Hello community. I hope someone is willing and able to help me here. I have spent 2 solid weekends messing with the setup of 5 new dimmers after a successful install and setup. It took forever to get them working correctly, and I had them finally working perfectly early last week. I was so relieved and went to grab dinner and sorta celebrate. When I go home, the switches were offline. Multiple reboots, resets, app device removals, etc, and gave up for a couple days. Yesterday, I shut down the new Xfinity modem, the Orbi mesh hub and satellites, and all the other device hubs (Sonos, Wemo, Philips Hue, Arlo, and SmartThings). I popped the power tabs on the 5 blue switches… waited 20 min and brought everything back online (modem>mesh hub&satellites>SmartThings & other brand hubs>and finally pushed in and reset the blue dimmers, the started the process of connecting and adding the blue dimmers back to SmartThings. Surprisingly, they came back online very easily and added back… even with the routines still there, which was a big dopamine release for me. I left for about 5 hrs, and when I returned, they were back offline again, and I have been unsuccessful in bringing them back. I have 12 more dimmers on order, so I need to cancel them and return what I have if I can’t find a sustainable solution. I would be so grateful for any advice.
Additional note, that after the roboot of the whole network system, repeated attempts to add the blue dimmers has been unsuccessful, even though the SmartThings hub is within 5 ft. of three of the switches I am attempting to reconnect. One of the hub satellites is about 8 ft. away. All but the switches are back online and operating just fine. The switches throw an error code… I think 34-302. Online search just says to bring the hub closer, but it’s already close.
Which ST hub are you using? ST doesn’t have “satellites”. Are you confusing Zigbee, which must connect to the hub, as opposed to WiFi? The locations of your Orbi WiFi satellites has nothing to do with connecting Zigbee devices to a ST hub.
Everything you describe points to a poor Zigbee mesh. When a switch is connected, have you looked at the path back to the hub? Generaly speaking, Inovelli switches connected to a good mesh don’t drop.
I’d also try doing a factory reset before re-adding.
Based on the device list that was mentioned in the first post, it looks like there’s a huge number of competing 2.4ghz networks. I would suggest moving apart the different hubs as much as is practical, making sure that for each network that you can choose a channel, you manually choose one that doesn’t overlap with the rest of the devices instead of letting it auto choose.
There’s also a great guide on Zigbee network improvements on the Home Assistant forums that may be useful.
Sorry for confusing, but there is an Orbi hub, that connects over Ethernet to the Xfinity modem. The Orbi has two satellites, so that’s where I confused the matter. The SmartThings hub is plugged into an Orbi Satellite closest to the switches. I had it connected to the Orbi hub previously, which isn’t that far away but not as close as the satellite. This same issue was happening initially, and I was told to move the ST closer, and that worked… at least for several hours before they all lost connection again.
Sorry, ewxh? I did read about assigning channels. ST doesn’t do that, and I can look into that for the Orbi mesh network if you think that would be useful?
In the link Rohan gave, this is one of the articles it mentions – I find the graphics used here helpful – they illustrate well where zigbee channels and 2.4 wifi channels conflict.
Zigbee channels 15, 20, and 25 are the most common to use as they have the least overlap across the 2.4 wifi spread (zigbee ch 26 tends to have issues with power constraints and device compatibility, so that one is generally best to avoid).
I’m not familiar with Orbi and it’s been a long time since I used SmartThings (ST), but I’d be surprised if ST does not allow you to change zigbee channels. Find out what channel your Orbi uses for 2.4 wifi and - if it’s available as an option - turn off its auto-channel selection. Set ST to a zigbee channel deconflicted from your 2.4 wifi channel.
Do you use Hue? If so, that’s another zigbee mesh you need to deconflict, so find out what channel it’s using (that’s in the Hue app).
Are the Blues your only mains-powered zigbee devices? It may be a good idea to beef up your zigbee mesh with some repeaters. I love my Blues, but I am not impressed with them as repeaters or as devices that like connecting directly to controller – all 8 of my Blues prefer to connect via other devices, and none of them are popular repeaters.
Sorry, apparently I was typing too fast and auto correct didn’t catch it. It should have read “each”.
So the day after I got them working again, they were still working, which was a huge step forward. I left that day and was traveling all week u til today. When I got home, it was daytime and most of the house lights were off. They were showing disconnected in ST again. After manually trying to turn the switches on, and resetting the ST by unplugging and plugging back in… 3 out of 4 worked. And after a while, they came back online.
