#UniFi Configuration

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

proven plinth
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blissful phoenix
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So I fibbed a little, I just noticed that I do have Multicast Enhancement turned on for my WiFi network which has all my main stuff on, but no Multicast DNS, IGMP snooping, Proxy ARP, Multicast Control, etc.

acoustic vigil
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I've got everything turned off with SLAAC ipv6 and that works for me

grim igloo
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Yea, unfortunately, after ~36 hours, some of my issues returned this AM. One of my shades has become non-responsive.

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FWIW, the only devices of mine that are really experiencing problems are my SmartWings MoT shades. They seem to be especially brittle.

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@blissful phoenix I'm aware of that site. Was definitely a helpful resource when I was first getting started w/ Unifi.

proven plinth
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haha yeah, made by the one and only @sweet idol 😛

blissful phoenix
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And he notes "I’ve had pretty good success with firmware stability, but it hasn’t been perfect. Early on I had to do a soft reboot of a few shades. But I’m not sure if that was due to Thread/Matter instability on my network, or a Smartwings firmware bug. Smartwings says they are working on updated firmware, but not sure what issues that is supposed to address."

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So it may be a SmartWings issue 🤷

grim igloo
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Yea, I saw that review about a week ago.

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@sweet idol have you had any better luck?

sweet idol
grim igloo
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And you migrated all your gear over to TP-link, right? What about your gateway/router?

sweet idol
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Firewalla firewall, tp-link and netgrear pro AV switches yes.

grim igloo
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How often do you see one of your shades become non-responsive?

sweet idol
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Out of the six, maybe one once a month

grim igloo
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I think I'm going to fire off yet another email to SmartWings, but inquiring about a potential firmware update. Out of ~30 MoT devices, my SmartWings shades are the only ones that I'm consistently having issues with. Everything else has been rock solid (Eve, Aqara, even NanoLeaf after their recent firmware updates).

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I blew $10k+ on this setup that refuses to work correctly. I'm deeply regretting not going with the Lutron alternative at this point.

sweet idol
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Let me know what they say

grim igloo
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Will do.

kind egret
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Hi, I have some VLANs. But all devices relevant for Matter are in the same VLAN (iPhones, iPads, Macs, AppleTVs, HomePods, Home Assistant Yellow).

The following options are disabled:

Multicast DNS
Multicast Enhancements
IGMP Snooping

grim igloo
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One bit of misinformation that comes up frequently that I'm pretty certain is flat-out wrong is that one "must" have IPv6 enabled on their network.

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Without IPv6 enabled, the devices will work just fine w/ link local addressing. It's only relevant between the MoT devices and the border routers.

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I've tested with both IPv6 disabled and enabled on my UDW, it makes no difference. Non-SmartWings devices still work perfectly. SmartWings shades exhibit the same amount of unreliability either way.

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The only time IPv6 should really matter is if you wanted devices to be directly addressable from the WAN.

blissful phoenix
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You need IPv6 enabled on your devices, including HA / Matter Controller, but yes you don’t need a public or private IPv6 subnet allocated on your VLAN, it’ll work with link local addressing afaik

kind egret
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I have IPv6 working end to end, on the WAN connection (PPPoE Dual Stack), in the LAN and on all devices that support it.

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I have a the following environment:

  • UDM-SE
  • USW-Aggregation
  • USW-Enterprise-24-PoE
  • 4x U7-Pro
  • 2x U6-Pro
grim igloo
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@kind egret do you have SmartWings MoT devices? If so, any issues specifically with those?

kind egret
grim igloo
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@sweet idol so I got an email back from SmartWings. They want to send me 5 of their "Matter motors with a 1.2 version featuring router function". This is also interesting: "Unfortunately, shades cannot be updated OTA 'cause the hardware inside of the motor is quite different."

