Do any of those bug fixes impact dimming performance? I’ve got about 35ish blues installed and have various dimming issues across multiple different blubs/fixtures (I think the higher load circuits are most impacted). I haven’t done much troubleshooting hoping that the new firmware will fix it but if that’s not in the cards I’ll start digging into it a bit more.
What type of dimming issues are you experiencing?
Short answer is, yes, there is a major update in I think 2.11 that addresses bulb compatibility. I’ll let Maycock spill the beans on it, but I think everyone will be extremely happy when we make the official announcement.
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Since ST isn’t providing OTA updates, how can ST customers update our firmware? Is there a how to?
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Yeah this is a good question. Let me check with @EricM_Inovelli about a good way to do it because right now I’ve been having to use a Dev Kit from Texas Instruments: https://www.ti.com/product/LAUNCHXL-CC1352R1/part-details/LAUNCHXL-CC1352R1
Or sometimes I just pair it to Hubitat and update that way. But I realize not everyone has the luxury of having multiple hubs.
I wish there was some sort of “PC Controller” type program that could be used like you can with Z-Wave.
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I’d recommend buying a cheap sonoff usb dongle and running zigbee2mqtt as a standalone container
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Use a Hubitat.
can you elaborate on that?
Are you saying zigbee2mgtt can run by itself and do OTA without HA?
If we pair to another controller to update firmware and then pair back to the main controller, do we have to set up bindings and/or automations again?
I am still testing a few alternatives. I’ve got some coming today that are really cheap and a large stock of and I am hoping I can get them to work. This is the one of them that I have used:
The key is that they need to support jlink v9 or higher.
I’d say a Zigbee dongle and zigbee2mqtt is a good option. You can just run the z2m container independent of everything else. It has a web interface and everything.
@avi The short answer is that you don’t need to recreate all of your automations and possibly bindings. In the ST driver there is an option toward the bottom that says “Re-send all configuration”. After you factory reset the device, add it to the other network to update it, and then re-add it back to ST, you enable that setting. It sends all of your configuration options to the switch and recreates any bindings you had setup.
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That’s my home setup in a nutshell. I use a Sonoff Zigbee Dongle Plus, with zigbee2mqtt and NO Home Assistant (I prefer Node-Red for automation). I do have HA running on a separate Pi box, but that’s more for fiddling around… it’s not “in charge” of anything. I find that the z2m web interface is reasonably full-featured, although there are areas where it could improve. No issues with reliability, though… quite the opposite. Stand-alone z2m (and ZwaveJS-UI on the same box) are far, far more reliable than what I had with my previous setup (popular proprietary solution that many here are still using, so I don’t want to bad-mouth it)
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I don’t see a reason why it wouldn’t work. I’ll try it out and post the results. Tag me if i forget.
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@mamber Zigbee2MQTT requires an MQTT server to be running. Either point the config to an existing server or temporarily startup one. I followed these instructions to start an mqtt server and zigbee2mqtt on a linux machine via docker-compose. Once z2m is started pair the switch and then go to the OTA tab and check for updates.
https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/guide/getting-started/#installation
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Can confirm. I run 2 instances of Z2M. 1 using the HA Add-On. And the second in an LXC container on my home server. If HA is down when I startup the server, the LXC version of Z2M will not boot. Once HA is up and running I need to reboot the LXC container.
Now it should be theoretically possible to use Z2M directly with Hubitat since HE is capable of sending and receiving MQTT messages. Somebody would just need to write an app to interpret the messages in a way that HE can make use of it. It should also be theoretically possible to use ZwaveJS with HE as well.
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Has anyone experienced this issue on Hubitat or is it isolated to Home Assistant?
Unfortunately (or fortunately) I haven’t gotten around to installing most of my 40+ Blue switches and I’m wondering if I might be better served by waiting and going with Reds instead. Zwave is what I really wanted to begin with (for exactly these types of routing issues that are present in a lot of Zigbee products) but I got impatient and jumped on the Blue pre-orders because nothing better was available.
Zigbee is going to be best going forward.
Z-wave isn’t problem-free either.
I haven’t seen any reports, but I would imagine the same issue exists as I experience this on SmartThings (just didn’t have all the fancy tools to diagnose it).
I do anticipate this being fixed with the next release and the good news is that I can personally tell if the fix is working.
Regarding swapping out for Z-Wave, we can certainly work something out if need be. But I can say confidently that I will continue to use Blue Series in my house exclusively (aside from a couple strategically placed Red Series switches for my Z-Wave locks/garage door opener) so hopefully that alleviates some of the concerns you have.
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Do you know when 2.11 will be released?
We are waiting until we test 2.12 which has all of the network issues hopefully fixed. I’m hoping to get the firmware this week, but we haven’t received anything from the manufacturer yet.
After 2.12 is tested, I think we will release it as there doesn’t seem to be any other issues outside what’s been fixed in prior versions.
I’ll continue to update everyone once I test it for a week or so. I want to make sure I’m not seeing a lot of the network congestion and binding issues over normal use.
Edit: My best guess would be in 2 weeks if all goes well.
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