I have a Home Assistant Yellow running Home Assistant 2025.1.3
I have some presence automations that trigger Zigbee light bulbs and dimmers via ZHA.
When an automation triggers an individual Zigbee device, it’s triggered several seconds late and unreliably.
When an automation triggers a Zigbee group, it’s triggered instantly and reliably.
Given this behavior, I’ve started to put individual Zigbee devices into Zigbee groups. If I want to trigger a Zigbee bulb in an automation, I put it into a new Zigbee group first. I have a dummy Zigbee bulb that I also put into such groups and then disconnect because otherwise, the Zigbee device is not triggered if it’s alone in the group.
It’s worth mentioning that when I tweak the settings of Zigbee light devices via their device pages in Home Assistant, they’re often sluggish and then usually catch up in several (dozen) seconds in a batch.
Why are individual Zigbee devices so laggy and unreliable versus Zigbee groups?