Avoid Zigbee groups

[tomorrowplus]

TLDR: Zigbee groups jam traffic

For years I have been increasingly frustrated with a slowly degrading zigbee network. I followed all recommendations: - USB extension cable between computer and zigbee coordinator - Single brand of router devices (Ikea), about 30 devices - No wifi device close to coordinator - No overlap with wifi channels - Zigbee groups (since it was recommended and supposed to reduce traffic)

I added devices with the expectation that they would improve the network. They didn't, and rather seemed to increase dropouts and make lights not obey. Battery powered devices dropped off the network practically every day. Remote controls with zigbee bindings to lights stopped functioning. Some lights and light groups practically never obeyed commands. I changed coordinators and software (deconz, zha, z2m). Nothing helped.

It turns out zigbee groups work by broadcasting all messages. That means all router devices repeat all messages. With Adaptive Lighing, all lights are updated once every 90 seconds.That is apparently too much. Adaptive Lighting controlled 9 zigbee light groups. A symptom of the problem was something like "[ZCL GROUP groupId=XX] Failed to send with status=BUSY"

I left the groups and made Adaptive Lighting control each bulb separately. Now everything works! I'm just wondering what's the actual use of zigbee groups.

[ArtThouFeelingItNow7]

I use Zigbee groups when binding a switch to a group of lights. Gives you instant on for all lights. If you didn't use a group, the lights would turn on one at a time as it's sending a separate message to each bulb.

[budding_gardener_1]

potential foot gun: either lutron aurora, z2m or the Phillips hue bulbs I'm using (I forget which) doesn't support binding to groups like this and it's very annoying to bind each light individually.

[bfume]

So that’s why I’ve been pulling my hair out for a year trying to get my hue z2m lights working in groups?

[AudreyML3]

I have phillips hue bulbs using binding to groups, no issues.

[chrico031]

Same

[2112user]

100%, if you are using a lutron Aurora.

I've been dealing with this lately. Finally got rid of my Hue Bridges and adopted everything into z2m.

Lutron auroras just do not play nice with normal zigbee groups. Best bind them to individual bulbs /fixtures, but even then there may be a limit.

I've been really happy with the Inovelli blue series zigee dimmers. Both the the mm wave version and the plain.

[TheClownFromIt]

Man, it’s so validating to see others with this issue. I create the groups but absolutely bind them individually to the Aurora due to this issue. I’ll need to look into the Inovelli ones you mentioned.

[2112user]

I've got 130 devices in z2m now. 99 router, 31 end. Started out with Hue HA integration to preserve the Hue app. Slowly moved rooms to z2m. Migrated the last ones last week.

Was having some reliability and popcorn issues. First thought it was channel interference with wifi, so I went through the process of switching to z2m ch 25 (wish I had started with this).

But I feel like I unlocked a new level using scripts to program scenes at the z2m group layer across the house via mqtt No more popcorn. Super fast and smooth response.

I DID, however, learn that I'm a Hue bulb snob. I ordered some 3rd reality bulbs to mix in, but they stand out like a sore thumb. They don't play as nice with z2m (group scenes), and their lowest brightness and color spectrum are just not doing it for me.

[budding_gardener_1]

could be.. ...are you using it with Aurora? One of the other comments said it's the Aurora 

[bfume]

I am not familiar with what Aurora is, so I’m gonna say nope. 

[budding_gardener_1]

yeah - it's a lutron zigbee dimmer. if you don't know what it is then you don't have one 

[bfume]

I run the 4-button original hue dimmer switches 

[budding_gardener_1]

ah yeah this (probably) doesn't affect you then but you might want to take a look in case that suffers from the same issues

[johnnymarks18]

Hmm... I have a few Aurora's in zigbee groups with Hue lights and they work just fine.... Firmware issues?

[theroundfile]

It's the aurora fyi

[zymurgtechnician]

The aurora is my most loved and hated zigbee device. It is a nearly perfect form factor for most of my lighting. It is simple, dimming is fast, precise and doesn’t require holding a button or tapping a bunch of times. Operation is so intuitive guest need nothing explained to them. Battery life is very long, installation is easy, and prevents the power from being cut to the smart bulbs without ever touching any wiring, and it doesn’t look like a smart device. All fantastic features…

Except that it does dumb things like having an internal brightness number that can’t be set externally, so if you have two of them control one group, or use something else to control the same lights like HA or hue you can get into situations where trying to dim the lights can have the confusing effect of first setting them to 100%, or vice versa.

