Zigbee lights turn on with minimal brightness, zigbee2mqtt says 100%

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1

I have a group of three Tradfri lights (grouped in HA, individual in z2m) and all of them are turning on at very low brightness no matter how I do it - call from automation, turning on individually or as a group in Lovelace interface, turning on individually from zigbee2mqtt. I have the same model of light bulbs in another room and they are still behaving normally.

Here’s a snippet of the logs from zigbee2mqtt from turning one of the lights off and on again:

Info 2023-10-20 16:04:27MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/Bathroom Bath Light', payload '{"brightness":254,"color_mode":"color_temp","color_options":null,"color_temp":370,"level_config":{"on_level":"previous"},"linkquality":51,"power_on_behavior":"previous","state":"ON","update":{"installed_version":65554,"latest_version":65554,"state":"idle"},"update_available":false}'
Debug 2023-10-20 16:08:18Received MQTT message on 'zigbee2mqtt/Bathroom Bath Light/set' with data '{"state":"OFF"}'
Debug 2023-10-20 16:08:18Publishing 'set' 'state' to 'Bathroom Bath Light'
Info 2023-10-20 16:08:18MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/Bathroom Bath Light', payload '{"brightness":254,"color_mode":"color_temp","color_options":null,"color_temp":370,"level_config":{"on_level":"previous"},"linkquality":39,"power_on_behavior":"previous","state":"OFF","update":{"installed_version":65554,"latest_version":65554,"state":"idle"},"update_available":false}'
Debug 2023-10-20 16:08:20Received MQTT message on 'zigbee2mqtt/Bathroom Bath Light/set' with data '{"state":"ON"}'
Debug 2023-10-20 16:08:20Publishing 'set' 'state' to 'Bathroom Bath Light'
Info 2023-10-20 16:08:20MQTT publish: topic 'zigbee2mqtt/Bathroom Bath Light', payload '{"brightness":254,"color_mode":"color_temp","color_options":null,"color_temp":370,"level_config":{"on_level":"previous"},"linkquality":45,"power_on_behavior":"previous","state":"ON","update":{"installed_version":65554,"latest_version":65554,"state":"idle"},"update_available":false}'

You can see z2m thinks the light is already at full brightness but in reality it’s dim, I can get the light to return to the desired brightness by changing the brightness slider but on next toggle it’s dim again.

I’m not sure where to turn next to troubleshoot this?

2

I have exactly the same behavior with one tradfri light.
Please let me know if you find a fix.

3

I had a similar issue after switching from Hue hub to ZHA. I solved it by using ‘brightness_pct’ instead of ‘brightness’ and then levels 0-100%

4

Same issue here. I solved one light by removing it from the bridge and re-adding it, but now other lights are showing the same symptoms.

The only lights affects so far appear to be ones in groups, but it’s very annoying.

5

Removed/re-added all my Ikea halogens, and the issue has gone away for now.

1 Like
6

Although I don’t use HomeAssistant, I had the same problem with one of Tradfri lights controlled by Zigbee2MQTT.

Removing and re-adding a bulb would be painful in my case, as I have 9 such bulbs in the ceiling connected to the same physical switch (i.e., 7 on/offs to pair one, would cause the same for the rest).

I’ve finally managed to resolve this and the culprit was in level_config attribute of the lamp (specifically on_level==previous) which somehow got set specifically for 1 out of 9 lamps. This attribute is not well documented in Zigbee2MQTT, I was only able to find the description in some other lamp’s guide (Ubisys D1 control via MQTT | Zigbee2MQTT)

TL;DR
I’ve solved this by:

  1. publishing an MQTT message with content {"level_config": {"on_level": 254}} to the zigbee2mqtt/FRIENDLY_NAME/set topic
  2. switching the lamp off and on again (now full brightness)
  3. reverting the config back by publishing {"level_config": {"on_level": "previous"}} again to the same topic

I don’t know what’s the root cause. It might even be a bug in Tradfri’s firmware not properly recording the last brightness, or applying it even for XY color mode. But, anyway, these steps help fixing the lamp without the re-registering it in the network

4 Likes
7

@maximk, can confirm it worked for me on an IKEA tradfri lamp!
Great, thanks a ton!

8

I had a similar situation with my Ikea Stoftmoln lamp: suddenly one of them wouldn’t start at full brightness.
The only difference between that one and the other ones is the

    "level_config": {
        "on_level": "previous"
    },

which isn’t there at all on the working lamps (they have all the same firmware level)

I don’t know if there is a way to delete this property, but the process explained by @maximk to restore full brightness made it work…

9

Sorry for archeological excavations but I’d like to add to this topic cause it was one of very few I could find on google when searching for my problem.

I have several TRADFRI bulbs and for a very long time now (probably since some firmware update) I had a problem where the bulb would turn on at brightness 1 after power cycle when the state was OFF before power was off. Changing "level_config": { "on_level": "previous" }, to numerical value would only change brightness value on state change to ON but remain 1 after a power cycle.
I started to dig and decided to YOLO it and I published {"level_config": {"current_level_startup": 254}} as it is done for other dimmer devices that are not IKEA.
This has solved my issue of bulbs turning at minimal brightness after power was turned back on. Unfortunately those functionalities are not documented on the light bulb’s page.
I’m writing all this in hopes it will save the trouble I have gone trough to find the solution, only to hit the wall over and over again… until today, when I finally found my answers!
Cheers,
InnerBushman