Eisy and Philips Hue Zigbee

[bconen]

Since the eisy can now control the Philips Hue light bulbs via zigbee, I am wanting to purchase two but had a couple of questions.

1.  Since I will have two BR30 bulbs in the same room, can they be grouped together so that when one is adjusted they both adjust together?

2.  Can the Philips bridge still be used with the eisy or does the eisy replace it?

3.  If controlling the bulbs from a program in the eisy, what parameters can be adjusted in the program (i.e. on/off, brightness, color, etc.)?

[dbwarner5]

43 minutes ago, bconen said:

Since the eisy can now control the Philips Hue light bulbs via zigbee, I am wanting to purchase two but had a couple of questions.

1.  Since I will have two BR30 bulbs in the same room, can they be grouped together so that when one is adjusted they both adjust together?

2.  Can the Philips bridge still be used with the eisy or does the eisy replace it?

3.  If controlling the bulbs from a program in the eisy, what parameters can be adjusted in the program (i.e. on/off, brightness, color, etc.)?

Also.. will the Plugin still be used / needed or will Hue be native to ISY?

[johnnyt]

Can anyone help with this? I'm also looking at getting Hue lights and motion sensors.

Do I need the Philips hub if I have eISY with zMatter?

Should I get the hub anyway, e.g. for more features and/or best results while IoX support for Zigbee matures?

Do I need the plug-in? If so, does it work with latest hub? (last update of plug=in was 2 years ago now)

Browsing forum I found some reasonably recent posts saying it doesn't work, others saying it should work but not confirming it does. One post said the motion sensor was the best one he tried, although not being specific as to whether it works great with eISY (either direct or via plug-in) or just in general with the Hue app...

Many of the posts I found are ancient in IT-years.

Any info would be appreciated

[Javi]

If the bulbs are "Zigbee" then they should work without a hub.

See this: 

And this:

 

 

 

 

[johnnyt]

Thanks, @Javi

Do motion sensors work following same process?

What about Festavia String Lights? It doesn't say it but I assume they communicate with the Hue hub via Zigbee, as I assume every Hue device does - is that right?

 

[Javi]

The product must say that it works with Zigbee Controllers....some of the older bulbs do not "work" with Zigbee Controllers.

Not sure about sensors, but most common Zigbee devices are supported.  If the Zigbee device doesn't work with eisy a user can open a ticket, but it could be a while before it makes it to production firmware.

There is also a node server (plugin) which works with the hue hub, but I don't have first hand experience.

[johnnyt]

16 hours ago, Javi said:

There is also a node server (plugin) which works with the hue hub, but I don't have first hand experience.

I've read in a few posts related to the plug-in that a power outage requires that eISY/Polisy be rebooted to get the plug-in to talk to Hue bridge again. And, apparently, it "has been like this for a long time". I also see the plug-in hasn't been touched in 2 years. 

While needing a full system reboot is far less than ideal (my eISY is on a UPS and I can't think of a time it ever went out due to a power outage), perhaps if there was a command I could send from IoX to gracefully reboot the hardware or PG3, I could program around a power outage. I know about the relatively new command to restart IoX but I don't think there's one to restart PG3 or reboot the hardware.

Is there an IoX command to reboot eISY/Polisy, or perhaps a way using network resources to send "shutdown -r now" to the eISY OS?

 

[Geddy]

2 hours ago, johnnyt said:

I've read in a few posts related to the plug-in that a power outage requires that eISY/Polisy be rebooted to get the plug-in to talk to Hue bridge again.

I use the plugin with my eisy (so on PG3x) and have not had this issue. However, we don’t get that many power outages (thankfully). Perhaps the issue is more network related than IoX/PG3 related.

2 hours ago, johnnyt said:

Is there an IoX command to reboot eISY/Polisy, or perhaps a way using network resources to send "shutdown -r now" to the eISY OS?