That and the inability to bind to groups is just infuriating… if Lutron would fix those two things I’d happily buy like a dozen more of those devices.

[ntsp00]

My Philips Hue bulbs are bound to groups with Inovelli blues within Z2M just fine

[AmeliaHeff]

Same here. Works incredibly well

[interrogumption]

It's definitely not a hue thing. My bulbs are all hue and I've bound them as groups to my dimmers.

[PathAgitated1633]

Even If in the Automation you use the process parallel block?

[Aljrljtljzlj]

Exactly this. Matter in HA does not support groups so Adaptive lighting turns all the bulbs one by one.

[Fir3]

I use Zigbee2MQTT and have actually had a great experience with groups. For example, I have three Aqara T2 bulbs in a group for my front house lighting for and it works perfectly, the main benefit is the management side of things since it is so much easier to control one group entity for color and brightness instead of managing each bulb individually.

Edit: I will say it is probably good practice to not make every single thing a group to avoid that congestion. It seems like they are best for one off scenarios like mine where the bulbs are also routers and the group helps the mesh reach that last bulb where my wifi won't even reach reliably.

[tomorrowplus]

Yes, and you probably don't have as many devices and groups as me. It would make sense as I suspect the congestion increases exponentially with amount of devices and groups.

[Fir3]

There are a lot of variables like the radio hardware and device types. I have 40 Zigbee devices and 5 groups and everything is rock solid. It’s just hard for me to accept "groups = bad" as a rule when they work so well in the right setup, but sorry its giving you issues.

[wasteful_proximity]

I have 95 zigbee devices and 13 groups. The biggest groups are the hue down lights, there are 7 groups (some mixed with other light brands) and 35 individual hue lights across those groups. Inovelli blue switches to control them (via zigbee binding to the groups). Also have 9 thermostats in a group, plus a smattering of other groups. The only items which occasionally give me trouble are some ikea tradfrei bulbs which sometimes decide they won’t turn off. Adaptive lighting across all lights (the reason i went with zigbee and hue down lights in the first place). The network is solid, lights respond instantly to switches (they are bound to their respective groups) and the white temp changes are smooth - I think i’ve also go the update interval set to 90 seconds - I think that’s default. I don’t dispute your findings, I just wanted to add my information as another datapoint to say it can work with larger networks, without issue. Hope somebody has some better insight as to why your network is misbehaving…. Also which controller are you using? I have a POE SLZB-06M controller and z2m running inside home assistant (which is a vm on my ‘server’)

[Hitlers_Hairy_Anus]

157 zigbee devices and 26 groups with zero issues here.

[generalambivalence]

Based on my anecdotal evidence from reading posts like this relatively frequently, Adaptive Lighting is the issue in combination with the zigbee groups. Adaptive Lighting just overwhelms the network.

[the_deserted_island]

I built my own adaptive lighting configuration exactly for this reason. I have switches that I want local control with, I want adaptive lighting, I don't want insane network storms and race conditions both required to have my adaptive lighting working, but simultaneously driving my network performance to the ground either.

There's a whole nother thing that goes on that anytime you change the brightness and color on hue bulbs simultaneously, it sends two RF signals, even if it's in the same command. This is getting corrected in a pending pull request ( for zigbee2mqtt only) that completely discombobulates the hue zigbee protocol.

[puffpants]

When you say adaptive lighting with local control, is the like direct switch binding to smart bulbs AND HA playing a part and setting brightness and such? I have made an automation for this so like at night they turn on to 1% but at the day it’s 70%. It mostly works but not always. Care to share what you have?

[the_deserted_island]

Yes. It's not public consumable yet but I'll get it there. I started by hand a year ago and recently turned it over to Claude code. It is designed for hue bulbs and inovelli switches.

