since couple of days, I see that my IKEA Smart Home/Tradfri devices start to stop working, either by being massively delayed when switching or simply to stop working. Once I reboot my HA (home-assistant, hassio instance) I get Tradfri devices all as gone and the Lovelace UI is showing a yellow exclamation mark. Also the dev tools seem to not being able to see the devices anymore. I can fix the problem by deleting the tradfri integration, reboot HA again and re-add again. But this is not what I want to do every day. Anyone else seen this before?
I noticed it first time, when I wanted to create lights groups which made the devices gone. Then I removed them all again and used them only alone. But the problem re-occurs. I also started to use Node-Red since 2 days, but only using HA objects not any IKEA plugin. Logs do not show anything useful, anyone seeing the same? Any advice or idea?
I’ve seen this issue on my installation, maybe not as drastic as in your case, usually restarting hassio and/or tradfri gateway was helping to get the devices back. In few cases it was required to power cycle the device (bulb) or to remove it and add again. Bottom line I was so frustrated with instability (i guess of gateway) that I switched to Phoscon/deCONZ with Conbee II USB stick and since then I have way less issues (not that it is 100% stable).
unfortunatelly manual process… removing IKEA integration will remove entities, but you cannor create new one in phoscon with exactly the same name, so also all cards, scripts or automation will need to be redefined.
all devices need to reset to factory settings (6 times off/on cycle for bulbs, long button press for switches) before adding to phoscon. To add just follow the process as described on add device screens in phoscon, works pretty well.
start with adding all existing bulbs or switches via phoscon and instantly rename them to target name. Intersesting is that if you rename device in phoscon it will be reflected in home assistant - that was not the case for IKEA (if I recall), renamed in IKEA app devices were reataing their names in hassio.
instantly assigne (while renaming) location to devices. It is possible later, but troublesome. Keep in mind that location is also used to create default deconz groups. So if you add to one location for example bulb and power outlet, both will be in the same group. If you want to have separate deconz groups you need to manage this in phoscon. Or separately as hassio groups, but this duplicate effort. Also I noticed that deconz groups works better for switchin on/of or dimming - they really work in parallel, rather than somehow not in sync in hassio.
Reagrding issues:
from time to time devices dissapear from the system… sometimes reappear without any intervention, sometimes it is required to power cycle them (bulbs). I also had one case of switch that vanished and it required to press the button on it to somehow wake it up.
sometimes phscon does not start automatically after hassio update. In such case also manual start won’t work and it is required to restart hassio again. Not very annoying, as happens in controllable situations.
In principle I’d say that amount of issues with IKEA/deCONZ combination in hassio is on ~5% level vs. setup with original Tradfri gateway.
are you using the tradfri gateway or something else? If HUE gateway would be more stable I would consider using that. As you can place the gateway everywhere, my NUC HA server is not very well placed.
got the Conbee USB Stick and tried it with 2 bulbs, it is a cluncky process to get them over to deconz/phoscon, but it works very well and I like the groups.
What I do not get working is the dimmer tradfri wireless to get properly connected to deconz/ikea. If I want to add a switch to a group, it tells me there are no switches.
IKEA switches/dimmers are not presented to hassio as entities. Every time you perform any action with these, they are triggering deconz_event on hassio event bus. Lets go to Developer Tools > Events and put deconz_event in the field next to Start Listening. Then press Start listening and do some actions with switches - you will see all the details of triggered event. Crucial information there is “id” that identifies particular controller and “event” that holds information about what action was performed with what button (it is well documented how to decode in official deconz integration documentation). You can find some more information on using IKEA switches/dimmers being discussed here: Problems using Trådfri with deCONZ. This thread also includes few links to other ones, with even more details.
Thank you @mirekmal, it was weird it tried to pair next day again and could do, but still I cannot assign any lights to the tradfri wireless dimmer. I might ride a piece of node-red code to control the bulbs using the events.