[OBSOLETE] GE Motion Switch (26931) and Motion Dimmer (26933)

Just curious…Hubitat not what it is cracked up to be? I am in the final stages of moving to Home Assistant and couldn’t be happier…it IS a hacker’s paradise, but it has about 200x more integrations than ST and works great. That being said, my ST hub is used now JUST as a radio for ZigBee and Z-Wave…all automations are through HA…I even dumped WebCore. The GE switches are going to be paired with a ZWave stick, giving me the same home experience (occupancy and vacant settings) as with ST without having to write a DTH. Was even able to get virtual switches into HA and have Alexa see them.

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Hubitat was awesome with speedy response times… Until I got almost all of my devices migrated and lots of automations going. I had all sorts of issues - automations failing to trigger or saying they triggered but nothing happened, highly delayed execution, and I found myself constantly troubleshooting mesh issues. All things you will find reported on the hubitat community with suggestions indicating I may need to run multiple hubs to separate things out. No thanks. It became so unstable and sucked up a ton of time to keep going that I came back to ST. Fingers crossed that the move to edge and more local execution doesn’t overwhelm the ST hub.

I do still have some devices on Hubitat that do not have integrations with ST.

HA I tried a while back before Hubitat. It seemed like Hubitat was a nice in-between HA and ST with more customization than ST and not as much of a hassle to maintain as HA.

It sounds like the denominator in your home are mesh issues…or interferences. Have you looked at repeaters or putting additional devices in? I have close to 100 devices and it was only after getting a lot that everything began running flawlessly.

I easily have over 100 and since it was suggested with Hubitat I got rid of almost all of my non-plus devices. I literally have almost every single switch in my house as a z wave switch so coverage cannot be a problem. I did just invest in a z wave Toolbox to do some testing. Things have been very good on ST.

The only issue I have is with the GE motion dimmers. I cannot see how ALL 6 of them that I have in my house suddenly stop reporting motion events. I am going to stop doing repairs now that things are stable. I mostly just wanted to report here in case others have issues (like above) getting motion to report. Same issue btw with @philh30 edge driver although that one has not been resolved with power resets.

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That kind of rules out the DTH if the edge drivers show the same behavior. For giggles, if it was me…I would swap one of them out for a brand new one…this might have later firmware and if behavior changes it COULD be something with the devices…just saying…it sounds like you have narrowed it down a bit to the devices themselves.

I agree @MichaelS that it does seem to be a device issue. I do have some that were purchased as recently as 4 months ago and others that are a couple years old. Once again I did a repair today since I removed some old non-plus devices and added new ones. The exact same outcome - every one of the motion dimmers stopped reporting motion and I had to toggle settings / power reset to get them to work again. Bizarre. Even more so is that the GE motion “switch” does not exhibit the same behavior. Any Jasco/GE contacts out there?

I have yet to get the Edge driver by @philh30 to work. Also, @MichaelS as many reported above the dimmer capability is gone and unavailable to ST routines. :frowning:

Here is another thing that COULD explain it…since these things are in a ‘mesh’, if one device in the chain breaks then the downstream COULD break. In your case it almost feels like only half the information is being passed…As such, I would probably pull the switches from the wall where they could be getting shielded and try again…

Regarding the DTH, I consider it legacy at this time. First, not everyone sees the dimmer or other parameters go away. This is clearly due to the migration ST is doing, but the bottom line is I wish I knew how to fix it. Hence, I am going to say use at your own risk at some point…unfortunately, it is THIS issue that made me go with Home Assistant, which does allow for me to make the settings adjustments that I need.

This would make sense if it was not happening to every single one at exactly the same time. They are all over my house in different places including just around the corner from the hub. Some are direct route to the hub, some are routing through other devices. In fact some of these dimmers are even routing other devices to the hub and that is working fine.

I hear you on End of Life of the DTH. I wish I could get the edge driver to work. I’m about to give up on these and just put some good ol’ battery sensors in their place. These were also working well in Hubitat so it leads me to believe there is a ST migration problem going on here which is the only way I can explain that it impacts all of them at the same time.