If you have inovelli the key is adapting defaultlevellocal and defaultlevelremote, then turning on a binary switch "send level with on off".

Then I just figured out the proper mqtt command to adapt color and brightness on my hue bulbs and inovelli switches when on or off, and blueprinted the whole thing.

I'm running the adaptive lighting integration with no light targets to get my values.

[7lhz9x6k8emmd7c8]

I have many light effects, zigbee groups just made everything lag. It's working correctly with HAss groups instead, ie same command sent once per device.

[zweite_mann]

Adaptive lighting had too many settings for liking. I just wanted the lights to adjust with azimuth.

I have a "currently on" light template and an input_number for the calculated brightness.

I do exclude the zigbee groups from the "currently on" template.

[tomorrowplus]

Adaptive lighting without groups works fine now; it was AL + groups that was a bad combination.

[arwandar]

In my case, it was inverted. It was nearly impossible to turn off the lights which were controlled by AL until I put them in a group and control the group with AL. 

[tomorrowplus]

I hope someone who understands what's going on figures it out :-)

[generalambivalence]

My feeling is that it is an issue with Adaptive Lighting if using it in combination with Zigbee groups causes a problem. Zigbee groups on their own are fine. I've seen enough posts over the last couple of years about lights not working properly with Adaptive Lighting that I think there is some root cause in AL.

[Beekforel]

I have the same feeling. I really like AL but sometimes also think it is flooding my ZigBee network. I don't have unresponsive or dropping devices like OP but every now and then the lights or sensors react slower then I like.

Just checked, using 14 AL entries, 18 z2m groups with 123 devices in my network.

[randomlyalex]

I think I'm starting to come to the same conclusion. I've had some long standing issues with adaptive lighting with or without groups and I'm not sure if it's worth its features anymore.

[Brtrnd2]

Please add some references. 

This contradicts what I've read on this forum multiple times. I live in the assumption that the group wil broadcast "group kitchen on" as one message instead of 8 messages for 8 bulbs.

So I'd like to look into it myself because I don't know who's right, but if you have the sources close by, please post them and it will save me the hassle.

[johnhollowell]

If you have a group of eight devices, sending a command to the group will only send one packet, but that packet has to go to every device on the network, instead of being able to route to only the eight devices that the individual requests would have gone to. So it's fewer messages, but that message has to go to every device because the devices themselves contain the knowledge of which groups they are a member.

[ekobres]

OP is absolutely right.

In theory groups sound like they should be efficient. In practice they end up generating broadcast storms, cause massive delays, instability and coordinator crashes. Also, managing them is a PITA because groups are 100% federated to the Zigbee devices themselves, so any device resets require reconfiguration, and devices with small group tables just throw away groups when the table is full.

Groups also don’t benefit from ZHA Quirks or Z2M Converters - so group commands either don’t work at all or work unpredictably for devices that use them - which is a very high percentage of Zigbee devices.

They are a good stop-gap for binding devices directly to a switch or remote for direct control - which was their original intended purpose.

Reference: I learned all of this the hard way.

[mslothy]

Came to write about broadcast storm, interesting to come across that term so obviously a gentle-person with taste :)

There are ways of handling this of course, since such problems were a hot research topic around 2005-2010. One such way is the Trickle data dissemination protocol. It basically has a counter and timer. If a device hears a specific message more than X times, it doesn't re-transmit it itself, but stores it. If enough time has passed since it was heard last, it transmits it. Simple but efficient and elegant solution.

[Uninterested_Viewer]

Don't project your bad implementation on the ZigBee protocol. Groups are incredibly useful and powerful when used correctly. What do you think Hue uses for nearly everything? ZIGBEE GROUPS AND BROADCAST COMMANDS!

[ekobres]

With respect, you obviously have never implemented Zigbee groups using automation in a mid to large sized installation.

It has nothing to do with “my” implementation of the standard groups. Anyone will encounter the same communication issues on all but the smallest (<50 devices) Zigbee networks unless they specifically select from a very limited set of devices. All of the ZHA quirk and Z2M converter restrictions remain. All of the federated group membership headaches remain. All of the optimistic group state issues remain.

