I fried my hue bridge completely last night and now that I’ve recovered from a deeply unecessary but completely authentic period of inconsolable rage, I realise it might be just about time to move all the lights across the the Zigbee dongle plugged into my Pi (running HA) anyway.
Setup is pi 3 running HA
dongle is the usb sonos plus zigbee 3.0. Something like that. I can’t check right now but more info hopefully not needed
I have zha installed and prior to this catastrophic hue-based occurance it had already picked up my agara (I think) balcony sensor that had been lying dormant after dropping off the smartthings hub 6 months ago, so I know it’s a working setup to some degree.
Questions:
What is the easiest way to get my lights back into pairing mode?
Will they still be on a particular zigbee channel and do I need to migrate my ZHA controller to that channel?
Context:
During my fit of rage I deleted the bridge from Hue and uninstalled the app. I have no idea if that is going to trip me up or not but presumably not - without a working bridge presumably even if deleting the lights was a component of the reset process they would not be able to receive the message that they have been deleted, for example.
I have a smartthings hub which i had previously linked to hue but removed the connection and deleted the lights prior to this malignant fuckup, but I think it perhaps wise to leave this off whilst i’m trying to re-pair all the lights to a different controller anyway. Right? Yes the lights had been doubling up in my HA install due to both the Hue integration and Smarthings integration, before I disabled them. I have also deleted the hue integration from HA.
I don’t have a dimmer which I have come to understand is the easy method
I don’t have an echo dot
These lights were purchased 6 years ago, and though they are many they don’t have bluetooth if that was even important
What’s my way forward? Should I try to figure out what channel my lights are/were on and migrate to that before attempting any “flip the light switch on and off 760 times whilst jumping on one leg with both arms outstretched until they blink type procedure?” Presumably I can find this in my HA logs somewhere.
Your previous setup does not matter at all in any way, (factory reset will remove all previous configurations and you can not re-pair devices before first doing a factory reset of them somehow). There is no easy or seamless way to migrate Zigbee devices between different gateways/hubs/bridges/controllers, so you are just going to have to start from scratch. (The only thing that would have made it easier is if you had been able to remove all Zigbee devices from the previous gateway/hub/bridge/controller they were joined/paired to as doing that would have factory reset those devices).
You just have to bite the bullet and try to factory reset each Zigbee device and then pair/join them one by one. Unfortunately, you do need to check the manufacturer’s website for each device and search other community sources like Reddit if there are other methods for factory reset, (and yes for most devices without buttons and batteries that sadly most often involve different variants of flipping the light switch on and off in a specific timed sequence for each specific product, sometimes even different on similar products from the same manufacturer, but fortunately I do not think many devices require jumping or arm flapping).
The main tip is to begin by adding all of your main-powered Zigbee Router devices to start building out your Zigbee network mesh to extend range and coverage so can then reach devices not close to the Zigbee Coordinator (before adding any Zigbee End Device such as battery-powered devices).
I highly recommend you read + follow tips and advice in these community guides because compared to commercial hubs for specific brands you should really learn a little more about how Zigbee works to optimize your setup and Zigbee’s limitations to work around as it makes everything simpler when following best practices:
I had attempted to get rid of my Hue hub utilizing Hubitat. The thing is, I have about 60 Hue bulbs and 15 or so Hue sensors. I got it to work, but I had niggling issues. The answer was to utilize the Hue for the bulbs. The motion detectors were fine outside of Hue (with Hubitat).
But not able to leave things well enough alone, I v.recently moved off Hubitat for HA. Had quite a few issues initially, some of them being with the sensors (occupancy vs motion triggers). I just moved most of them back to the Hue hub, all VERY good now. As the Hue is pretty much stuffed with devices, I’ve ordered another to 1/2 the burden on two hubs.
That journey was taken despite many recommendations not to utilize Hue devices outside of Hue due to not being reliable repeaters outside of Hue. But, hey it’s me, not unlike many of us I had to see what I could get away with against the grain.
Anyways, to reset the bulbs I used the Hue 4 button vertical dimmer. With the bulb on, and the dimmer held withing a few inches of the bulb, holding the On and HUE buttons simultaneously for 10-20 seconds is how to reset the bulbs.
I get your Hue rage, and sympathize. Good luck getting on with whatever way you decide to go.
