Problem with Philips Hue switches no longer working

Hey there!

I have a somewhat strange problem. All of my Philips Hue dimmer switches (both RWL021 and RWL022) no longer work.

I’m running a Conbee II stick with Firmware Version 26720700, Gateway Version 2.28.1 on Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS. I have paired Deconz to Homebridge to control lights via Siri and set up my switches via the Hue Essentials app.

The only obvious thing I’ve changed is that I now added the deconz adapter in iobroker to use sensor data in iobroker. After that, my hue switches stopped working. They still showed up as connected in Phoscon and Deconz, but the app no longer registered button presses. I’ve removed and re-paired them since, setting them up again in Hue Essentials and they’ve worked for a while. But after some time, they simply stop working, without really dropping from the network. All other lights and sensors still work as if nothing happened, even the switches from Ikea still work without a problem.

Any idea what could be causing this and how I could fix it without having to start from scratch?

Thanks a lot!

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Hi there,

right now, there’s a known bug in deconz requiring it to be restarted after a device has been paired. Presumably, this applies in your case, so a simple restart could already resolve the issue.

Thanks for the reply! Unfortunately, that does not seem to solve the problem. It seems to be solely affecting Philips Hue switches. I can add new ones, but they don’t register any actions. At the same time, I added a brand new Tradfri switch that works perfectly fine. I’m a bit baffled.

I experience the same, and only with Philips switches as well.

I added a Sonoff ZBMINIR2 to the network and they stopped working. I can see the switches in Deconz, and they are active, but Phoscon and Home Assistant (via Integration) do not register any actions from them anymore. I removed the Sonoff device and restarted Deconz, all went back to normal.

Obviously, I attributed this to ZBMINIR2 being the troublemaker, so I stopped trying. It did not occur to me that it might be a bug in Deconz. I might give it another try over the weekend.

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Thank you so much! At first I thought that actually solved my problem, because I had a ZBMINIL2 in my system as well. After removing it and rebooting Deconz, my switches worked again! Unfortunately, after an hour or so, they revert back to their non-registering status. But rebooting the system again gets them back to work. Still only Philips Hue switches are affected. So we’re getting closer, but not quite there. Anyone have an idea where to go from here?

Could you been hit with this?

Essential do a replug of the ConBee.

There was a problem with HUE switches back prior to 2.27.2. but 2.28.1 should be OK.

Replugging Conbee had no effect, unfortunately. I’ve tried removing Deconz and reinstalling it, but it made no difference. Is the only option I have left a full reset of my gateway?

Are you using a powered USB hub?
Or at least a USB extension to the Conbee?

Most relevant for RPis, but…
I use that for all my installations…

I have the same problem. At least I see the same symptoms. All my Philips HUE switches (RWL022 and ROM001) are no longer functional. All other devices are working as expected.

It started when I paired two HUE E27-bulbs. But these bulbs seems not to be the issue - I used a backup that I made some time before pairing the bulbs but the switches were still no longer working.

All the switches are visible in the phoscon-app and the deconz-gui. However events are not recognized.

I removed one of the switches and tried to pair it again, but that did not work. The switch appears in the deconz-gui but the pairing process in the phoscon-app did not finish.

For now I’ve replaced all HUE-switches with the old IKEA ones.

Oh, and I’m using a powered USB-HUB with a 2-m-USB-wire to connect the ConbeeII to the USB-2-Port of the Raspi.

@de_employees

Any ideas? Anyone?

I have the same issue, running raspbeeII on PI4. Only Hue wall switches (RDM001) are affected, evcerything else is working fine. Issue could be solved temporary by restart of deconz (I filed a cron as WA).

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I wonder if this might be related t the firmware version of the switches. My network has the old RWL021 (firmware version 20160302) and newer RWL022 (firmware version 20201125) switches. Both work normally with the following DDFs:

rwl02_dimmer_switch.json
rwl22_dimmer_switch.json

I also have various Ikea lights in my network. However in the company we are currently looking into a case where an Ikea light somehow messes around and when powered also brings down a battery powered end-device.

All switches are running on the latest firmware. Nothing was changed, except of adding two new hue-bulbs.

I restarted the deconz-container several times. I updated deconz to the latest version. I tried a backup from some weeks ago, when everything was working fine. I removed the switches and tried to add them again (did not work).

I understand, that updates can break things. Therefore we have docker and a regular backup. But when something that worked for years suddenly stops operating, than something is very wrong and can not be used for my smarthome, which simply has to work reliably all the time .

This topic is up for a month now and there is not a single helpful hint anywhere. I found sereral people having exactly the same issue. I’m getting out of patience.

So I bought a hue-bridge (which has no connection to the Internet) and use this hub to add the switches to my smarthome - without any issues.

I also moved some of the bulbs and outlets to the hue-bridge. Thanks to the separation of hardware- and logic-abstraction this is very easy even with a big openhab-installation.

So everything works fine again now.

I somehow lost trust in the conbee-deconz-phoscon-thingy.

I will continue following this topic. Maybe someday the issue gets the attention it deserves.

Same issue here. I lost connection to three Hue Dimmers (RWL022) without changing anything. All other things in the zigbee-network are not affected. The dimmers are still visible and seem to be connected in Phoscon, but no button-push ist detected.

There seem to be a lot of issues with these devices with third party zigbee-controllers. But I have not seen a solution up to now.

As no one seems to have any ideas on how to fix this, is there a way to raise these issues with the developers more directly?

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@de_employees

This was a tricky one, I’ve merged a fix now which hopefully should make the switches (and likely some other devices) work again.

https://github.com/dresden-elektronik/deconz-rest-plugin/pull/8043

The problem isn’t really the devices, but a bookkeeping mechanism from the early DDF days prevented processing some DDF handled messages like the Hue button events, in case additional DDFs where loaded during a running session. This also could happen in case of existing devices in the network where no DDF exists but is created on the fly.

The v2.29.1-beta release is now building, would be cool if anybody could test it.

Thanks a lot! I updated to the Beta, added a RWL022 switch and so far it seems to be working after 12 hours. If anything changes, I will report back.

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Update from my side: Something still seems to be going wrong. After my added RWL022 was still working after 24 hours, I started adding back my other switches, both RWL022 and RWL021. Promptly, all of my RWL022 stopped working, but the newly added RWL021 kept working. So I removed all RWL022 and added them back. Now they’re back to working, but none of my RWL021 work, even after removing them and adding them back. I’m very confused. :frowning: