Zigbee scaling/performance with lots of devices in SmartThings

I have a SmartThings v2 hub with ~100 devices spread around the house, which are a mix of Zigbee, Zwave, WiFi/cloud integrations and virtual switches. Of these, around 60 are Zigbee devices - approx 20 battery powered sensors, 8 smart plugs and the rest are mains powered bulbs/dimmers.

Overall, the system performs well and is responsive, with no noticeable delays in normal use. But there is one exception; I have a set of 19 outside lights (coloured Osram and EGlo smart GU10s) which are controlled using scenes, (e.g. “Set lights 1-12 to green 100%, set lights 11-19 to cool white 30%”). When these scenes are called, the lights are slow to respond (up to a minute before they have all changed) and the rest of my devices are unresponsive during that time. For example, if the 19-light scene is being activated, and then I walk into a room, the (different) motion sensor and light won’t react at all for ~60 seconds. Sometimes, one or two of the outside lights don’t respond to a scene at all and it has to be activated again.

I assume my problem is being caused by a flood of simultaneous messages to the 19 bulbs when the scene is activated, clogging up the Zigbee network. Presumably this network traffic has to clear before my other sensors and devices start responding again. I assume lack of repeaters aren’t a problem - hopefully the bulbs should be repeaters themselves, but even if they’re not I have 5 smart plugs within range as well as the hub. Being coloured bulbs may not help either, if SmartThings is sending several commands separately (e.g. "turn on, set RGB to green, set brightness 100%) - that could lead to ~50 messages sent during each scene. The bulbs are inside metal spotlight housings, which doesn’t help signal either, but they work OK individually.

Is there anything I can do to improve the response times of these bulbs, or am I hitting the limitations of the Zigbee protocol?
As adding repeaters doesn’t seem to help, is my hub the bottleneck? Would a newer hub, or even multiple hubs help?

Last resort is to replace 12 of the bulbs with a couple of Zigbee dimmers driving “dumb” bulbs, reducing the number of devices significantly, but then I’d lose control of colour.

Thanks for any advice

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Your analysis looks good. I think it is important to say that the issues you are seeing are because of SmartThings’ implementation of the Zigbee protocol, not the Zigbee protocol itself. In particular, the lack of support for groupcasting is an issue once you get to more than about eight individual devices in the scene.

ONE POSSIBLE SOLUTION

The most straightforward way to improve things from an engineering aspect would probably to introduce a couple of Hue Bridges and let them run the outdoor lights as Hue scenes (not SmartThings scenes). That way you would still have colour control, but the implementation would be much smoother.

You used to be able to do this with the custom edge driver created by @blueyetisoftware , but I don’t know if that still works. Otherwise, there should be other ways to proxy into Hue scenes.

You wouldn’t have to use Hue bulbs to get this result: any devices that worked with a hue Bridge would work, including Gledopto drivers with dumb LED strips.

But it would mean a significant redesign of your network architecture, and that could be a lot of work. It would dramatically lighten the load on your SmartThings Zigbee network, though. I just don’t know if that’s worth it to you.

ALTERNATIVELY, ACCEPT ST’S LIMITATIONS

The easier option would be to conceptually divide your outside lights into zones and change your ST scenes to include no more than eight devices at a time. And activate no more than two scenes per routine. This would give you a slight “popcorn effect” outside when the lights were activated, but that’s usually more acceptable than with indoor lighting and might meet your needs.

MY PERSPECTIVE

We all have our own lenses, and as a network engineer, I am particularly concerned about the disruption to your other devices by your current setup. While, you can see the motion sensor fail to light the room in the room you’re standing in, other communications failures could be Happening elsewhere in the home and that just worries me.

I would agree your description of the problem sounds right: that the SmartThings network is not handling the traffic as the individual messages go out. From my perspective, that’s a critical failure that needs to be addressed, and I would be willing to put time and effort into finding a solution. But I do realize that other people may not care that much, or at least not enough to fix it.

SmartThings staff have said multiple times over the years that their typical customer has 15 devices or fewer. That may have gone up a bit in the last year or two, but my guess is that it’s still under two dozen. People in this community are almost all “super users“ who exceed that, of course, but the architecture just isn’t really built for scaling up. And they don’t have much market pressure to do so, apparently. :thinking:

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I have just under 210 Zigbee devices, spread across 2 hubs, with one of them carrying the majority of the load (35 zigbee devices). Out of that total population, the majority are very chatty battery powered devices, which constantly send temp, humidity, and battery reports.

