Most of my automated devices are Z-Wave, but I have a couple of Zigbee outlet switches that I use for a lamp and an appliance. These have all been working great with SmartThings, well, up until about three days ago. Then suddenly the outlets stopped working… almost!
The devices are simple outlet switches that can turn on and off, nothing fancy. SmartThings Hub lists it as an “Innr Smart Plug”.
One of them for example controls a table lamp. I have a remote button on the wall, and I’ve got a function programmed so that if I press the wall button, it will toggle the lamp on or off via the outlet switch. I also have an automation set to turn the lamp on at dusk, and off at dawn. Again, simple stuff, been working well for a couple years.
But suddenly a few days ago, I noticed that pressing the wall button does nothing. I can’t manually toggle the switch on or off. Of course, if I walk over to the switch and press its hard button on the outlet, it can certainly switch on and off, so it’s not a mechanical problem.
If I go into the SmartThings app to show status of the device, it does show the correct status. If I manually turn the switch on or off, after a few seconds the app will show me the status has changed. So the hub is definitely communicating with the switch. But, if I press the On/off control in the app, telling the hub to send a command to toggle the switch, it will just hang, and spin, as if trying to send the command, but no response is coming back.
So the hub is in communication, but it isn’t. That’s awfully strange.
Furthermore, the Automation that I set up is still working! The lamp turns on automatically at dusk, and presumably if I waited until dawn, it would turn off again. But I usually prefer to turn it off myself before bed.
So, why is the hub able to see the switch, show me its status, and send on/off commands via Automation, but can’t send Manual commands to the switch? It makes no sense to me.
Furthermore, BOTH my Zigbee switches are behaving exactly the same, so I can’t really blame the hardware, I don’t think. It seems like something must have changed on my hub. Was there a firmware update or something?
Honestly, this has all been working so well for years that I don’t even remember how to properly troubleshoot problems like these anymore. I’m not sure what logs to check or how to go about finding the nature of the problem.
Anyone else seeing this same sudden change in behavior for Zigbee devices on their network?