It’s my understanding that when you turn them off, they still stay powered and can help retain settings for the hue bulbs. If true, is there a setting that makes them stay that way, and if they stay that way, will they work better as repeaters for each other… maybe stop disconnecting?
Also, wouldn’t the hue bulbs, being Zigbee, also work as repeaters?
Finally. Is there a repeater you could recommend? This seems to be turning into a more complicated system than I had anticipated when deciding to start replacing my Wemo smart switches…
Does Lutron have this much complexity with their setup as well?
Thanks in advance for your insights
It sounds like your Hue bulbs are paired to your Hue bridge (not ST)… If true, your Hue zigbee mesh is wholly separate from your ST’s zigbee mesh, so your Hue bulbs only repeat for stuff on your Hue bridge (not ST). Likewise, your mains-powered zigbee devices on ST do not repeat for any of your Hue devices.
Lutron Caseta is fantastic in its own right (I use a mix of Inovelli, Caseta, and Zooz switches in my setup), but it is not compatible with any smart bulbs/fixtures.
I would encourage you to check what channels your Hue zigbee and ST zigbee are on, and make sure those are both deconflicted with your Orbi’s 2.4 wifi channel. Channel interference can really trash zigbee meshes (and thusly zigbee performance).
ETA - just in case this thought crosses your mind (as it understandably seems reasonable at first blush), you cannot combine your Hue and ST zigbee meshes by putting both on the same zigbee channel - that will not work - they each need to be on their own (deconflicted) zigbee channel.
As long as they physically still have power, yes, that’s true. There’s no specific setting to make them act as repeaters (or stop acting as repeaters).
Personally, I like these for repeaters. I didn’t end up needing any at my own house, but at my parents house having one of them on each floor centrally located helped solve any of the Zigbee issues that they were having.
It it important to deconflict the channels on the mesh though.
No idea, I’ve only ever used a single Lutron Caseta switch ~10 years ago. I couldn’t stand the UX of the switch and got rid of it shortly afterwards. Honestly speaking, this is one of the big reasons why Z-Wave is a great protocol (compared to Zigbee). Because it’s running at around 900mhz, there’s basically no interference with anything else and the range is better compared to Zigbee. Inovelli does make Z-Wave devices as well (the Red Series).
Honestly, this is where something like Home Assistant with Zigbee2MQTT shines. You can ditch all of the proprietary hubs (like Hue) and have everything on a single mesh which does great for repeating.
You should not need to switch hubs to resolve a problem such as this. Basically, there is something fundamentally jacked with your wireless environment.
I have ST, Hubitat and sometimes Home Assistant hubs running zigbee, along with a Philips Hue hub and five other proprietary hubs, and they all coexist without issue. I do not have a Wi-Fi mesh however.
Have you looked at the routing to the hub for the problematic switches? That might give you some idea of what the issue is.
I think @hydro311 is pointing you in the right direction discussing the zigbee channel interference.
Do you need the Wi-Fi remotes? Can you remove them and just go with the primary router to see if that makes a difference?
This may very well involve removing your network devices and then adding them back slowly to see when the failure begins to happen. That is a pretty good way of determining what may be causing the issue.
Thanks everyone for the great insights. I was able to change the Orbi Mesh network to one of the suggested channels but no luck.
The zigbee switches did stay online for 2 days though. Well, they dropped once, but I messed with one switch and they all started showing back up.
Then we had a 45 min power outage this morning, and now they aren’t getting recognized, even after a reset. It was after this setback that I changed the Orbi channel, but no results.
I have even reset the SmartThings hub while trying to switch it to WiFi so I could move it closer to the center of the house. It’s probably more messed up now. I also learned that SmartThings isn’t a thing anymore. A 3rd party has the SmartThings software now, but Samsung stopped making the devices.
My 10-pack order of Inovelli switches just arrived the other day as well, and I’m thinking I need to give up and return everything. I am deflated after putting so much time into this project.
The old Wemo switches just setup and worked. They weren’t as configurable, but they were reliable. I can’t go through this reconnection crap every time the home’s power flickers or they just lose connection.
I guess I can try the Hue channel change suggestion and see what that does.
I may not be as techy as I thought I was, because this has proven way more complicated a puzzle than I expected.
Found the channels for the Hue and the Zigbee system on Smart Things. They are both on different channels. There is also a Sonos hub on some other channel as well… none of them show the same channel
I’ll try unplugging the two satellites and see what that does.
