Integrating Zigbee Canless Lights For Entire Home - Juno Connect

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#71

I had a few lights drop more recently so I thought, why not try smartthings as that’s the officially supported way to use these Juno lights. I bought an Aeotec hub, but was unable to pair. It turns out that due to a firmware update back in October these lights no longer work with smartthings. The issue is known and people are working on it, but that is how it is for now.

I spoke to a tech support person at Juno who said that the Amazon Echo smart home hub is officially supported and works well with these bulbs. I’m tempted to give that a shot.

However, anyone know if the Inovelli two-in-one switch will work with the Amazon Echo? I’m imagining that getting that to work esp with Zigbee binding might be a long shot.

#72

It does pair to the Echo but very basic features (on/off/dim).

#73

Can a Zigbee group be done with Samsung smarthtings? I was able to bind one light to the Blue series switch and it works great, but I have 6 more and can figure out how to group them.

#74

hmm, i was able to pair the lights to smarthings hub v2 maybe back in October, and they still work. Trying to get more than one on the same circuit done was difficult, so i ended up doing it one by running a temporary circuit with a switch just to light the one i was connecting.

I had to cycle power 5 time, then the device popped up to connect, then when it asks to turn off and on, i had to again cycle 5 times.

#75

I was able to get 1 to work, the Endpoint was 8. But cant get more than 1 to work.

#76

I’ve got these working successfully so far in two groups of 4 lights, bound to two different inovelli blue switches.

I’m using home assistant, zha, and a sonoff zigbee stick.

I haven’t experimented with the advanced parameters on the switch yet, to see if I can adjust dimming rate, etc.

@anon640257 or @EricM_Inovelli do either of you have a document about how the blue 2-1 switches are supposed to control a dimmable ZigBee light bound to the switch? Do the various configuration parameters for the switch still apply? When does the switch forward commands it receives to the bound lights?

I’m thinking something like:
When you hold up, send a ZigBee command to increase the level, with a rate determined (how?) by the ___ configuration parameters

Blue 2-1 switch occasionally flashing lights off
#77

These lights suck. No consistency, go offline all the time. Have to factory reset to rejoin. When are we getting a firmware update, lol…

#78

Can you tell us more about your setup? Trying to understand if there is a common element.

I’m running one as a test right now, as my electrician will only install UL listed fixtures in the new house, and these are some of the only UL listed Zigbee lights I can find that are not just bulbs.

#79

My recommendation is to avoid these Juno Connect lights if you can. Since I installed them Philips Hue has come out with wafer down lights. I’m sure they are much more $$$ but could be worth it.

I have 11 of the Junos upstairs and 9 downstairs. Originally I had all connected to the same hub via zigbee 2 mqtt with a sonoff dongle on a raspberry pi. It worked fairly well but periodicaly things would become unresponsive. Most recently I connected the downstairs lights to an Amazon Echo. Since then I don’t think I’ve had any more major system meltdowns.

However, the options with the Echo are very limited. For example, I haven’t figured out yet how to conrol the Echo-connected lights from these Ikea Styrbar remotes while with Z2M I can do zigbee binding. Much nicer.

I suspect I’m having better luck now due to the upstairs and downstairs lights being on separate networks, perhaps leading to a better topology or less interference or ???

#80

Setup
Setup1280×720 74.4 KB

Need help with setup to get this working as you have in the video, I have tried to setup the switch as Dimmable and Smart Bulb, but cannot get to dim correctly, two of the lights flicker/blink, when dimming and all others work fine, not sure what I am doing wrong, any help is appreciated.

#81

Yeah happy to help!

For starters, I think you’ll have to swap the Aux and 2-1 as the Line in has to always go to the 2-1, unless you are able to somehow take the line from where the Aux is and run it to the 2-1 w/out wiring it to the Aux.

After that, can you let me know if these are the Zigbee enabled ones, or are they just Bluetooth?

#82

They are Zigbee enabled, I will switch the 2-1 and Aux when I get home to see if that remedies the issue.

#83

Ok, good to know – in addition to that, can you try these steps? It should help with the sporadic bulbs turning on:

#84

This is the diagram I used for wiring originally
image

#85

I run Home Assistant. I’ve tried these lights with both Z2M + Texas Instruments Z-Stack ZNP, and ZHA + Texas Instruments Z-Stack ZNP, and also Deconz + Conbee II stick, and in all of these scenarios, you join the lights to the coordinator, they work for a bit of time, then they disconnect permanently and the only way to get them functional again is to factory reset + pair.