One of the most important things to do for a healthy zigbee mesh is to make sure you have good working zigbee mesh routing devices, like AC (mains) powered devices, like switches. Quite a few of them when you have as many as I do, or even you in your case.

Another couple things to do is make sure your wifi channel is well separated from your zigbee channel, or at least as far apart as you can set it. There are posts in this community talking about that, so I won’t go into that here. Also, rebuild your mesh every so often by powering down your hub for at least 20 minutes. Again, there are posts in this community discussing that as well.

Another thing to consider are those Osram bulbs. I used to have similar ones, and they were terrible performers in my zigbee mesh. I believe they are considered repeaters if I’m not mistaken. I removed them a while ago and I stopped seeing odd things happening with my zigbee devices. Same with Cree bulbs. Those are terrible too. I replaced everything with Sengled bulbs years ago and haven’t had a problem since.

I used to have close to 300 devices, almost all zigbee, and even then I never had issues after making the changes I mentioned above. Now, ST themselves have caused me problems, but mesh issues for me have been non-existent for the last few years.

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JD would using the “Mirror Group Function” available in the ZigBee Light Multifunction Mc driver help reduce the hub traffic in this case?

+1 for use of Hue hub(s) and @blueyetisoftware driver to trigger Hue scenes and control Hue generally. Response is much better when done through the Hue hub with no delaying.other actions, uneven fades or bulb activations… @JDRoberts - it still works well :blush:

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Yep. The functionality still works. As far as I know, everything is functional other than the “Alerts” feature which was killed by ST when they blocked hubs from having a Settings group in the menu. If they ever bring that back, the Alerts can be flipped back on.

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I’m not familiar with the details of that edge driver. Obviously @Mariano_Colmenarejo would know.

In theory, yes!

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What’s the firmware version of your hub?

Firmware version on the hub is 000.055.00005

Thanks for the suggestions everyone, I hadn’t thought of using a Hue hub or the mirror group function so will take a look at those.

@JDRoberts: Are you suggesting one routine calling two scenes (of 8 bulbs each)? Do you think that would help vs one scene of 16? Presumably it generates the same amount of network traffic?

Oddly, I checked my setup earlier and one bulb was using a different driver to all the others, so I’ve set them the same. Response time seems a little better tonight (still slow, but not as slow) but time will tell if it stays like that.

@johnconstantelo Agree on the Osram bulbs - they’re not the most reliable, particularly if you send too many commands in a short time (don’t try to make them flash!). However they seem better than they used to be now I have more repeaters. The Eglo bulbs had issues too - they flooded my mesh when I first got them (as in nothing Zigbee worked at all when they were connected) but a firmware update fixed that.

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Yes.

Presumably it generates the same amount of network traffic?

Same amount of total traffic in a minute, probably. But with a very slight delay in between the two sets, which could be enough to let some other network traffic through.

You’d have to try it and see if it made a difference, of course. :man_shrugging:t2:

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After reading though all the replies I would suggest switching to the ZigBee Light Multifunction Mc driver and setting up Mirror Groups.

This is Free and easy to apply. Then you can see if it works for you.

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Unfortunately Mariano is no longer active in this forum. :sob:

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That is a tragedy. :disappointed_relieved:

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Very sad indeed… His contributions to this community have been instrumental.

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If you have an Echo device that has a Zigbee hub, you can always create a virtual switch in SmartThings to start those routines on it. That should work if SmartThings is the problem. I’m no expert on how these protocols work, but I’m pretty good at finding workarounds for my SmartThings devices.

I’ve changed over to the ZigBee Light Multifunction Mc driver and setup two mirror groups covering all the bulbs. So far I’m very impressed; response times are much faster than before. Not perfect, but significantly better and with far less popcorning.

It reminds me of how the “mirror” function works in Smart Lighting - I used to have 8 bulbs mirrored in one room and they were usually perfectly in sync. Shows Samsung can do this when they want to! Unfortunately mirroring via Smart Lighting only supports on/off and brightness, so not much use for coloured bulbs.

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I am glad it worked for you. @Mariano_Colmenarejo 's drivers are great and can solve many problems that SmartThings doesn’t address.

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