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I'm starting to think their engineers are clueless.

sweet idol
grim igloo
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Every shade is within 15' of a thread border router. I explained this to them. I presume they mean "meshing" when they say "router function". Meshing won't help any if they can't already communicate with a border router right next to them.

sweet idol
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ok I just emailed them about Matter 1.2...will see what they say

grim igloo
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This signoff on their response is supposed to be confidence inspiring, but it's actually the opposite:

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"Trust me, choosing us cannot be a wiser decision compared to going with Eve or Lutron. We respect every piece of review and comment. Though we're not a big name, I believe we can grow up fast under your guys' help."

sweet idol
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ya I've gotten weird responses back from support as well.

proven plinth
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ah god, not inspiring much hope for them.....

grim igloo
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This was my response. It really feels like their engineers are just grasping at straws. I'm hoping I can dig a little deeper and provide them some better guidance.

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"I presume you're referring to Thread meshing? There is nothing in the Matter 1.2 spec regarding meshing. It has been part of the original Thread spec since the beginning. But that will not help in my case. Every shade is within 15 feet of a Thread Border Router. The problem is not physical connectivity.

From what I am seeing, the problem is that some of your motors randomly stop broadcasting themselves on the network. Eventually, Open Thread Border Router (OTBR) no longer sees them in mDNS, removes their cached IP address, and marks them as offline. The only way I've found to fix this is to power cycle the shade.

I presume this is happening because these motors are "sleepy nodes" but have a poor/buggy firmware. I am guessing that they go to sleep to preserve battery life (even though my motors are hardwired) but then they never correctly wake up again, and eventually they fall off the network.

Again, I have hardwired shades. There is no reason for these motors to identify as "sleepy" devices. But first and foremost, if my hypothesis is correct, you need to fix your firmware for battery powered shades. If this is indeed the problem that many people are having then adding "router ability" will not improve things for many/most of your customers.

Also, I have 18 shades total. Replacing 5 will not fix my problem, especially since I am positive that every shade has a strong wireless connection to one or more Thread Border Routers. Adding "router function" between shades will not help in this scenario if one of the shades decides to go to sleep and never wakes up again. At this very moment, one of my shades that is not responsive is 3 feet from my OTBR device. "

proven plinth
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Yeah, I hope this gets you a response from a engineer, not a level 1 support

grim igloo
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The only other thing I can think they're referring to by "router functionality" is that their shades are currently incapable of connecting to more than a single Thread Border Router.

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And that if that TBR goes offline, then they are incapable of re-routing to another TBR.

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And that would somewhat align with the behavior I've seen from them. But holy hell...that would be horrible to ship a product with that kind of butchered functionality.

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That's like alpha-level software. Not beta, and definitely not production grade.

sweet idol
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@grim igloo I haven't observed TBR failover issues. I have 2 ATVs plus Skyconnect. Seem to me to failover without issue.

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The only issue I've observed is that on fairly rare occasions a shade needs a soft reboot to wake it up from being unresponsive.

proven plinth
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I mean, it seams odd it can’t do a OTA update

grim igloo
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That's literally part of the Matter 1.1 spec in order to be "Matter certified"

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@sweet idol how are you observing them performing the failover?

sweet idol
grim igloo
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If it's possible to swap an Eve Motion motor into these shade tubes, I might just pull the plug and go that route. This is becoming unbearable.

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But that's another $3600...

proven plinth
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Maybe they are struggling with it all

grim igloo
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Oh they're definitely struggling with it all 😂

sweet idol
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Their HOmekit/thread shades can be updated to Matter via OTA/Bluetooth

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so I'm hard pressed to think why Matter updates can't be done OTA too..and via Apple home

grim igloo
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I'm guessing they're using an entirely different thread radio on the new devices

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But I'm also guessing they're solving the wrong issue. It sounds like they're trying to fix meshing to improve range, but the issue isn't one of connectivity.

blissful phoenix
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Possible memory/storage/performance issue on the hardware? Similar to how NL originally commented that you'd be able to update their HK bulbs to Matter, only then to find that the hardware wasn't up to the task of running Matter code 🤷

grim igloo
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That'd be my only guess, although these motors were already running Matter over Thread.

blissful phoenix
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Wondering if SW managed to cram a basic Matter implementation onto some existing hardware, as don't they have Zigbee etc blinds as well, and now they've hit issues

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All speculation I know but...

grim igloo
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In any case, it just gives the impression of some scrappy engineering team somewhere in China that are in way over their heads, with a sales/marketing team stateside that has no understanding of how to manage an engineering team at all, and now they're starting to experience the consequences of that.

sweet idol
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@grim igloo Smartwings wrote me about the Matter upgrade: "We are currently in the final stage of internal testing, and this is an exquisite technological upgrade. Please be patient. Once the testing is completed, I will promptly send it out to you:)"

grim igloo
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@sweet idol it's worrisome that they seem to be on a very different page.