I literally have 8 of these wafers NOW connected to a Sonoff Power Switch and I have a button on the wall that just turns the power on or off to these – I no longer control their brightness or color temperature ~ I might as well have purchased dumb lights.

#86

@Bcohen8129. I am in a similar boat.

I have random Juno Connects drop off and then need to be repaired, and there seems to be an upper limit that after having 26 units on a zigbee network, pairing additional units becomes almost impossible.

I will say Acuity has been somewhat receptive to wanting to fix issues. I say somewhat because they seem very locked into the smartthings platform (which I left a long time ago).

I would say/ask please reach out to Juno Smart Connected (Juno AI): [email protected]

Not that I think they’ll waive a magic wand, but the more they hear there are issues, the more chance they’ll push a firmware update to fix things.

I’ve even gone so far as to resurrect a smartthings hub and create a dedicated zigbee mesh of just the Juno Connects. Their development team seems to be working with the Samsung Smartthings software team and the focus of their tech support is on smartthings. So my theory was take all their excuses away and get them on a platform that they can access/troubleshoot.

-When working they work great.
-When one drops off a network in a circuit with 11 of them, it’s a freaking PITA…

-Jonathan

#87

I have the same problems as everyone else here seem to have.

I have emailed the address posted above, and I suggest everyone else do the same!!!

[email protected]

#88

TLDR: GO GET AN AEOTEC SMARTTHINGS HUB AND YOUR PROBLEMS WILL GO AWAY!!!

OK, so holy f*ck…

I spoke with someone @ Acuity and brace yourselves for this response…

I was told that these lights were designed SPECIFIALLY to only work with 3 hubs and 3 hubs only, and that if you try to go outside of these, they WILL NOT WORK. And, get this. IDK the logic, but dude @ Acuity said different hubs support a different amount of these lights.

So, he said get one of these three hubs:

1.) Aeotec SmartThings Hub - Supports up to 64? of these lights
2.) Amazon Echo Hub - Supports up to 12? of these lights
3.) Google Nest Hub - Supports up to 5? of these lights

I can’t remember the exact numbers, which is why I have question marks above. I was already frustrated as all heck that this Acuity dude was telling me that I have to break out of my local-only philosophy to make these lights behave properly. Still am quite livid. But, in my rage, I remember it made sense to go with the Aeotec SmartThings hub. The dude @ Acuity said that’s what he ran in his house, and had Juno Connect lights at his house, and the experience was flawless.

So, a few days ago, I bought the damn Aeotec Hub – set it up – joined the lights to it – configured the SmartThings integration in HA – the damn thing works. It fricken works. No disconnects, no lights going offline, the lights just fricken work.

This was important for me because the reason I bought these lights to begin with was because they met the criteria to fit into my “Circadian Lighting” household. Every light in my house is Color Temp adjustable, and I have a service running in the background that takes the lights and transitions them slowly throughout the day from warm in the AM, to cool by midday, and back to warm at night. When I was looking to add more lighting in my living room, a buddy of mine showed me these and so I bought 8 of them. I bought 1 first, tested it briefly with Deconz, it worked in the test, so I ordered 7 more. It wasn’t until I had all 8 joined to Deconz and ran them for a few days or so that the disconnects surfaced, and I held onto these hoping for a firmware update one day. The dude @ Acuity said don’t hold your breath for a firmware update that’s going to make these work with Deconz/ZHA/Zigbee2MQTT… So, here we are.

If the Philips Hue Zigbee canless downlights were available at the time, and I knew these lights were going to suck this badly, I would have just went that route. But I am taking the sunk-cost route on these and instead of completely replacing them for approx $500, I decided to add this $140 hub and introduce a cloud component. I have the hub on an IoT VLAN that can’t talk to my trusted VLAN, so at least there’s that.

Anyhow, I now have Smart Lights again that don’t disconnect. I hope this helps out anyone else who is/was as frustrated as me!

#89

Lol just seeing this now…

Is your resurrected SmartThings mesh proving to be rock solid for these downlights?

#90

I will second this. After resurrecting my Smarttings hub, once I get a wafer connected, it stays connected well.

BUT, I still seem to hit limits on the number of wafers I can connect. Once past 25-26 range, it stops consistently adding devices.

Question for this sub-group: I am not a smartthings expert and lost most of my skills on that platform. My understanding is you have to change the driver to enable binding/grouping. Has anyone been successful in changing the driver for these wafers to then allow zigbee grouping and binding. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet.

If I can get group binding to work to the Inovelli Blues, I can expose these to Home Assistant (I know, now I’m in the cloud), but I could live with that for now.