I am running into an issue with my Hue ecosystem which seems to be getting worse and i have ran out of ideas, so perhaps someone else has a suggestion for me.
I have 3 Hue bridges (~100 lights and accessoires). Most sensors are Hue as well. I had the bridges connected over zigbee at first to HP23, which i believed worked fine, at least i didn’t notice anything strange. After i changed the zigbee into Matter, which at first seems to work fine, more responsive, so i was happy. But lately i have been noticing registration of events not happening or not getting through. For example:
Timer off → lights out not happening (lights stay on, happens in multiple rooms, until i walk in the room again and it registers movement, then when the no movement signal is sent lights will go out.)
At sunset turn on lights (i have multiple lights it should turn on but it doesn’t or only a few, but used to be fine)
4 spots in bathroom should dim to -50% after a timer, only does 1 light at times, other times all 4).
The HP23 is not running out of memory as far i can see. My feeling is that this started happening more after i switched to Matter, but not sure if that is even possible (my knowledge doesn’t go that deep). I am testing by re-adding my lights using zigbee instead of Matter devices to see if that helps, but no results yet. I have tried to switch zigbee channel on some bridges. But it doesn’t seem to help. If anyone has a suggestion for me to try i would be thankful.
Nice to hear you are excited about the Matter integration you can use on Homey Pro 2023. Please note that Matter on Homey Pro is still in Beta and that the Matter standard itself still has very limited functionality (for example, there is no power measurement standard in Matter at the moment).
You have to compare your integration now running through Matter to a Zigbee device for which there is no official app on Homey, it will also be treated as a Basic Zigbee device and only work according to a few standard commands. That’s pretty similar to the current state of Matter. So more extensive options like dim over x time and turn on at this dim level are not there (yet). So currently there is also no option to run custom capabilities through Matter (Matter apps on Homey), this is one of the reasons why Matter integration is currently even more limited than integration through the Hue app. So custom capabilities like the groups and such cannot be used yet.
We are currently working on the Hue app though to make sure that all sensors and lights are more responsive, so you may want to keep an eye on the Hue app when this update is released. Maybe this will solve your biggest problems with the current Hue app for you.
Also, the Matter integration on Homey Pro is still getting better and better and the Matter standard itself will also get more extensive, so you should see the current Matter integration purely as the beginning, this will get bigger and more extensive with time especially when Thread will also come soon. So you are right that Matter is currently more limited than the other implementations (it is still in Beta for a reason). But so this will definitely continue to be developed and expanded to at least equal the other integrations such as Z-wave and Zigbee .
I hope this answers your question to your satisfaction, so I will close your ticket now. Should you need additional support you can reopen your ticket by replying to this email.
I wish you a good day and lots of fun with Homey!
Kind regards,
Best Regards,
Peter
( the answer was in Dutch so i translate it)
This is what i had as answer from Athom, today the hue zigbee app has updated, no idea if this was the update peter was talking about.
There is no ZigBee communication involved when you are using Hue Bridge paired with Homey Pro 2023. At least not in direct way. There is only connection through WiFi/LAN using REST API, or using Matter.
When you are using Hue with Homey in an “old way”, through API, you can use groups in your flows. When you are using Matter, there are no groups available, just single devies, which requires much more requests to handle and it becames unstable.
I’m using both connections, through API (official Philips Hue app from Homey) for groups, and Matter for single devices, because Matter has quicker response from Hue remotes and sensors.
I’ve removed all devices from “old integration”, and I’m using only groups in flows, to not have duplicated devices in dashboard. I’ve left only Matter devices in dashboard view.
Hello rizzah,
Are you sure it has to do with Homey? I have a similar behaviour in my Hue system (after a recent Hue update I assume); After appr. 30 sec after a switch off due to the sensor two other items (one lamp and one “strange” zigbee controller) will be dimmed to 25%. I tought it had to do with the Homey connection but even with the Homey complete switched off it will be the same.
regards, Bas
No im not sure tbh, everything was working fine for many years (also usiing Domoticz before), and in the beginning with Homey the same. When i switched to Matter everything looked ok in the beginning but started noticing wierd things, most of them involving Hue sensors. I switched back to zigbee and removed all Matter things, but still the issue is still there. At the moment im not sure what to do but it is very frustrating.
Hi Peter,
I looked in the HUE-essentials app and found that most of the sensors had “strange” actions in the Automation. (red triangle with exclamation mark). I removed these and now it is working fine as before the update. Some of the sensors (I have 7 of them) I put new timers in by use of the “standard” HUE app. I think due to the update of the bridge or sensors (with the new option for more timers) the old ones are not overwritten and got strange behaviour.
It’s been going well for half a day now, so fingers crossed it stays that way.
Bit late reply, was sick for a while and a bit clueless what to try next. Right now i have added all Hue motion sensors directly to the HP23 with Hue app without bridge. The sensors seem to detect movement just fine, its in combination when timers end where things go wrong. I have configured it like this (basic): No movement detected → start timer; when that timer ends → go in dim -50% mode and start a timer; when that one ends lights go out. Sometimes nothing happens when a timer finishes, sometimes it goes into dim and then nothing, sometimes lights go out. Its all @random. So for now what i configured, because it seems like the dim and/or out signals are not being received, i have added a 2nd ‘lights out’ to the flow which starts 3 seconds are the first. Timer ends → lights out (and at the same time wait 3 seconds, check if lights are on, if so, send another lights out). I have yet to see if this resolves anything … but even if it does, it is not really the way it should be.
