn on in the middle of the night.
So now we are talking about 3 configuration options after a power outage: restore to ON, restore to last state, restore to OFF. Since there’s no UI on a lightbulb, the manufacturers would have to rely on the hub to make that change. I’m doubtful most hub makers would bother. ST still has no way to send parameter changes to devices without editing the device type.
This is one of the million reasons I got rid of all of the “smart” bulbs in my house. Use switches instead, even if that means you need to pull neutral wires. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for. “Smart” bulbs are really stupid.
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In (very expensive) medical monitoring equipment, power doesn’t get restored to the end device until it’s run through the rules engine in the very sophisticated controller device.
So there’s a difference between “power available” and “power provided” and a whole bunch of rules checks in between. With state at the time of last power loss being just one of many pieces of information going into the rules.
It can definitely be done with a central controller, but, yes, there’s a lot of complexity if you want to cover all the options automatically, rather than just having a person make a decision about what to do next.
And this is why I elected to go old school with just dimmable LED bulbs and zwave switches. High approval factor and no blinding light in the middle of the night!
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Yeah I’m going to have a nasty shock nowadays in the bedroom when the power goes out momentarily and and all 12 lights turn on…
Ummmmm, why not set up a routine that turns off everything in the house one time a day in the middle of the night? Then the house only flies for 24 hours max. That’s an available option right now.
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If the power goes out at 7:00pm and gets restored at 3:00am I am going to be up worried about the sub pump and many other things.
Someone posted above that OSRAM bulbs do this now. ST can send any data to any device. There are no limits.
I do not understand in the year 2015 why no one can make this work. We have 4K TV’s and cell phones that can shoot 4K video but we can not make an automated light bulb turn on a off with out a bunch of issues.
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Apples and oranges. The cell phones that shoot 4K video are all high-end models. $500 and up mostly. Not the equivalent of $15 networked lightbulbs that only cost a couple bucks more than the nonnetworked versions.
I can absolutely give you somebody who can install a lighting system that will do exactly what you want it to do after a power outage. But it’s going to cost money. It’s going to be of the high-end of the category.
If you buy a $20 no contract Wi-Fi phone at Walmart it’s not going to shoot 4K video. That shouldn’t be a surprise to an engineer.
The Three rules of engineering:
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Physics count.
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Money matters.
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Hardware is hard.
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I bet in 2 years you will be able to get a phone at Walmart that will do that. The Zigbee SIG has had 15 years to perfect turning light bulbs on and off reliability and they have failed. That is one pixel a few times a day. Not 4,000 pixels 60 times a second from a satellite many miles away. It is apple and oranges but the idiots trying to automate turning a light bulb on a few times a day really suck at what they do.
So don’t buy their product. If you think you can beat them at it, start your kickstarter campaign. I’m sure there will be a lot of people who think as you do.
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I don’t have a sump pump, so I’ll be sleeping like a baby at 3am. And my Zwave switches won’t wake me up either. My point is, every user has his or her own needs. If a product doesn’t fit your requirements, don’t buy it. If osram meets your needs, buy it. I can buy a switch that controls any number of lamps for less than a single osram bulb.
The zigbee bulb folks are focused on making their bulbs as cheap as possible because that’s what the market will bare. Plus, users have told them that they want some basic control at the lightswitch. That requires a simple solution: turn on when power is toggled off and on. Any more logic requires more brains, and therefore more cost.
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I simply have a Smart Lighting routine run at 3am that turns all the lights off except my porch and a night light in all modes. It covers me forgetting to turn something off and the vacation scenario. I can live with the occasional middle of the night power restore, I just push a button on my bedside minimote and they all go off again. Done.
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Zigbee is a group of Engineers that created and updated a standard for home automation. CREE, OSRAM, TCP, Philips and a few others use that standard for interoperability. The standard has some major issues. We had basic control of a light switch 30 years ago with X10. Zigbee was supposed to address many of the issues. They have failed.
You can buy a ARM Cortex M0+, 48MHz, 32bit, 16KB Flash, 4K RAM for 16 cents from Atmel (SAM D09). That is way too much power to control a light bulb but super cheap.
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That would have fixed my issue but it is a band aid to a problem that should have been addressed many years ago.
Besides setting a routine to run that turns off all of the smart bulbs (which to me seems like the obvious “kiss” choice), there is another solve currently which was mentioned at the beginning of this thread.
So we have 2 scenarios to solve for smart bulbs being stupid…correct? What we have not solved for is bulbs that possibly fall off the network during the power outage cycle…correct?
Shouldn’t that be what we are trying to solve vs. suggesting re-engineer the whole situation? This thread reminds me of one of many things wrong in the business world facealm…well, according to my viewpoint I suppose.
Instead of fixing the 1% error rate as inexpensive and simply as possible (sometimes a band_aid is all a scratch needs) it is suggested to disassemble the entire architecture and question it’s design, point out hurdles causing imperfection, then suggest changes to (possibly / maybe) ensure perfection, then suggest spending way more money to fix the scenario than it could ever possibly recover in the (would be) 1% down time.
Genious!..but it’s not a nuclear reactor…it’s just some stupid light bulbs.
I chose this:
- 1st. Gen. ST motion detector
- install community shared app
- Inexpensive UPS to power hub and router while power is out
…but hey, I’m just a stupid common sense smartass with a nerd itch I that I like to scratch with HA stuff.
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That will not fix the issue. The hub will continue to get power but the light bulb will not. When the power comes back the light bulb will be on at full brightness. The hub will not know.
The best solution is for vendors of bulbs to allow users to configure how the bulbs react after a power outage. That would not add any more expense. It is an easy fix.
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Yes, I know…it has to assume they are on. That’s what the app is for.
Sorry to intervene here, but while I do agree with your feelings on the Zigbee bulbs, and wish they had built in an option to configure the bulbs to react the way we would like them to react, this simply did not happen. And while I have many of these bulbs, I knew going in that when we lost power, they would come back on after the power loss. When I go away, I turn those switches off, so that if we lose power that they will remain off. I did my research understanding the issues behind each technology I choose to place in the house, the potential disadvantages and advantages. The Zigbee bulbs explained how they would respond to a power outage clearly in the various sites that I went to in order to decide if they would fit into my plan. I needed them as I did not have a neutral wire in some locations and due to this, they were the cheapest most effective way to automate those areas. I plan to eventually remove them and either place a neutral in line or use a non-neutral needing switch to automate those areas.
The way I see it, is that this caught you by surprise when it happened, I understand your frustration. However, you have a problem and you need to solve it, so what is the best way to solve this issue for you? Right now I would use the automation in ST as others have suggested, and work to remove this issue down the line.
Maybe start you own company make a better bulb, that we other HA users will purchase because you thought it out, where others have not.
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