Hue lights aren't usable in zha for me

Configuration Zigbee
21

I’ve took the plunge last weekend and removed all devices from ZHA and re-added them using Deconz. After renaming them all my automations etc work again and the past five days have been really great; not a single light that stayed on when it wasn’t supposed to, or the other way around. I was dreading this transition because I wasn’t sure if deCONZ was going to be an improvement for me, but for now I’m very glad that I did.

A few takeaways:

  1. While the Phoscon and deCONZ bundle is a bit weird, deCONZ is very advanced. In ZHA I never managed to be able to rewrite cluster attributes for my Aqara curtains, in deCONZ those attributes all have readable names and values (instead of hexadecimals) and a form-based interface. I needed this to change the direction of one of my curtains, since HA always thought it was open when it was closed. That saves me a template cover!
  2. Another benefit for my curtains; their exact position is available in the entity itself. With ZHA I had to use a database sensor to read a value.
  3. The most problems I’ve experienced in ZHA were with lights that have to turn on with a specific brightness / color temperature. 9 times out of 10, these light would just turn on on a very low brightness, regardless of the desired state. This works perfectly with deCONZ.
  4. Zigbee light groups work very good for me; consistently switching all the devices in the group on or off and reporting the correct status.
  5. Automations and scripts feel ‘snappier’. During my last week with ZHA I had some devices randomly losing connection overnight, causing a lot of timeout errors in the logs. These errors also halted the execution of the actions in those automations, or really slowed them down at times that ZHA did work. My guess is that HA waits for each individual ZHA action to complete before continuing to the next action. The deCONZ integration does not seem to do that, or does it much faster, since especially large automations (scripts that turn off all the devices in my home for example), are completed much faster.
22

Just switched from my HUE Bridge to ConBee 2 with ZHA and i have the exact same issues as described here. When using ZHA and you switch on or off Groups not all lights are properly updated. I tried zigbee groups, i created entity groups and even light groups. All of them had the same issue. Does this work reliable with deCONZ ? Also how is response rate with motion sensor in deCONZ? That was one of the reasons why i want to switch away because the HUE bridge updates the motion sensor to slow if automation is configured via HA.

23

Since switching over 1,5 week ago my Zigbee network has been rock solid on deCONZ.
Light groups actually work and I notice no difference in the response time for my motion sensors. I’m using Aqara motion sensors and they were very responsive in ZHA and they still are in deCONZ, so I’m not sure if that transition is going to fix anything on that end.

Have you checked the network visualization tab in Zigbee to see the signal strenghts?

24

Thanks for the feedback. Do you use HUE Blubs with deCONZ ? I checked the network but my test installation is all in one single room so signal strength should not be the issue. According to some other posts i found the HUE Bulbs do not properly propagate thier status which seems to cause issue with ZHA. Would be interesting if deCONZ implemented some workaround for that.

25

Yes, I do use Hue bulbs in deCONZ, about 18 of them. I’m not sure about workarounds in deCONZ for those statusses, but remember reading about that in ZHA. Maybe deCONZ handles the assumed states better in combination with better handling of on and off commands while in an assumed state.