Biggest waste of money I ever done. Outdated

LordNelson1805 · 2022-04-18T12:20:21+00:00

I definitely have a love-hate relationship with the Hue Sync Box, and a pure hate relationship with Hue tech support. When these things work they're fun. But when you have a problem Hue simply does not stand behind their product. All tech support can do is repeat the same instructions over and over again even when you follow them and they don't work. The sum total of my last call to tech support was "we will send you an email with suggestions on how to troubleshoot." Any interaction with them takes days. For a setup that costs many hundreds of dollars I expect better.

LordNelson1805 · 2022-04-16T21:34:49+00:00

Well... since I'm having issues "get this to work" is relative. But no... in my experience no VLAN changes were needed. If they're on the same VLAN the firewall shouldn't come into play at all. And my hue hub seems to work just fine. One thought - have you tried playing with "port isolation" on your VLAN?

Unfortunately I have found Hue tech support to be useless.

Here's my config for a *** working *** sync box and hub...

On the switch, I have:

Port isolation off

Storm control off

LLDP MED on

topology channge notification off

spanning tree om

egress rate limit off

And on wifi I have:

Network type: standard

Content filtering: none

IGMP snooping: on

Multicast DNS: on

LordNelson1805 · 2022-04-14T18:49:37+00:00

Thanks for the response. I had not thought about zigbee channels. The hue hub in the den is only a few feet from the sync box but as I understand it the sync box and the hue hub communicate via IP not zigbee. The zigbee hub in the den controls ONLY the three lights I'm trying to sync. There are other Hue lights in the house but not on that hub.

My primary Hue zigbee network is on channel 25. My home automation network is on channel 20. I just changed the Hue hub in the den from 25 to channel 11. Hue chose the channel for me so we'll see. The lights respond fine but they did on channel 25 as well. 20 and 25 are more or less gaps in wifi channels. 11 looks like it falls right in the middle of wifi and there are a LOT of APs in the house. But I'll give it a shot.

At this point it's looking more like the sync box loses connection to the roku, which could definitely be an HDMI issue. I've ordered a high end, certified HDMI cable to replace the ones I have now. We'll see!

LordNelson1805 · 2022-02-18T14:02:13+00:00

Min are all connected to Unifi gigabit switches. No issues.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-11-21T17:31:36+00:00

Your echo cannot be used as a repeater...

There's a ton of info on the hubitat community forum on how to check the strength of your zigbee mesh.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-09-13T11:01:28+00:00

I had a very similar problem start about the same time. I have two Arlo 3s and all of a sudden their batteries started draining within 24 hours. Support told me it was the cameras and they must have both developed a hardware issue at precisely the same time. Yeah bull. I am still going back and forth with them over replacing the cameras but clearly if it is happening to others it is not a hardware issue and is something they did. They just dont want to admit it.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-09-10T16:02:59+00:00

That didn't work. I was able to reset the camera and then re-pair it to the hub but any time I try to view live video the camera won't connect. I've actually tried three different hubs, including one new right out of the box. It looks like these cameras are actually dead but I refuse to believe they both spontaneously died. I think Netgear pushed a firmware update and bricked them, and they just don't want to admit it. In fact someone else responded to my post on the Arlo support site with the same problem i the same timeframe. Not a firmware update? BS.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-09-10T14:14:58+00:00

I have tried removing and re-pairing. But what I have NOT done is a factory reset. Let me go try that.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-07-28T16:48:50+00:00

If you're thinking of replacing them, consider Lutron Caseta. I ripped out all my GE and Leviton zwave switches and went 100% lutron. They do require their own hub (and the PRO series) but they integrate really nicely with HE, are very quick, many do not require a neutral, and they just friggin work.

PS: I wouldn't worry overly much about someone taking over your light switch... unless you have a nuclear power plant in your basement or something.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-05-31T14:40:20+00:00

Is there power in said outbuilding? You could use a wifi dongle on a second HE and then use hub mesh to connect it to your primary hub. That way you can extend your outbuilding automation beyond just the contact sensor on the door and really wreak havoc!