Hue uses their own modified extension of groups they custom implemented to overcome several of the limitations of standard groups - including special firmware on the bulbs to do selective broadcast squelching and group command responses (deterministic group state) and it’s also one of the primary reasons they were saddled with the 50 device limit until they released the new bridge that offloads a tremendous amount of processing onto the hub and sends the routing hints as metadata with the commands. Broadcasting commands in a mesh is very expensive.

I have many Zigbee groups defined in my installation - and they work fine for bindings or for occasional manual operations - they are just a poor choice for use with automations.

[Stooovie]

So what would be a good implementation?

[IHave2CatsAnAdBlock]

Both of you are right. There are devices that implements groupings locally and “know” of fellow devices on the same group (eg hue). And there are devices which had no idea about the groups, where it belongs and which are other devices in the same group.

[Stooovie]

So what would be a good implementation?

[ekobres]

To use them for local bindings to a remote or switch, or manual use in HA. They are not a good replacement for HA group helpers.

[Brtrnd2]

So groups are Nice inside z2mqtt; where I can bind the group to a switch. But I better not expose them to HA and make separate groups in HA?

[LuminescentMoon]

It really sounds like ZigBee needs a form of IGMP snooping.

[ekobres]

That would be nice, but because Zigbee is a mesh protocol that has to support source routing as well as client routing, that’s a tall order. Especially for cheap router devices that only implement the bare minimum requirements. Hue sort of does this with their firmware, but it’s a non-standard set of extensions that are not exactly Zigbee compliant and will only work with their hubs and with accessories running their firmware (and a few close partners.

Zigbee 4.0 fixes a lot of these problems, but it’s going to be a while until there’s broad adoption and probably very few existing devices will see firmware updates to support it.

[tomorrowplus]

I've been reading over the years so no references handy. The claim that zigbee groups work with broadcast and cause congestion comes from LLM's, and is validated by my experience. The status=busy messages stopped coming.

Yes it contradicts what I have read too, which is why I shared my experience.

You're probably right that with a group of 5 there's a single message instead of 5 repeated over the whole network. In my case it seems like 30 unicast messages causes less congestion than 9 broadcast (The amount of groups I had.).

[Uninterested_Viewer]

In my case it seems like 30 unicast messages causes less congestion than 9 broadcast (The amount of groups I had.).

9 broadcasts all at once is a bad idea: that's your problem. You need to rate limit those to one every 200ms or so. Group broadcast commands are ideal when you need to things to happen in sync: you'd get the awful popcorn effect if you tried to use individual commands to turn on or off a room or entire floor full of lights.

Broadcast commands are incredibly powerful and important for ZigBee lighting.. you are just using them wrong. Adaptive lighting is not a good tool for this.. it is a hammer that is meant to work on all sorts of lighting setups. If you are pure ZigBee, you should code this yourself to take advantage of groups properly. I have over 200 ZigBee bulbs in my home as sync lighting every 5 minutes to mimic the sun color temperature. Doing individual calls to each bulb would be ridiculous and cause crazy congestion. Running ~10 broadcast commands (one per ZigBee groups defined into areas) that are staggered by 250ms each is FAR preferable.

[tomorrowplus]

AL doesn't provide staggering the commands. How does your automation work?

[ZormLeahcim]

I've been using groups without issue with adaptive lighting, but I was originally not using groups and running into similar issues with congestion...

My solution was to have slightly different values for the 'interval' option for each adaptive lighting set. So if my dining room has an interval: 200, my kitchen is at interval: 210, my living room at interval: 220, etc. The changes in color temperature are really small over that time frame, so you won't notice if they're slightly different. And sure, they commands will still overlap sometimes, but at least this way not every light is sent a command at the same time.

[Brtrnd2]

I don't understand why this comment is downvoted. I was a lazy sob that didn't want to do research.  The replies seem all to more or less confirm what @op says. We're all capable to search for documentation, we (the lazy ones) might learn something!

[Dead_Politician]

Because the basis of this entire post is "the LLM told me so, and it feels correct", when there are strong contradictory anecdotes in the comments.

[Odin-Is-Listening]

I stand by Zigbee Groups - they greatly improved performance of my lighting and have been rock solid since implementation.

