FabianI have quite a few Philips Hue products in my home, I think around 80 lights and at least 25 accessories. I’ve split the entire installation between two bridges and the whole thing has always been very stable over the past six years. Until a few days ago.
Suddenly the lights in some rooms no longer switched on properly when I pressed the light switch. Only after several attempts did the Hue wall switch module respond. Dimmer switches also stopped working and even in the app there were delays in control. What was going on?
I quickly realised that only one Hue Bridge was affected by the problems. I initially tried restarting the Bridge, but this had no effect. To make matters worse, I didn’t make any changes during the period in question, not even on the software side.
Already tense atmosphere in the house
So I tackled the next step: Change the Zigbee channel. This is very easy to do in the Hue app via the bridge settings and usually takes less than a minute. The entire system changes the radio channel and hopefully runs more stably again. But this change had no effect either.
My wife was already visibly annoyed at this point. It’s understandable when you have to press the light switch in the bathroom five times before something finally happens. The children’s room and dressing room were also among the rooms affected, in which the light is repeatedly switched on and off, especially in the dark season. Horror scenarios were already running through my head at this point: Do I need to reset the Bridge to factory settings? Or is the control centre perhaps the problem and I’d better move everything to a new Hue Bridge? A pretty big operation without a backup function.
This solution left me speechless
On the way home from kindergarten, I had another idea: to change the position of the Hue Bridge. I didn’t have much hope, because the channel change didn’t help and the two Bridges have been standing next to each other in the same cupboard for six years. The problems came all of a sudden. But even if you don’t believe me now, it was precisely this change – I moved the Hue Bridge to a different floor on a different router – that made the entire system run smoothly again. Why and why? I have no idea.
But I definitely wanted to write down my experiences. Maybe one of you will have similar problems at some point and won’t find a solution either. Why don’t you try moving one of your Hue Bridges to a different location?
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Thanks for sharing! As I read this, I was 100% following every troubleshooting step and possible (daunting) outcome.
And then there’s the spouse… Who, lord love them, has put up with all of our Philips Hue obsessing, setup, successes (and failures) over the years (including misconfigured power recovery settings waking an infant in the middle of the night after a power failure).
It is in these moments of Hue hiccups that “the look” of a spouse can just say it all (“I thought Hue was so awesome?, Can we just go back to regular lights now? How much did you spend on all of this again?!”).
However, from time to time, as we sit in a gloriously comfortable, soft and warm room of flickering fireplace Hue lights, she’ll turn to me and admit that I was right, and she can’t imagine going back.
Zigbee bands overlap with WiFi frequencies.
Depending on the router configuration e.g. to “auto select” the best channel it can be that the WiFi channel is now causing the interference with your ZigBee.
I have fixed my WiFi channels at one side of the spectrum and the zigbee channels at the middle and other end you avoid overlapping.
https://community.openhab.org/t/zigbee-channelling-considerations-when-installing-your-zigbee-network/103455
However, I have experienced the same problems in the last couple of days.
1 of my 2 hub also experiences slow responsiveness sometimes.
As you I haven’t changed anything in my configuration.
Maybe a bug in the new firmware??
I too have experienced issues in the past week after years of stability.
What I found was any accessory with a battery level under 50% was experiencing flakey responses. Nothing was under 25%, but popping in new batteries and problems instantly went away.
Depending on whether you have “close” neighbors: someone might have installed (or moved) a router next to you using a channel that create interference. Puzzling errors can appear out of nowhere 🙂
Move to Home Assistant ZHA and never haver these problems again. Im with 128 que devices, and only one zigbee coordinator (Home Assistant Yellow default).
*Have, **Hue
Different router? You have more than one? Why?
The latest hue hub maxes out at around 50-60 lights depending on amount of switches etc.
I also have made no changes over the last new years but the last week or so my switches require several presses to work.
Reading all the comments this is defo a firmware issue as it would be a massive coincidence.
If someone can help me with my problem! My hue bridge doesn’t not connect to home kit anymore. Just Alexa. Do I need to reset to factory settings or there is another solution?
I have over 30 lights and I don’t want to start from scratch