I also don’t see it being a mesh issue. It really just seems like the devices are getting stuck thinking that motion reports are disabled. I’m stumped, so I just ordered one of the dimmers and I’m going to install it as far as possible from my hub. If you’ll send me how you have yours configured I’ll replicate the settings and see what happens.

Shoot @philh30 a few more days of frustration on my end and I just might have bought you a dimmer. :wink:

Some of my dimmers are just a couple feet from my hub so it’s probably not necessary to put that far away to get the same behavior.

I am also going to run a sniffer to see if anything is actually being sent. Unlikely I think.

As far from the hub as possible just happens to be in my workshop where the wife won’t notice yet another device. So the placement might be dual purpose.

Lol. My wife yesterday asked why I have recently been replacing so many old switches. I told her because Z Wave Plus. Eye rolls ensued.

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I had success with the edge driver today. Replying over on the edge driver thread as that is the more relevant home for this discussion.

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This DTH is no longer supported! I have updated the thread title/heading, and have redirected all users to the Edge driver from @philh30

Thank you to all users that supported this DTH over the past 4 years! And thank you to Phil for picking up the ball and getting ALL the functionality of these switches to work with the new SmartThings Edge Platform.

–Michael

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Unfortunately, Edge drivers are not yet working on Samsung Connect Home/SmartThings Wi-fi Hubs yet :frowning:

That is too bad…I hope they get it working!

To be clear, there is nothing I am ‘turning off’ to prevent these DTHs from being installed in the interim; I am just no longer updating them or supporting them. The users are ‘on their own’ until ST gets the edge program rolled out.

That being said, the DTHs do work for the majority of folks…the interface is really the issue most of the time, but I am hearing more and more that the actual functionality seems ‘off’.

Anyway, good luck!

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Hello
Could you please help me? My situation:

  • I have recently purchased a Samsung SmartThings Hub (Hub v3 US).
  • I also have some switches of type: GE Z-Wave Plus Motion Dimmer.
  • I have seen the blog and find it interesting how this integration of all the equipment has been achieved; however, I have followed the directions and I am not able to do it :frowning:.
  • Take the information and latest version of the site: Configuration

I’m a new user and not very familiar with the SmartThings device type handler (DTH); but I think I followed the instructions correctly and I don’t achieve the goal :frowning:.

Maybe I did something wrong or am I missing to do something else?

On the other hand: what does this clarification at the beginning of the blog mean? : “…the devices allow for limited LOCAL CONTROL of lighting based on motion…”

Can you help me or tell me what I need to do to get the GE device to work properly in ST?
Thanks in advance.
mm

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This DTH is no longer supported by the author. And Groovy DTHs are on thier way out overall when the Groovy infrastructure gets retired in the future.

You’ll likely have better experience with the Edge driver being put together for these devices:

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Hello :wink:
fantastic explanation.

It helped me a lot and I managed to install the GE switches I had in the new version of SmartThings Edge. Thanks.

The invitation you shared with me in the mail, is it only for GE products?; but I have a concern: I have more equipment (Z-Wave) that I would also like to upgrade.

How do I manage the invitations, or know what other drivers are available in ST Edge, how can I have my other drivers updated,

I have more equipment, e.g. ZooZ brand (power strip) and also some Enerware (sensors) and other brands as well (Aeotec , etc.)…

Note. another concern, I have a Samsung branded Smart Washer and Smart Dryer that worked fine for me with older versions of SmartThings (and other Samsung services), but now recently they are no longer supported :frowning: (they are a bit old now); now with Smarthings Edge, would this be possible again?

Pd. Have you worked integrations with DCS Alarms (Power Series 1832)? Currently it works perfect for me with GetVera (Vera-LT Controller + IT-100 Module); But I want to also try to do it with SmartThings. is this possible?

Thanks again
Regards
mm

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The following should help with your Edge questions, including where to find other drivers:

FAQ: I have no idea what Edge is. Is that a new developer tool? (2022)

Please start a new thread or find an existing relevant thread for questions about other devices. This thread is limited to the specific GE model listed in the topic title. Thank you!

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