Starting to wonder if the ST is just old. I tried to reset it and use WiFi so I could move it to a more central place, instead of plugged in as I have it now, but it wouldn’t after trying it from two different angles.
Is there something better than ST I should consider. That will work well with these Inovelli Blue dimmers, Hue bulbs, Sonos, Arlo, Ecobee, B-hyve, a few remaining Wemos, and door locks… basically a wide variety of devices. Someone here mentioned ST could still run stuff even if the internet was out, so that would be good to retain.
Unless you have a Gen 1 ST hub, having an older Gen 2 or later should not be an issue in and of itself. Of course, it’s possible that the hub is failing, but I still think you have some fundamental issue with your wireless environment. In addition to removing the satellites, you need to do some WiFi analysis to see which channels are congested and change the channel on your router accordingly.
I’m running a Gen 2 hub along with two other non-ST Zigbee hubs and a bunch of others, such as Sonos, Honeywell, etc. They all work fine together with an older hub, so the fact that the hub is old is not necessarily a problem.
If you decide to upgrade your hub, be mindful of whether or not you need Z-Wave. ST v3 if you do, otherwise the new Aeotec Hub 2 is about to be released, without Z-wave.
IMO, the last thing you need right now is to try to learn a new hub’s ecosystem.
Yes, most things on ST run locally, but that is nothing new.
Thanks for all this great insight. Some update notes:
I have been switching channels on the Orbi mesh network, and also on the various hubs.
I removed all but the main Orbi hub and was able to get things working for 1.5 days, but then the went offline again and I have not been able to get them back. I have reset the ST several times, but eventually reset it and didn’t bring in the old data… basically started over from scratch, but nothing.
There was a comment about which ST I have. I have the ST3. At this point, I think it is failing. I replace my modem, which feeds to the house via WiFi and a brand new switch pushing through wires to all points in the house. I replace the old Orbi mesh network with a new one. The Inovelli switches are new. The other device hubs and the ST are the only remaining components that aren’t new.
I saw that new Aeotec one coming out in October. I am going to purchase that and try again at that time. I don’t think any of my devices use Z-wave, but thanks for the heads-up on that. I will double-check for sure. Also, the comment about avoiding the process of learning a new hub’s ecosystem is very valid. I’m hoping the new eotec one will be similar enough.
One thing that remains I could try if I could get them back online for long enough, is trying the suggestion to see if there was a setting to keep the Zigbee active while turned off for the network to remain strong, and I have dug through settings, so not sure if its something I configure in the Inovelli or a toggle somewhere I am missing. That might help the situation, but if we have a power failure and I have to do resets for all the swtiches over and over until they all get back online, I would be super frustrated at that. I’m willing to test that theory though. If anyone has insights there, it would be appreciated.
So, I tried connecting the Inovelli Blue Dimmer switches several times after I said I was going to stop for awhile, so having a hard time letting this go. There was zero response. I got reading some forums again, and someone mentioned the ability to change channels inside ST, which I thought wasn’t possible. It turns out that you can’t do it through the mobile app, but if you go into the online app there is a sorta app within the app that has this setting, so I switched the channel and tried the switches again… bam connected right away. The next morning they were still online. That afternoon… back offline. Later in the day they came back, and then they went offline again overnight, and I haven’t been able to get them back yet this morning.
What channels are Hue and Sonos on right now, and what are the old and new ST channels?
- The ST Hub was on 13 I think, and it’s been on channel 20 for a week or more.
- The Hue Bridge is on Channel 11
- The Sonos Bridge is on Channel 1
- The Orbi mesh network uses Channel 6
- I read that my Arlo hub chooses its 2.4 channel at will and can’t be controlled. There is an Arlo doorbell very close to three of the Inovelli Blue switches…
- There are a few other items like a Wemo, Orbit B-Hyve sprinkler, and Automate Pulse2 hub, but I think they connect to the router and use the router’s channel… which is 6
Two more things I tried with no success:
- I turned off 2.4 on my modem and a wireless router I had in an upstairs office all together, then turned off the 5 on my mesh so that it was only putting out 2.4 and the only 2.4 access system in the house. I still couldn’t connect
- I got a long network cable and connected my ST very near three of my Innovelli Blue switches so the communication could be as easy as possible between them… no luck
I had purchased a 10 pack of these things after the initial five I bought and installed looked like they were going to work, but returning the 10 today, and will try the installed ones a bit longer, then maybe file a Warranty claim on them. I don’t know what else to do…
Thanks in advance for any further insights.