Let’s start with the fact that I’m totally new to home automation. last weekend I bought a second hand homey pro (the 2019 ball), and some new Fibaro switches and an outdoor Philips Hue motion sensor. Yesterday I connected the fibaro switch to my lamp and to the Homey, and I connected the Philips motion sensor. That took a bit of fiddling but I finally got it to work using “Philips Hue without the bridge” app, in a test version (version 2.0.46).
I built a small flow using the two and it worked fine: sensor saw movement: light on, sensor stopped seeing movement: lights off again.
However this morning the lamps don’t switch on anymore when I approach the sensor. In Homey the Philips sensor has a sleeping state saying (it’s in Dutch, so my translation may not be exact) “Device unavailable - Battery operated device does not respond, wake it up for communication”.
I’ve tried everything: pressing the setup button in the back of the sensor shortly, pressing it longer then 10 seconds (to register with the homey again), I’ve restarted my Homey but all in vain.
Funny thing is: in the history of the device I see it does still detect motion.
Can somebody help me getting this thing awake again?
Sidenote: Tonight (so right in between the working state last night and the failing state this morning) my Homey was upgraded to version 10.0.2. I don’t think it’s related but might be useful.
The problem isn’t the device sleeping (battery-operated Zigbee sensors almost always fall asleep until some event, like motion, is detected), it’s more likely an issue with your Zigbee network, interference, sensor being too far away from Homey, etc.
And yes, Homey firmware upgrades are also a common cause of problems. If may start working again when you take Homey off power for about 10 minutes (a restart is not good enough).
What does this page look like? Homey Developer Tools
Hi Robert,
Thanks for the swift response!
I have moved the sensor right next to the Homey, no effect
I have shut the Homey for 15 minutes, no effect
I have removed and reinserted the batteries from the sensor, no effect
In the end I decided to remove the device from Homey completely and re-add it. Updated my flows and all looks good again. I have moved the sensor back to its designated location and will wait and see how the thing holds overnight.
Moving Zigbee sensors after they have paired is usually not a great idea anyway, but how far is the sensor located from Homey now, and what does the rest of your Zigbee network look like?
Hi. Are you using the Philips Hue Hub, or the «Philips Hue, Without The Hub» app?
If you move the sensor when using the hue hub you need to remove the batteries from the sensor and re-insert them at the desired location. Make sure there is a powered zigbee unit not too far away.
If you use the homeys zigbee network, the homey is (in my experience) good at re-structuring the network without needing to remove the power source from the node
The Homey and the Philips sensor ARE the Zigbee network. There is nothing else connecting with Zigbee, no bridges or repeaters. After re-adding the sensor to the Homey and moving it back to the garage, it’s been working stable for the past 48 hours already.
