Hey,
I’m coming from Philips Hue and Home Assistant. But I don’t want to mess with my Smart Home Setup anymore and want something polished. But there is something that is very important for me. Turning on light bulbs smoothly in sync, like it is done in Philips Hue.
I was able to reproduce this behaviour with Zigbree Groups in Home Assistant.
But I am not sure if this is also possible in Homey.
I was reading that there is a Zigbee stack rewrite going on and that this is a feature that could be supported in the future. I also saw taht Homey documented Zigbee groups in their Zigbee documentation .
So here is my question now. Does Homey now support Zigbee groups or is there an alternative way to get light bulbs turning on and off smoothly and in sync with Homey. I have a lamp with three smart light bulbs and I want to make sure that they are turned on"nicely" and not one after one.
Thank you very much!
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It’s not.
Not that I know of. Where did you read that?
The documentation only states that one-way group communication (from devices to Homey) is possible, not the other way around.
It’s also not possible for Homey (apps) to create Zigbee groups or bindings between two devices (for instance binding a remote to a light(group)). And FWIW, Homey also doesn’t support OTA updates for Zigbee.
All these missing features have long been pointed out to Athom, but the response has always been “interesting, we’ll take a look”.
There are some software-defined methods, like the <group> app. However, historically Homey has had quite bad support for sending commands to multiple devices at the same time. With three lights it’ll probably work, but no guarantees. The typical fix is introducing delays between each command.
@robertklep Thanks for the quick response. .
That’s really a bummer. I was hoping for a Homey native solution here.
As a work around I could of course also still use the Hue Bridge for controlling my lights, but then I have to configure scenes and zones and rooms at two different places.
It is a pity that such a well-designed product does not allow an aesthetically pleasing light setup/automation. Especially since the problem and the required feature are well known.
Is there a similar problem with z-wave or Thread lights?
AFAIK Homey doesn’t have any tools to group Z-Wave, Thread or Zigbee devices, so I would say that this issue exists across the whole range of protocols.
About controlling grouped devices per < group > app:
It has a setting to enter a custom delay time (in ms), which is used between every command to a device in that group.
When you turn the group device on, it fires the commands one after the other very quick, instead of Homey, which fires all at once.
When it’s possible to set that delay to, say, 50ms (just some value), you could control like 10 lights with a max of 0.5s delay between the first & last light.
You can make that delay maybe even shorter, that means experimenting with it until you found the shortest delay, without random lights not responding.
This is also an interesting app, maybe it suits even better:
Light Triggers
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@Peter_Kawa: could you please tell me where I can find that custom delay settinng in the device or app? I can’t find it and I am hoping that this will fix my issue with my Ikea lights.
The Group app you mean? It shouldn’t be necessary to adjust it.
I can’t find the setting either, apparently it has been removed from the app at some point. Not the delay itself, but the setting to adjust it.
Yes, indeed the Group app.
My IKEA Tradfri lights are performing really poorly when grouped together with the Group app. High latencies (up to 10 seconds or so) and sometimes they do not react at all. From this forum, I understand that’s because Homey’s Zigbee implementation sends out all commands at once. Therefore, I was hoping that this delay parameter you mentioned above would help. However, I cannot find that parameter.
Hi Patrick,
While Homey sends all commands at once (with any protocol, not zigbee in particular), asynchronous, the Group app should send commands to group members one by one, synchronous.
That tiny delay in between each command always was present, and, in previous app versions, it was adjustable.
I couldn’t find that setting either, in the current app version, with Light groups that is:
I just found out it’s present in a United group advanced settings tab:
Can you confirm the lights act as expected, when operated one by one? (to rule out any zigbee issues).
NB
Here I’ve found a screenshot of an previous app version, it definitely was there in any group type one day:
Hi Peter,
Thank you for your reaction and my apologies for the late reply.
Individually, the lights work as expected. All the lights that the Group “missed”, I switch on manually and that works flawlessly.
What’s the difference between a Light group and a United group? Is that something I can configure?
Best regards,
Patrick.
Hello Patrick,
No problem.
OK, so we can rule out individual device issues.
The descriptions are a bit hidden; after starting to add a United group for instance, a description is shown
I just coincidentally found the delay setting in this particular group type.
Maybe it’s present in other types as well, but not in the standard light group, which puzzles me.
More info can be found in the group app’s forum topic.
Thanks for all the help.
But in the end I had to give up. The ZigBee stack in Homey is just too limited. It doesn’t support group broadcasts so the lights will never react simultaneously. So, I switched to Home Assistant with a Zigbee2MQTT dongle and that works just fine.
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