Fibaro RGBW controllers moved to Homey give weird results

I’ve just removed 3 working RGBW controllers from my Home Centre 2 and added them to Homey.

I’m now getting somewhat erratic behaviour when trying to use the RGB lights.

  • I can turn them on and off fine from the app.
  • If i change the colours it’s a bit hit and miss if the colour change occurs or jumps back to the current one in the app UI.
  • If i turn on and off using the traditional wall toggle switch the colour seems to be reset to bright red.

It has been maybe 3-4 years since I set up the RGBW devices in HC2 so maybe I’ve forgotten some setting I should have done…

  • What is needed to make them turn on and off with a standard toggle wall switch and remember the last set RGBW colour?
  • Are there known problems still with the RGBW controllers from Fibaro - if so where are the issues listed to track?

I’m using App v2.8.0.383 (iOS) and Homey Pro v2.5.0

I’m not sure how or where I can see a log of events as there’s some ZWave error messages that flash up briefly when doing something things in the iOS app?

Set the following parameter of Fibaro module to 1:

  1. Response to BRIGHTNESS set to 0%
    Default setting: 1
    0 - illumination colour set to white (all channels controlled together)
    1 - last set colour is memorized
    Parameter size: 1[byte]

Thanks for the pointer. Sounds like it’s doable, at least.

However I can’t see in the mobile app > RGBW > settings > advanced settings where “response to brightness” is located?

Is ‘71’ something related to the device raw parameter ID?

Yes, in device setting under “Raw configuration parameters” you can set it manually: 71,1,1

okay, makes sense, done, and saved.

Tested on two of my RGBW devices - turned on the devices using Homey app, set a colour, turned them off.
When turning on using IN1 toggle wall switch the RGBW comes on as red still.

Ah, reading the RGBW manual - IN1 that the wall switch is connected to also controls the “Red”!

Thats the issue. Each color has its own input. In your case, you are switching only red channel.

From what I can decipher in the docs, it’s parameter 14 i need to change rather than (or as well as?) parameter 71?

I can’t grasp what value is expected for parm 14 though - other than it being 2 bytes in size :slight_smile:

I tried 71,1,1;14,2,7 but got nothing better out of it.

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Set it to 4x switch in parameters. and put outgoing wire from switch to fibaro input 1 then wire from input 1 to 2 to 3 to 4. so 1 switch turn on all 4 channels

Interesting suggestion - but this wasn’t necessary when the RGBW devices were controlled by the Home Centre 2 box. Some RGBW devices are in fiddly to access places such as ceiling cavities.

True. You could also set the 4 digit parameter manually, this should work, but I’m not sure if it get overruled by the athom fibaro app setting for it.
Edit: you can also make a flow for it now that i think of it…
When red is turned on and others are off, turn on all.

I’m not sure i fancy the idea of making flows for each of the rooms with an RGBW switch in.

I’ve contacted Athom support as i can’t suss the param 14 out to work. All i ever get is the red led coming on with the wall switch still.

New app is out , this might have a fix. Have to re-add devices though.

Ah! Thanks for the heads-up on that. I have auto updates enabled on the Fibaro Homey app so assumed it would install itself.

I see it’s a beta version currently - v2.2.4 - https://apps.athom.com/app/com.fibaro
I’m currently running v2.2.2

No response from Athom support, yet.

Is there always no solution for this problem? I have the same problem with the fibaro rgbw 2 Controller. The v1 Controller works perfect with a wall switch.

Hey Heff – i’ve got my Fibaro RGBW lights working in Homey okay now – although the unpredictable general colour picker process I mentioned is still a problem, even with Homey v5

to control the device with homey over the app seems okay. but when like to toggle it over the switch about the Input channels that won’t work with the v2. i tried it with parameters, but without a solution. when the fibaro is in factory mode and not connected to homey the input channels works perfect as toggle switch. i think ist a problem of the fibaro app, in combination when is connectet to homey.

Hi I am having the same problem after migrating from Fibaro Home Center 2. The physical switch connected to IN1 controls only red channel. Last color is not remembered and it is not possible to switch off the light completely by the physical switch, when more channels than red are on.

Has anybody found a solution to this?

Did you try the raw parameter setting on the RGBW device?

That worked For me.

I’ve since moved house and left All the zwave kit there so can no longer check back on exactly what I did.

I played around with it for some more time and it seems to work satisfactorily. First, I was not able to replicate Input 1 to other Inputs, so I physically connected the Inputs 2-4 to the same wire as Input 1. This helped with the problem of controlling only the red channel.

But it was still working a bit strange, so I tried the suggested setting of raw parameters. 71,1,1 works correctly, but 14,2,7 didn’t work for me. I checked in this manual (perhaps an old one, but the current one does not seem to describe parameter 14). What is important to note is, that the value of parameter 14 is a decimal number corresponding to a binary number of four bits for four channels, i.e. default seems to be 0001000100010001 (decimal 4369). I am using momentary switches, so I need to use values for table corresponding to momentary switches, i.e. brightness mode over all channels = 0010001000100010 (decimal 8738), rainbow mode over all channels = 0011001100110011. For toggle switches and toggle w/memory switches the correct values need to be found in the table.

So in the end, I am using momentary switches, hard-wired all 4 inputs and a setting of params 71,1,1;14,2,8738 and the behavior seems to be what I originally had with Fibaro HC2 and at least it is somehow logical and consistent.

In the end, I found this formulation: “2) BRIGHTNESS mode - all outputs are controlled together, i.e.
one switch controls brightness of all channels at the same time.
This operating mode works with momentary and toggle switches.”
which I understand in a way that with correctly set parameter 14 to brightness mode, it is not needed to physically wire Inputs 2-4.

Thanks for hints and hopefully it will help someone else.