Cannot trigger Philips Hue light effects on Philips Hue light groups

[Grandma-Betty]

What happened?

The following issue was closed a long time ago but the issues still persists as other users reported too: https://github.com/Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt/issues/15997#issuecomment-2350208617

Therefore I will open a new issue for this issue as it seems the other ticket is not being followed by any developer anmore.

To sum it up, here is a description of the issue: On Home Assistant, when triggering any Philips Hue light effects on a single Philips Hue light entity, the according light effect is being triggered without any issues. So far, so good. On the other hand, when the same Philips Hue light entities are being grouped together and then triggering the same specific Philips Hue light effects on that light group, the according light effects do not apply.

Please be aware that some specific Philips Hue light effects actually do indeed work when being triggered on Philips Hue light groups without any issues, while others do not.

I have tested with the following two lights grouped together:

• Philips Hue Festavia Light String 20m (Model)
• Philips Hue Festavia Light String 40m (Model)

The following Philips Hue light effects are working on that group:

• blink
• breathe
• okay
• channel_change

The following Philips Hue light effects are not working on that group:

• candle
• fireplace
• colorloop
• sunrise
• sparkle
• opal
• glisten
• finish_effect
• stop_effect
• stop_hue_effect

What did you expect to happen?

Philips Hue light effects should always apply on Philips Hue lights, whether being triggered on a single Z2M light entity or on a Z2M light group entity.

How to reproduce it (minimal and precise)

Group Philips Hue light entities together and then trigger the according Philips Hue light effects on that group.

Zigbee2MQTT version

1.40.1

Adapter firmware version

20221226

Adapter

Sonoff zStack3x0

Setup

Add-on on virtual HAOS x86_64 (VMware ESXi)

Debug log

No response

[deviantintegral]

I think this is a limitation in the Hue firmware, though I haven’t confirmed that myself.

I will say, I used to think that preferring Zigbee groups was always the best way to set up a network. However, I discovered that on my own network with 45 routers and 64 end devices that reducing the number of groups I used really helped with overall network performance.

For example, I used to have a group in a bathroom fixture that had 2 lights in it. When I sent that group a command, the routers would repeat the command several times as broadcasts. And, with adaptive lighting, there were commands being sent periodically to adjust the light temperature.

What I ended up doing was moving all of my small groups to Home Assistant groups. Surprisingly, I rarely notice any popcorn effects as lights in an HA group come on, which I did years ago when first setting things up. I still have Zigbee groups for groups like “All lights”, “Main floor”, and so on, since those would be sending so many commands that the broadcast storm doesn’t really matter.

And, one side effect is that sending hue light effects always works (because I would never trigger them on a whole floor or the whole house anyways).

[Grandma-Betty]

@deviantintegral Holy crap, using HA groups insted of Z2M groups indeed did solve the problem. Thanks a bunch for that! Nevertheless I just don't get it why some of the Hue effects actually do work with Z2M groups and others do not. If it's a bug, then I think this somehow should get fixed. If it's a technical limitation on specific effects, then this maybe can get workarounded too. Either way, users will run into this issue permanently if they do not know better. But maybe @Koenkk is able to tell us more about that. Let's wait if he finds the time to pick up this issue.

Thanks again so far, you gave me a workaround for a problem that has been driving me nuts since months!

Edit: @deviantintegral I just played around a little bit more now and what you said about HA light groups being more reliable compared to Z2M light groups may be true for some use cases. But when it comes into specific effects, for example like "breathe" for multiple Philips Hue GU10 bulbs (eight bulbs in my case), then those effects are totally synchronous for the Z2M light group on all eight bulbs for the whole time the effect is being triggered, while the same effect is getting totally ansychronous when being triggered on the same light bulbs on a HA light group. Also, turning the lights on is a more smooth experience when triggering on Z2M light groups compared to HA light groups. I guess it depends on the use case when it comes into pros/cons on HA/Z2M light groups. Fortunately it is possible to use both of them at the same time, so thanks to Home Assistant (once again!) we have the freedom to choose whatever fits best for specific use cases ;-)