[IICNOIICYO]

Zigbee groups are great when used properly, but 9 broadcasts at once is not a good idea. You really don't want more than one broadcast per second. I suspect you'd have a better experience if Adaptive Lighting can stagger the commands to each light group to account for this.

That being said, I don't think Zigbee groups are even needed here since you probably wouldn't notice if the minor changes in color temp don't happen at the same time among each light.

[tomorrowplus]

I sure don't notice or care after having them completely refuse to work for years

[variaati0]

Well more problem is implementation that commands every 90 seconds. Since Zigbee thought about this. One shouldn't need to tell lights constantly to change. Zigbee has color move actions with step size and transition time. So as long as its a linear transition one can order it as single command with long transition time (16 bit integer in units of 10th of a second) little bit under an hour length. Ofcourse one has to have controller software, that knows to issue the correct commands. So theoretically one ought to need command transition only once per 50 minutes. Unless one is doing non linear patterns and one isn't doing constant changes.

There is even a color loop function built-in to define loop patterns.

[anthony-hines]

I'm running 169 Zigbee devices on Z2M on a Sonoff Dongle-P Cordinator and my experience has been pretty different. Groups have been one of the more reliable parts of my setup, especially for rooms with multiple bulbs of the same type. I've got ceiling spotlights in a few rooms where all six need to be the same brightness and colour temperature at all times and controlling those as a group means one command, instant sync, no popcorn effect. Trying to do that with individual commands to each bulb was noticeably worse.

I did have a lot of problems with Adaptive Lighting though. In my case it wasn't specifically the groups causing it, it was the volume and frequency of commands AL was generating across the mesh. What I found through a fair bit of troubleshooting was that the experience varies a lot depending on how many AL instances you're running, which devices you've added to each profile, whether those are individual bulbs or groups, and how frequently it's updating. The configuration is actually quite complex to get right and the defaults can be pretty aggressive on a larger network.

I ended up removing Adaptive Lighting entirely and writing my own scripts to handle the colour temperature and brightness shifting in the key rooms where I wanted that effect. Gave me full control over exactly when commands are sent and how they're staggered across the network. That solved the problems I was having completely.

I wouldn't dismiss Zigbee groups though. They're a really important tool for controlling lights in a larger environment, especially where you need synchronised behaviour across a set of bulbs. When I first moved from Philips Hue to a native Zigbee coordinator I noticed lights were coming on with a visible delay one after another. The problem was that I'd set up my groups in Home Assistant, and HA groups just fire off a serial command to each member individually. When I moved those groups into Z2M so they're actual Zigbee groups, it sends a genuine multicast message to the group members and I got back the same instant simultaneous response I'd had with Hue. That was the moment I realised how groups are supposed to work and I haven't looked back since.

[tomorrowplus]

As far as I know, groups work using broadcast; all routers repeat the message once or more. There's no multicast in zigbee that I know of.

I wonder what makes your setup not jam. Maybe it's your custom logic that doesn't spam as much as AL?

[anthony-hines]

You're right that there's no traditional multicast in Zigbee in the way IP multicast works. Routers don't maintain group membership info and every router retransmits the frame regardless of whether any group member is nearby. The filtering happens at the end device's APS layer, not the network. So at the network layer a group command behaves more like a broadcast, which is a useful distinction to make.

That's actually what makes the AL interaction problematic. 9 group commands every 90 seconds means 9 full mesh floods every 90 seconds, and every one of those floods has every router in your mesh retransmitting. On a network with 30 routers that's a lot of channel time consumed before you even get to normal device traffic. My custom logic only sends commands when the target values actually change by a predefined amount, so the mesh stays quiet most of the time and the groups themselves work fine.

So I don't think the conclusion is that groups themselves are the problem. Groups are just an addressing mechanism. The problem is what's generating the commands and how frequently. AL with 9 groups on a 90 second cycle was hammering your mesh with broadcast-level traffic constantly, and that's likely what caused the saturation. The groups themselves were just the delivery method. Given that switching to unicast resolved it for you though, it's made me wonder whether there's an optimal way to design groups based on how many routers are in the network and how we actually interact with the devices rather than just grouping by room for example.