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The email I just got back is only causing me to be more concerned. They do not seem to be interested at all in actually understanding what the problem is. They seem to be perfectly content with hypothesizing without asking for any further information.

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Also, my alternative hypothesis from yesterday might actually be correct. This is one of the things they mentioned:

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"In addition, please power off the hardwired shades by unplugging the power supply and the shades will be controlled by the nearby Thread border router after powering on. Hence, it is an easier way to replace the procedure of sleep mode."

proven plinth
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yikes

grim igloo
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Yea, they're convinced my problems are due to either 1) multiple thread networks (I don't have multiple thread networks, I have a single HomeKit originated network with Home Assistants OTBR merged to it via credential sharing) or 2) "the Matter-enabled shades were controlled by the furthest Thread border routers". But I've already debugged that by unplugging all border routers except the one closest to my shades, and I'm still experiencing shades becoming non-responsive.

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I'm a software engineer, so I would expect their engineers to ask questions to try and better understand the problem. But they're not, they're just making completely false assumptions.

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So I'm starting to come to grips with the fact that I likely flushed $10k+ down the drain with their shades.

remote grail
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@sweet idol @grim igloo curious if you guys ended up having any luck with smartwings?

I ordered one window shade as a test, which keeps disconnecting from HA with this error: "This entity is no longer being provided by the matter integration. If the entity is no longer in use, delete it in settings."

grim igloo
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I have not, although your error sounds quite different.

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@remote grail you're seeing that in the Matter Server logs specifically?

remote grail
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The blinds seem to work in google home, but keeps breaking the connection with HA

grim igloo
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Yea, if they're working in Google Home then that doesn't sound like an issue with the blinds specifically.

remote grail
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I've done resets a few times, but keeps happening

grim igloo
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So it works initially in both Google Home and HA?

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Or you've only gotten it working in Google Home?

remote grail
grim igloo
sweet idol
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My blinds are 'decently' reliable with one of them "only" needing a soft reboot every few weeks. They def have bugs to fix.

remote grail
grim igloo
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I'm on a roll at the moment. Since updating all my Apple devices to 17.5/17.5.1, and restarting all my shades, they've actually all remained responsive for about 5 days now.

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My longest streak since buying them

sweet idol
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And I think some of the unresponsiveness to commands is due to all the Eve devices I have. Marcel said all those custom attribute queries are bogging down my network. The next Matter server update may help with lessening that Eve traffic.

sweet idol
grim igloo
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Yea, but I'm tempted to go give them another power cycle just to see what happens

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I'm guessing it's just a coincidence.

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When I power cycle them, usually 1 or 2 won't come back up responsive.

sweet idol
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There's no way to 'power cycle' the SW binds...the best you can do is a forced reboot.

grim igloo
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Yea there is

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Mine are hard wired 🙂

sweet idol
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ah..battery devices have no power disconnect on them

grim igloo
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I've got a circuit breaker for all 18 of my shades. I just give it a flip...wait a few seconds, flip it back, and most of them (but usually not all of them) come back online

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It's just kind of maddening because each time it's a different shade(s) that are non-responsive. But every so often, all of them come back online.

sweet idol
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are you sure it's not a mDNS/multicast/IPv6 issue/instability?

grim igloo
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At this point, I'm pretty certain. I'm not using VLAN's, but besides that I've tested all the mdns/multicast settings, turned IPv6 off, etc etc

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They've behaved the same no matter the settings

sweet idol
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Do you have other Matter/thread devices?

grim igloo
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Yea, I've got 30+ MoT devices. Only the SmartWings have issues.

sweet idol
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ok ya mDNS sounds stable

grim igloo
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I've got Eve and Aqara devices that work about as perfect as you could hope for.

