I currently have a number of Hue bulbs controlled by a Hue dimmer switch. Turning the Hue light off in the dining room triggers an automation which also turns off two Z Wave plugs and an RF Plug.
The automation works fine but I have started to notice the plugs turning on and off randomly which is driving me mad! I cannot for the life of me figure out what is happening.
I have upgraded to the latest version (0.46.1) running on a RPi 3 although this was happening over the last few versions.
My logbook shows that it seems to be the Hue lamp triggering the automation - during this time (section below) I have not touched a thing and at no point did the Hue light (the Sideboard light) turn off or even flicker. The Sideboard light is the only light in the Dining Room Group:
10:59
Lights turned off
10:59
IkeaLamp Switch turned off
10:59
Dining Room Off has been triggered
10:59
Hall Lamp Off has been triggered
10:59
Ikea Lamp Off has been triggered
10:59
Desk Lamp Off has been triggered
10:59
Dining Room Lights turned off
10:59
Sideboard turned off
10:59
IkeaLamp Switch turned on
10:59
Ikea Lamp On has been triggered
10:59
Dining Room Lights turned on
10:59
Lights turned on
10:59
Sideboard turned on
10:58
Lights turned off
10:58
IkeaLamp Switch turned off
10:58
Scripts turned on
10:58
Five minute delay turned on
10:58
Enable Timer turned on
10:58
Dining Room Off has been triggered
10:58
Hall Lamp Off has been triggered
10:58
Ikea Lamp Off has been triggered
10:58
Desk Lamp Off has been triggered
10:58
Dining Room Lights turned off
10:58
Sideboard turned off
My automation is pretty basic:
- alias: "Ikea Lamp On"
trigger:
platform: state
entity_id: group.dining_room_lights
from: "off"
to: "on"
action:
service: switch.turn_on
entity_id: switch.ikealamp_switch_32_0
- alias: "Ikea Lamp Off"
trigger:
platform: state
entity_id: group.dining_room_lights
from: "on"
to: "off"
action:
service: switch.turn_off
entity_id: switch.ikealamp_switch_32_0
There does not seem to be any pattern to the switching on and off but it happens pretty frequently.
I read previously about a problem with non Hue bulbs in a Hue system flickering but all my bulbs are genuine Hue and I have never seen any of them drop out or flicker. I even checked the battery in the dimmer switch but it is still shown at 100% and the Hue firmware is up to date.
Any suggestions to help me trouble shoot this will be greatly received!
Just thinking out loud, so I have no idea if this is will solve the problem, but…
Educated presumption: HA gets the information about whether or not the hue bulbs are on/off from the hue bridge. I think it checks every 15 seconds or so.
Summation: Hue bridge is not responding, or is responding with inaccurate data about your lamp.
Possible causes: Lamp on the fritz / Hue Bridge on the fritz / network problems / Interference on Zigbee protocol*.
Possible fix: Completely power down lamp for long enough for it to reset (I don’t think they have a reset button type thing) / Reset Hue Bridge / reset router / reset whole network / Wait and see.
*I don’t know how you would identify/solve interference on Zigbee
Thank you for your suggestions @anon43302295 - it got me thinking about a few extra things too but so far I have failed to fix the problem. To date I have:
Changed the diningroom bulb over to one that was not being used
Swapped the dimmer switches over (I have two)
Removed my Xiaomi MiHome hub from my system (I think it also uses ZigBee)
Reset my Hue hub
Reset my dimmer switches.
I had noticed that the dimmer switches were not as responsive as I remember them being so I was having to press the button a couple of times before it registered. I did a bit of google fu and there was a suggestion that a Wifi Router could interfere so I moved my Hue hub away from it (was about 5cm away, is now about 3m away).
Looking at my logbook now, I have constant entires for my Hue bulbs turning off and on all the time but none of them are even flickering…
I have now changed almost every concievable setting and even going so far as to check all the wiring in my plugs and connectors on the lamp, but I was still getting the same problem - the Hue hub was dropping the connection to the bulb intermittently which was in turn messing with my automations.
The strange thing was that it was only one lamp that had the problem (changing the bulb didn’t fix it) so I resorted to staring at it…
After a few minutes of staring, I realised that I have a Sonos speaker right next to the lamp which, of course, has its own wireless network and a few Google searches later made me realise that I am not the only person who has had interference between a Sonos speaker and a Hue bulb…
I have moved the speaker a few more inches from the lamp and so far it seems to have fixed the problem!