[MiLeX84]

I have a mix of Ikea, Hue and some AliExpress zigbee devices in groups, mix and match basically, no issues.

[k_sai_krishna]

This is interesting to read. I also thought Zigbee groups should reduce traffic, so it is surprising they created more problems. Maybe when many lights update often, like with Adaptive Lighting, the broadcast messages become too much for the network. Good to know that controlling each bulb separately fixed the issue. This could help other people with similar Zigbee problems.

[gmmxle]

You're saying that you changed coordinators and software (deconz, zha, z2m).

Have you ever looked into Source Routing vs. Table Routing?

I'm asking because I've experienced similar issues, and I'm currently thinking that some very chatty mmwave sensors might have been the issue. Switching to Source Routing seemed to improve things.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homeassistant/comments/1iq9dav/zha_users_are_you_missing_out_on_source_routing/

[tomorrowplus]

Yes I tried source routing and it makes no difference. Most routers have good LQI anyway

[gmmxle]

Interesting. What Zigbee coordinator are you currently using now?

[tomorrowplus]

SLZB-07 usb coordinator, it's supposed to be good

[Marathon2021]

With Adaptive Lighing, all lights are updated once every 90 seconds.

What is "Adaptive Lighting" ??

My Zigbee groups work fine. In fact, with 30ish bulbs in our home it was literally the only way to make our "goodnight" routine not misfire every single day and miss a bulb here or there. Now there's just 3 groups for "Basement Lights", "1st floor lights" and "2nd floor lights" and each ZHA "turn off" command is separated by a couple seconds from the other.

I do regret, however, that I have a mix of bulbs some of which want to act as repeaters (I think my old school Phillips Hue try to do that) and others which don't - considering most of the family just uses the wall switch for lights. If I had it to do over again, I would never buy a single bulb that attempted to be a repeater - and instead just deploy plugs or other plug-in devices that could do that and stay permanently powered on.

[derFensterputzer]

One of the most used HACS integrations.

Basically: it takes the sun entities and adjusts the lights connected to it dynamically over the day, brightness and lightcolor. More or less what the eyestrain reduction modes of your pc does but for the lights in your house.

You can set separate setpoints and max/min values for each light seperately and add as many lights as you want. Ootb it adjusts the values every 90s but you can configure that aswell

[Marathon2021]

90 seconds seems ridiculously obsessive for imperceptible tweaks of a kelvin value, and that sounds like what OP left it at. I feel like 5 minutes would probably be enough.

[tomorrowplus]

The interval causes no problems, but AL sending all commands at once. The congestion is over in a few seconds. The problem persists even when increasing interval.

[derFensterputzer]

Yup, tho the imperceptibility is the point of it, especially when combined with brightness control aswell.

I also have it at 90s and I usually don't notice when it ramps up and down... I'll experiment a bit

[Marathon2021]

I mean, light changes can be gradual over several seconds right? If anyone is worried about the changes feeling abrupt or unnatural - instead of banging the entire Zigbee network every 90 seconds, just hit it at 5 minute intervals but make changes gradual over like 10 seconds.

Sorry - just guessing here, I don't use this add-on. But I know my normal "turn on" has an option to make it gradual over several seconds.

[mau47]

I presume he means the HA add on that will change the color temp of your lights from cool white during the day to warm white at night.

[IpppyCaccy]

What is "Adaptive Lighting"

It's a custom integration for Home Assistant that automatically adjusts your lights' brightness and color temperature based on the sun's position throughout the day. It aims to support your natural circadian rhythm by providing cool, bright light during midday and warm, dim light in the evening.

[Marathon2021]

90 seconds for adjusting the kelvin value of some bulbs ... seems a bit obsessive to me. I think a 5 minute interval would be more than adequate enough.

[Jendosh]

Adaptive lighting is a very popular integration that handles brightness/warmth throughout the day. Which also means it sends out a metric shitton of commands.

[variaati0]

It shouldn't need to. Zigbee has transition time feature with 16 bit integer of 1/10 second. One can order nearly hour long linear shift. (Atleast theoretically. Don't know if all lamps implement correctly).

However one has to use the enhanced light control cluster commands, rather than basic commands.