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Even a Nanoleaf bulb (w/ latest firmware) that's been solid.

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I can positively say that each individual one of my SmartWings shades has given me more issues than all my other non-SmartWings devices combined, many times over.

grim igloo
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So much for streak...woke up this AM to a shade unopened and unresponsive again. Ughhhh.

grim igloo
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@sweet idol I just got an email from SmartWings letting me know that "We plan to send you a Matter Bridge to improve the stability. As we're working on that right now, it probably take 2-3 weeks to be ready". So it sounds like they have given up on fixing the Matter implementation of their motors and are instead reverting to implementing a Matter hub that I'm guessing will control the motors via traditional RF.

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At this point I think I'm going to reach back out and ask for some sort of refund.

sweet idol
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My luck with the RF remote is worse than with Matter. LOL

blissful phoenix
sweet idol
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I got another email. Sounds like the “bridge” is a device to update the firmware. Very unclear from their English.

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One is on the way so we will see

sweet idol
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@grim igloo My "bridge" with new firmware arrives tomorrow from Smartwings. Still no idea what they sent.

grim igloo
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@sweet idol let me know how that works out. Although in my emails they made it sound like the bridge itself operates with Matter 1.2, but that it's still just a bridge. They didn't indicate that it updates the shades. They previously told me they had to physically replace the motors in order to update them.

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In my case the RF remotes work 100% of the time. But I didn't buy these things to have their ugly remotes laying around all the time.

sweet idol
grim igloo
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They just emailed me saying they want to send me new motors w/ the 1.2 firmware, and a link to their YouTube video for how to replace the motor. So yea, pretty sure their MoT motors can't be soft-upgraded.

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Really not looking forward to pulling down 18 hard-wired motors, some of pretty akwardly long lengths, and replacing all their motors...

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Doing all that, then having to re-setup each motor in Home Assistant, and get all my various automations working again....FML

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That's easily a full days work.

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And in all likelihood, given the impression theyve made, it won't fix anything.

sweet idol
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@grim igloo My issue appears to be a random crash of the firmware that requires a physical reboot to bring back online. This is fairly rare and the reboot brings it back 100% of the time. So if I'm right about the crashing, I'd welcome an update that addresses that problem...then I should be good to go.

grim igloo
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How many shades total do you have?

sweet idol
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I have 6. Three roller, three zebra.

grim igloo
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Yea, I think I'm likely experiencing the same, but with 18 shades, I just witness it more often.

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The only difference is that when I power cycle all of them at once, sometimes a shade or two won't come back online, and I'll have to power cycle again

sweet idol
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I just emailed them asking for 1.2 motor replacements, and asked if the 1.2 motors will support future OTA updates.

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Power cycling 18 at once could tax the thread network and packets get dropped?

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Marcel worked on less Eve polling to lessen the thread network traffic burden.

grim igloo
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Yea, but they should eventually come back online. It just might take a few minutes.

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I can watch it happening in the Home Assistant logs

sweet idol
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yes...depending on the hub and how often it retries.

grim igloo
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But I'll occasionally get one or two which simply stay non-responsive no matter how long I wait

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Did they email you any more info about that bridge they sent you? Did it seriously not come with any additional information?

sweet idol
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It came with a little matter QR code and a QR code to download some app. No Smartwings specific instructions at all.

sweet idol
grim igloo
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That Smart Link Pro doesn't support Matter or Homekit. But it can be setup in Home Assistant, and then through that bridged to Homekit.

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I might try that this weekend, since I got one as a backup option.

sweet idol
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My hub has a matter QR code

grim igloo
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Yea, sounds like something similar. It's a Matter to RF bridge I'm guessing.

sweet idol
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yes the sticker shows the RF range it supports.

grim igloo
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It's worth trying out. For me, the RF remotes work 100% of the time. I might just give up and switch to that.

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It's just too bad it couldn't be connected via PoE

sweet idol
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My RF remotes are TERRIBLE. 75% of the time when doing 3 at once one of them will ignore the command.