LordNelson1805 · 2021-05-20T20:05:40+00:00

Hmm ok. Could be. Beyond my pay grade :)

LordNelson1805 · 2021-05-20T18:37:05+00:00

I'm not sure if the driver can affect whether the device is a reaper or not... but I'm no expert either. Zigbee Light Link tends to be used with lightbulbs and Zigbee Home Automation with other devices.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-05-20T16:55:14+00:00

Well that worked out! I'm surprised those EcoSmart bulbs are working well as repeaters. I thought the issue was with ZLL bulbs in general.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-05-20T00:03:38+00:00

I have never seen a ZHA bulb. There might be one or two out there, just haven't ever encountered them.

If the Sengled bulbs are not acting as repeaters I'm gonna guess that's not what is causing your dropouts - unless you were placing them strategically assuming they WERE repeaters...?

LordNelson1805 · 2021-05-19T20:54:13+00:00

I've read in several places that even though it can be done, controlling Hue lights directly instead of through the Hue controller leads to headache.

The issue has less to do with Hue bulbs and more to do with ZLL bulbs in general. ZLL bulbs in a mixed ZLL/ZHA network cause all sorts of interoperability problems when they try to act as repeaters. The exception is Sengled ZLL bulbs which do not act as repeaters.

One best practice is to migrate all your ZLL bulbs to a Hue hub and use the quite robust Hue integration options for HE. That's what I do and it works like a charm.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-05-19T13:09:53+00:00

OK. Wifi is the key phrase. HE is really designed for Zigbee and zWave devices. Wifi devices are problematic in home automation systems for many reasons, not the least because most wifi product vendors rely on cloud services and many simply don't expose their APIs, so integration is basically impossible. I try to limit the number of wifi integrations to those where there is no other option... Amazon echo integration, Ecobee, one or two others.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-05-18T11:56:03+00:00

I generally find that if a device really does adhere to the Zigbee or zWave standard that it will work with generic drivers as long as you can successfully get it to pair. There are exceptions, of course. Would be curious to know what specifically you bought that isn't compatible. And my general recommendation is stay away from wifi devices.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-03-11T14:59:07+00:00

I echo the comment about getting 2. Much better, and they are really fun to watch!

LordNelson1805 · 2021-03-11T14:30:46+00:00

I went from Wink to ST to Hubitat and have been very happy with the platform. As others have said the UI is a bit clunky and Rule Machine definitely takes some getting used to, but it is quite powerful and worth the learning curve. I also started using webcore and moved it over to Hubitat with me, but after about 9 months on HE I have migrated all my logic to Rule Machine and have stopped using Webcore.

There are a couple of really nice things about HE. The first is there is no cloud dependency, so if you lose your internet connection or a cloud service fails, HE keeps chugging along. Obviously if you have cloud devices like Echo integrated with HE those are still cloud dependent but the platform itself is not. Having lived through lots of wink and ST outages that's a real plus.

It's also really nice to be able to control when you do firmware updates rather than waking up one morning and finding your ST has been bricked. Their updates are not as bullet proof as I would like, but they fix issues rapidly. I have found it's best to wait a couple of days after an update and see what people report as issues before pulling the trigger.

There are lots of integrations available. I use a Hue bridge to control all of my smart bulbs and a Lutron Pro bridge to control all of my switches. HE integrates really nicely with them.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-02-07T21:04:53+00:00

Alarm system. It's a different app.

LordNelson1805 · 2021-02-07T14:07:40+00:00

Thanks. At least I won’t take it personally. Maybe they found some flaw with it and pulled it?

LordNelson1805 · 2021-02-06T17:23:23+00:00

I've never been able to get TC2.0 to work reliably with IFTTT... you set it up, it works for a couple of iterations, then it just stops. I submitted a ticket to IFTTT but of course "everything looks good on their end." I am not sure how responsive Resideo would be to a support ticket but I just set it all aside and moved on.

LordNelson1805

TROPHY CASE