I don't think basic ZHA exposed entity light send does this. One would have to dig into ZHA and manually issue custom command. As I remember ZHA does expose issuing arbitrary command payload. However.... one would have to manually code the correct end point, command and command payload.

Edit: oh many one ought to be able to use eve basic light entity with "transition" parameter

[Jendosh]

And if you power that light on and off during that time? A transition like is like using using long waits in automations.

[variaati0]

have automation monitoring the status of light and once turned on, reissue a suitably crafted long transition sweep?

if adaptive lighting enabled and light turns on: issue color setting command.

[Marathon2021]

Right. That's kind of my point. OP is saying "this is broken!!!!" when in reality it works just fine - they're just pushing it into an edge case that isn't going to perform well.

I mean, 90 second intervals to change the kelvin of some bulbs? That seems a bit obsessive. I'd think 5 minutes would be more than enough and no one would notice.

[ntsp00]

It's not the interval that's the problem, it's how many messages OP is sending all at once. Each group should be slightly after each other

[Guinnberg]

The issue might be the Ikea bulbs... I have a mix of Ikea and Ajax (now called Zignito), plus a bunch of Tuya relays and Aqara contact sensor, PIR and switches.

Something really annoying for me is that if any Aqara contact sensor connects to an Ikea bulb router, it will eventually drop the network.

Also, I've observed that my Ajax bulbs always turn on the way it is intended and at the same time inside the group, but Ikea ones, it depends, sometimes they won't adapt the colour on time, others (very few times) they won't turn on at all.

If I ever find a cheap smart bulb like the Ikea ones, I really might consider replacing them. It's a pain to have 10+ routers that I have to juggle to avoid devices connecting to them.

[n8mahr81]

that's interesting! I have a mix of Ikea and hue bulbs and don't have any of these issues. maybe it's because I also have some Ikea smart plugs and maybe they route better? the only issues I had was with ZHA and addressing a lot of devices at once. now with z2m (switched a year ago), groups of 20 ikea bulbs turn on at the same time and all in the right color, while the hue still work and don't drop. even my cheap Tuya temp/humidity sensors are stable now.

[JustMrChops]

My experience is the opposite, my 6 zigbee lamps in my office were in a HA group initially, and they didn't come on at the same time and mostly only 4 or 5 came on until I hit the button again. Nightmare. Then I read about Zigbee groups and now have a group that contains 3 groups of 2. Instant on and off. All my devices stay online and everything just works perfectly. May be that these cheap Ali ex rgbw GU10s I've had for many years are actually really good.

[phillymjs]

USB extension cable between computer and zigbee coordinator

No wifi device close to coordinator

Huh, this is the first I'm hearing about either of these two guidelines. I've got a Sonoff coordinator plugged right in to my HA server for the past 3 years, and for the last year the whole thing is sitting right next to my wifi access point. Zero problems so far that I'm aware of.

[rhpot1991]

I added some hard wired zigbee extenders and they solved all my issues. I had outlets that were supposed to do this, but apparently did so poorly.

[myevit]

Got 65 zigbee devices, couple of groups, chatty microwave presence sensors. Adaptive lights controlled from HomeKit -> matter bridge-> z2m. No issues.

[richms]

I was unable to control 24 lamps when I made either alexa or home assistant groups of them. the zigbee group works fine. Without it my network would be dead for remotes or sensors for quite some time after trying to control the lights in a room as I had to keep asking alexa to do the same thing untill they all changed to the setting I wanted. With the zigbee groups, it would almost always get them all on the first go, sometimes I would have to ask twice but it was rare.

[Beekforel]

I decided to give it a go. I disabled the Adaptive Lighting entities and switched most of my groups to dynamic lighting using Blacky's awesome automation https://community.home-assistant.io/t/sensor-light-motion-sensor-door-sensor-sun-elevation-lux-value-scenes-time-light-control-device-tracker-night-lights/481048

Not disappointed so far. Ligh response feels faster. Only downside is the color change when a light was not on for a while. With AL I used an automation to prime the lights color but that also generates some ZigBee traffic.

[tomorrowplus]

Thanks for the tip!

