Zigbee2mqtt (Z2M) first button click does not work on switch/dimmer

Hi,

This is my first week using Home Assistant and Zigbee2mqtt. I have installed the OS version of Home Assistant on Raspberry Pi 4B. I am using the Sonoff Zigbee USB 3.0 Dongle with Zigbee 2 MQTT and Mosquito Broker.

I own maybe a couple dozen Lutron Aurora dimmer/switches. In the past I have used them with Philips Hue Hub but was told to switch to this setup because it better for supporting a large number of devices. I have maybe 200+ Philips Hue Lights & Motions Sensors as well as Lutron Switches/Dimmers.

I started using this Legacy Zigbee2MQTT Lutron Aurora blueprint for Home Assistant.

After spending maybe two days transitioning all my devices. I have run into an issue with the Lutron Aurora switch/dimmer not working on the first 1-3 clicks.

I don’t have enough experience yet with Home Assistant to debug this and was hoping someone could help me find a solution. I do like Home Assistant and would love to keep it, but this is a deal killer, I can’t have my lights maybe work or maybe not work.

I thought a good first place to look was within the Zigbee app/dashboard in Home Assistant. What I noticed in the Logs tab is that the first click to the Lutron Aurora switch/dimmer does not produce any logs under the Logs tab. (See video)

Why is it not registering the first click, i can justify the other two clicks with bad automation programming, but how can i fix this?

So, unfortunately, you are running into the same problem that we all do when using the Lutron Aurora switch with Zigbee on Home Assistant. I didn’t know about it until I bought and installed one either, but for some reason that as far as I know no one has actually quite figured out, Home Assistant doesn’t always pick up on the button presses. Rotating the dimmer works just fine, but you can’t turn off the lights with the dimmer using the blueprints, if I’m not mistaken, so button presses are necessary.

I know of two possible solutions:

  1. You can try getting a different Zigbee dongle. I think you have the same one as mine, and it is unfortunately known to have this problem. I believe that some people have had success with other dongles, specifically Conbee (though I’d have to check to make sure that’s right), but I don’t know that it is a guarantee.

  2. You can hook your Lutron Auroras back up to your Hue Hub because they work perfectly then. I only have a few bulbs running so this worked well for me because my Hub is in no way overloaded, and I never actually bothered to migrate my bulbs anyways, despite original intentions. My Lutron Aurora does appear in Home Assistant through the Hue integration like my bulbs do, so I assume you could then create an automation for the bulbs that you have migrated to Zigbee2MQTT triggered by the on/off/rotation events recorded from the switches.

Hey there,
For the initial click, that could be an issue with your MQTT broker. May I ask which broker you use? (not an issue I have had on my end).
For the other two clicks you are correct that there is some bad programing in my blueprint haha. I never figured out the best way to approach this issue. Essentially the “click” function of the Aurora has either an “on” state or an “off” state. So if you use the dimmer to turn the lights to 50% but then want to turn the lights off by clicking the button, if the state of the click is already “on” it gets confused and requires your to cycle it (I think this is because of the way it talks to the Hue lights through zigbee2mqtt).
Anyway, I have not had the time to debug it because of work. I honestly am just looking at alternatives to the auroras ¯_(ツ)_/¯