From what I’ve seen commented in the past there is NOT a way to reboot after power loss. Some that want(ed) a way to reboot the eisy just had it on a WiFi plug and did a hard power cycle if they weren’t local. Kind of risky (IMO). 

I don’t use any motion sensors so can’t tell you if they would work without the hub or how the system handles them through the hub. But for lights the plugin works as expected without any issues. I must be lucky. Of course basing issues only on posts here is very slanted…most that don’t have issues really have no reason to post. So only the problems are (mostly) seen here.

[johnnyt]

Thanks @Geddy

9 minutes ago, Geddy said:

From what I’ve seen commented in the past there is NOT a way to reboot after power loss. Some that want(ed) a way to reboot the eisy just had it on a WiFi plug and did a hard power cycle if they weren’t local. Kind of risky (IMO). 

I can get eisy/Polisy to commit suicide using my Digital Loggers Webswitch or by configuring one of a few zwave outlets that has auto-ON-after-OFF capability but, like you, worry about the risk/cost of doing that. An important cost for me is that whenever I do a reboot or IoX restart, I first run a program that saves a bunch of variables that I use as usage counters and to control some devices. I do the latter so that when I replace a device I only need to change one program - the one that changes the variable. I lose a lot if/when there's a hard stop. 

If no one knows of a way to do a graceful OS and/or PG3 restart from IoX program, I guess I'll submit a feature request. I would actually like to see the ability to configure a program (using AC) to run before IoX does a restart of itself or reboots the hardware. Kind of like a "Run At Shutdown" feature.

 

[Javi]

In the past many of these issues may have been caused by a bug in PG3 that caused issues when internet was not available at restart which was very likely in the case of power outages .  

17 hours ago, johnnyt said:

If no one knows of a way to do a graceful OS and/or PG3 restart from IoX program, I guess I'll submit a feature request. I would actually like to see the ability to configure a program (using AC) to run before IoX does a restart of itself or reboots the hardware. Kind of like a "Run At Shutdown" feature.

Sounds like a support nightmare.  Aside from a few setup reboot requirements, which we are trying to remove, if the user is rebooting then something was not working correctly or power was removed unexpectedly. It is highly probable the "Run at shutdown" program would not run or complete.  Some alternatives included; (1) the "init" parameter of a variable survives reboot, so this should be set when a parameter value is changed so it is retained in case of unexpected restart. (2) I believe the "Backup" Node Server restores values, but not tested on my end. (3) UD Mobile allows manual stop/start/restart commands for individual Node Servers, so if PG3 sends a notification saying the Node Server is stopped then manual reboot of only the affected Node Server with issues is possible.

[johnnyt]

25 minutes ago, Javi said:

Some alternatives included; (1) the "init" parameter of a variable survives reboot, so this should be set when a parameter value is changed so it is retained in case of unexpected restart. 

Thanks for the alternatives. Question about "init". I do init my counters at regular intervals throughout the day, or when they are infrequently updated. I'm under the impression (from my early 994i days with 512MB SD Card) that "init" wears the SD card and needs to be done with some care. With probably >50 counters, many of them being incremented every minute or every time there's motion, I didn't want to init them each time I incremented them. Is that an old concern now that storage is abundant with, I think, wear leveling happening? I may just init everytime I change a counter.

[Javi]

That is one of the tradeoffs a, but almost guarantees the value will be there.  That would have been an issue on the SD card, but can't speak on wear over time as there it has only been a few  years.

Anecdotally there is an SQLite database which holds property (status) history for all node properties, if enabled. So something with many more writes is available to users.  

 

[auger66]

On 6/6/2024 at 4:25 PM, Geddy said:

From what I’ve seen commented in the past there is NOT a way to reboot after power loss. Some that want(ed) a way to reboot the eisy just had it on a WiFi plug and did a hard power cycle if they weren’t local. Kind of risky (IMO). 

True, but if you're not home, you can get notified of a power loss recovery, and reboot with the UD Mobile app.