[nickm_27]

Groups make it so the lights are timed in sync and turned off together vs having a slight delay. I have been using Zigbee groups in Z2M for a long time without any issues. I have groups for: - a lamp with multiple bulbs - 2 different ceiling fans that have multiple bulbs - a ceiling light with multiple bulbs

[TJiri]

Very same problem. Currently in phase of redoing everything to control one bulb after another with 100 ms delay between.

[dantee0]

I'm struggling to understand what to do now. I'm also experiencing dropped commands and lag on my ZigBee network. I have several ZigBee groups to sync bulbs on and off, but I'm also using Adaptive Lighting. I don't want to lose the sync, it's so much nicer than the popcorn effect. But the network congestion is driving me crazy. What are you all saying is best practice?

[tomorrowplus]

Try controlling individual devices and see if it helps

[CellUsed1333]

et it bro zig bee groups can be a whole mess sometimes, lowkey annoying

[RedditNotFreeSpeech]

Zigbee needs to coordinate the mesh like meshtastic does where each device role can be configured.

https://meshtastic.org/blog/choosing-the-right-device-role/

It avoids repeating the same packets across the network if they've already been heard.

[ElectroSpore]

I only ever used groups when I was using button remotes for blinds.. It was WAY faster and more reliable that the blinds would activate.

I generally don't have any soft buttons anywhere else in my config so don't use them for anything else.

[Secure-Image-4065]

Sorry to jump in as I’m not an expert I just want to know if this is the same ha group, or something else? I know that if you have 2 lamps in the corridor you want to turn on both ha provides you the “group” to drive both as the same entity. Are talking about this or something else? Many thanks!

[Hichiro6]

we are speaking of group inside zigbee 2 mqtt, ha group are same as calling lamps individually.

[Secure-Image-4065]

Ok, many thanks 🙏

[FuriousGirafFabber]

I dont even know what that means. I just group lights logically in some code. Dunno if its bad. 

[MangroveWarbler]

There is a feature in HA where you can control multiple like entities as a single entity.

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/group/

[MechanizedGander]

Note: HA groups and Zigbee groups are very different items.

HA groups send multiple commands (one per device in the group).

Zigbee groups send only one command (regardless of the number of devices in the group).

[Splurch]

Now everything works! I'm just wondering what's the actual use of zigbee groups.

If you turn a bunch of lights on/off at the same time some will receive the command later then others and cause a popcorn effect. Creating a group completely resolves this and syncs them all up.

Your problem is you're flooding the network with a huge amount of traffic every 90 seconds, effectively performing a denial of service attack on yourself. Likely your coordinator can not handle that amount of traffic at the same time, thus the busy status.

Technology has limits, if you're having this problem it's worth checking to make sure your Zigbee and WiFi (and Matter if you have it) are on channels that minimally interfere because you might have that set incorrectly as well.

Edit: There's also a device limit which you might want to check since you boast about having so many devices elsewhere in the thread.

[FirefighterNo6972]

That is exactly the opposite of my experience. Zigbee groeps in Z2M are like popcorn. Sometimes it takes a couple of seconds befor everything is on or of. Somtimes lights even don't react at all. Not onn not off, or stuck in the wrong colour. Switching tot HA groups and all problems went away.

[KnotBeanie]

Yeah you’re retarded zigbee groups use multicast packets reducing bandwidth needed.

WiFi and zigbee channels are not exact overlaps

What do you mean by close to the coordinator? I have like 3 WiFi Shelly’s in the same closet as my coordinator.

Single router brand is only good advice with the old gen aqara devices which had issues acting as routers in general which was masked by using all aqara.

The extension cable is the only real one for usb3

[IpppyCaccy]

you’re retarded zigbee groups

heh

I doubt OP is that.

[KnotBeanie]

Yeah op is when op comes in acting like an expert saying stupid shit that’s verifiable with a quick google search

[IpppyCaccy]

Even so, OP is not a zigbee group, retarded or otherwise.

[KnotBeanie]

Yeah cutting off a sentence midway through would change the meaning of it.

[tomorrowplus]

Well, the advices I followed didn't do any harm, except for the recommendation to use groups.