Hello there!
I have a problem with my installation of Tradfri lighting. I have large set of G10 bulbs in living room (18 pcs) as part of my ceiling lighting. From IKEA gateway perspective these are configured as 2 sets of 9 bulbs (as I recall IKEA set limit of 10 devies per controller). From hassio perspective all these bulbs are part of one light group, so I should be able to controll all of them simultanously.
The problem is that it works very slowly… I mean when I trigger the script via automation or even the group directly via entity button or light card to turn these lights on it take almost 20 seconds to turn all bulbs on. Bulbs are turned on almost one by one - when the first is turned on then the second starts to light up and so on… The same when swithing these off.
I tried to use light group or regular entities group the result s the same (with exception of not being able to control brightnes from normal group). To make it more fun, situation degrades over time; after few days without hassio restert whole process could be extended to more that a minute!
My config is following:
Lights:
- platform: group
name: Main ceiling light
entities:
- light.ceiling_light_1
- light.ceiling_light_2
...
- light.ceiling_light_17
- light.ceiling_light_18
script to turn whole group on (very similar for turnoing off):
living_room_ceiling_lights_on:
alias: Living Room Ceiling Light Full Ligh Scene
sequence:
- service: light.turn_on
data:
entity_id: light.main_ceiling_light
brightness: 255
transition: 3
BTW it is not transition issue, if removed it takes the same amount of time, just light go on intantly).
I also tried to use tradfri created groups (apparently this helps to manage several lights in sync), but have no idea how it works:
there is no groups in IKEA application (Are these now called rooms? Seems to have similar functionality for grouping lights together under one contrloller)
I tried to activate discovery of these groups in hassion by adding to configuration.yaml:
tradfri:
host: 192.168.xx.xx
allow_tradfri_groups: true
but it seems not to have any effect, I do not see any new entities on the list…
Any idea how to get this resolved, so all bulbs work in sync within the group?
I saw the same once with Hue. Huge chandelier with 30 bulbs. They came on 1 by 1, which I thought was a really cool effect.
I think the behavior is typical for a Zigbee mesh. Calls get routed through the mesh, so some delay is to be expected.
In my experience, Tradfri quickly reaches it’s capacity. I experienced the same issue of slowing down over time. I have, based on personal experience, come to the opinion Tradfri is just not as solid as Hue.
Indeed it might be somehow limitation of IKEA gateway… When I control these bulbs from associated controller, responce is almost instant. But as I understand it is controller talking directly to bulbs, not gateway. Could mean that the problem is not speed of Zigbee mesh, but communication between hassio and gateway or gateway to controller/bulbs.
So I made another test, using fuctionality I almost forgot - using nativre IKEA application and results are somehow dissapointing… Seems problem is indeed in gateway. When controlling bulbs from app directly I run into the very same problem of slow responce and bulbs lightening one by one. But then I power cycled gateway and presto! Everything started to work fast again! From both hassio and IKEA app. So it is not hassio limitation or configuration issue, but solution needs to be found elsewhere. It might mean change to be considered… retaining the bulbs, but getting rid of IKEA controllers and gatway and replacing these either with sort of Zigbee USB stick or proper hub (Hue, SmartThings or so).
Regarding sequential turn on/off effect is sort of cool, I agree, but we should have some degree of controll over it. For example I have another 6 IKEA bulbs illuminating stairways. I created the script that lighten these one by one, starting from the point I’m approaching stairs and then turning these off. Very cool looking, but with the reaction speed of IKEA system I’m downstairs well before all of them are lightened
It may sound like something very stupid, but restarting the Tradfri HUB might solve your problem. I have a similar problem when dimming lights. It would take 3 or more seconds to actually inact the action. After a HUB restart it all works like it should. Though like someone mentioned before, there will always be a little delay due to the nature of Zigbee.
Btw, if you have a chandelier with that many bulbs, you might want to change the switch instead of the bulbs. This will save you a lot of money and that way they will definitely turn on all at once. But I guess you have already bought these lights.
In my case bulbs are placed not in chandelier but around the living room in sort of bezel near the wall. So on top of lightening all of them I can also use individual bulbs to create scenes (like turning on some only to highlight paintings or the other one to enlighten bar. I’m using light group only for overal ‘stage’ ligting. Indeed, in other cases I went for Fibaro or Aeotec dimmers - much cheaper if within large group of bulbs individual ones do not need to be controlled separatelly.
Hi! I have the same problem. ~ 10 lights are in a group or a scene. Turning on the scene, or the lights in the group, results into switching on one bulb after another.
Interesting fact: I expose all of the single lights to HomeKit. If I turn them on at once in a HomeKit scene, or via Siri “Hey Siri, turn on all lights in the living room”, all bulbs immediately switch on at the same time.
So, somehow it must be related to groups or scenes. No?
I am using a cc2531 usb stick on a raspberry pi with zigbee2mqtt.
When you integrate the IKEA gateway into home assistant, does it import the groups as well?
The thing is, groups created in ZigBee don’t behave the same way as groups created in home assistant.
In your example, with 18 bulbs. A group created in home assistant for all these bulbs, will send 18 requests to the IKEA gateway when you send the turn off command for example. This is problematic as the IKEA gateway is unable to cope with so many requests at the same time, therefore you get delays or in worst case some bulbs don’t turn off at all. However if you create the groups in ZigBee (2x 9 bulbs) it will only send 2 requests to the IKEA gateway and the messages will be populated and you should get lights that turn off at the same time.
I switched to a raspberry pi with https://www.phoscon.de/de/conbee2 as gateway for all kinds of zigbee devices. That works perfectly without delays of flickering lights.
