Hue lights turning on differently depending on kiosk or switch use

I have several Hue bulbs and some LED light strips (not Hue, but generic Zigbee) in my kitchen. I have two main ways of turning them on. The first is with a button on my kiosk dashboard that uses a Mushroom light card to toggle and control the entity light.kitchen_all which is a group that contains all the lights. The second is via and Insteon switch that triggers an automation that calls “Light Turn On” for all the lights.

The issue I am having is that when I use the Insteon switch and the group light.kitchen_all the LED strips usually flicker once, then don’t turn on (sometimes one or two might turn on). If I use the dashboard button all the lights turn on appropriately.

In order to get around this problem, rather than using light.kitchen_all for the Insteon switch I turn on groups of light individually with a 1 second pause between each group. So right now, the sequence looks like this: Hue bulbs - wait a second - cabinet LED’s - wait a second - counter LED’s - wait a second toe kick LED’s. Using the pauses everything works properly. Given that I am using the same “Light Turn On” for each method, why does the Insteon switch fail to work as expected? I should note that the lights have power at all time, the Insteon switch at this point is just a logical switch, not actually switching power on and off.

The initial flicker is likely due to the powerline signal that Insteon devices send when activated. Insteon sells an anti flicker capacitor kit, you might want to try those on the LEDs. They also sell a plug in filter that the LEDs could be plugged into. I’m fairly certain it would work but be a bit bulky.

The lights not turning on sounds like an automation problem. Go to settings, automations and scenes. Pick the automation, the click traces at the upper right. Watch it as you try to execute the automation

I’ve decided to start swapping out my Insteon switches for Zigbee switches. I’ve got around the problem by staggering the on commands for the devices and that is working well for the time being. I’m sure the Zigbee switches will come with another set of problems!

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Yeh I’ve put in a matter/thread sandbox with 5 devices. The mesh is now there, but waiting for lighting products I’m willing to put in… meaning device-device scenes to standard that work.