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@grim igloo Did SW indicate if your 1.2 matter motors will have changes such that future OTA updates will be possible?

grim igloo
sweet idol
grim igloo
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Zeimsmart?

sweet idol
grim igloo
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Those appear to be the same motors.

sweet idol
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Very similar I would agree

grim igloo
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Except they use mounting options which are actually sensible

sweet idol
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Wonder if they would be drop in replacements for Smartwings?

grim igloo
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Yea, might drop a shade tomorrow and measure the diameter

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Their bare motors are much cheaper than SmartWings

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Ughhh...I'm jealous of their mounting brackets

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hah...their hard wired models act as repeater nodes, not end nodes, unlike SmartWings

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My SW hardwired shades still appear as "sleepy nodes". Again, terrible engineering.

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If those zemismart motors fit, then I'm going to ask SmartWings for a refund equal to the cost of my 18 motors. ~$3k.

sweet idol
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sounds like a great idea

grim igloo
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Thanks for pointing them out!

sweet idol
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yes!

sweet idol
grim igloo
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The problem (for me) with the zemismart motors is that their hardwired motors use 110/220. SmartWings are 12v, which made running electrical much easier since low voltage doesn't have the same code requirements.

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I was also reading that the zemismart are a bit more crude in functionality. Like they don't have a "stopping speed" when nearing fully open/closed, unlike Eve/SmartWings shades.

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I might just throw in the towel and get the Eve motors, and forego the hardwiring

sweet idol
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@grim igloo Smartwings told me "No upgrades have been made to the new matter motor, but some internal part replacements and updates have been made that will make it more stable than the previous one". And the offered to send me six new motors.

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I would consider Eve, except they don't support solar panels, which I require. @loud coral Hopefully Eve wil consider adding solar panels, or might even work with the Smartwings USB-C solar panels?

loud coral
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They work with solar panel from smartwings or any other solar panel usb c

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But at this moment the led will consume some energy

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Working on a new fw version for that.

sweet idol
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Oh that's awesome info...I might also reconsider Eve then!

loud coral
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If it gets decent sun it will charge more than consuming from led

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But we want to make it better. But haven't started this yet.

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We are testing and working on solar panels

sweet idol
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I will say the Smartwings, even in the dead of winter with no direct sun, charges enough via solar to maintain batter level when using the roller shades twice a day. In other seasons with more indirect sun it keeps the charge at 100% with the same usage patterns.

sweet idol
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@grim igloo Regardind the updated Matter motors smartwings wants to send me: The motor can do OTA updates in the future, but the ETA is unsure, currently, we're working on the stage of version 1.2 certification and we have submitted the files/products they need. It still requires time to be certificated.

sweet idol
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@grim igloo Any progress on seeing if the Eve motors will work in Smartwings?

grim igloo
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@sweet idol sorry...ended up being away most of the weekend and didn't get a chance to take a shade down. Might try and do so this AM...

grim igloo
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@sweet idol I measured the insertable end of a spare motor I have (SmartWings accidentally sent me 2 additional motors) and it's ~36.5mm, which tells me that they're meant for 38mm tubes (given that 38mm is the exterior diameter of the tube, and 37mm is the interior).

sweet idol
grim igloo
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Yea, or Eve as well

loud coral
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Could you share some pics and measurements of the smartwings motor.

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I can check if it will fit.

grim igloo
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I already checked. It's a 36.5mm motor, hence it's intended for 37mm (interior)/38mm (exterior) tubes.

loud coral
sweet idol
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@loud coral I think a possible wrinkle in using the Eve motors is the end cap mounting on the motors/blinds. I'd be surprised if they used the same mounting method to secure the roller to the blinds body. I'll try and grab a photo.

loud coral
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I thought we were talking about the honeycomb system. If it is a roller motor indeed end cap mounting is different.

sweet idol
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I personally don't have any honeycomb..no idea what James has.

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Smartwings sent me 6 new roller motors and those show up as "Smartwings 1.0.0" firmware and they claim to now support OTA.

grim igloo
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@sweet idol I asked them for a refund equaling the retail cost of 16 motors and they agreed and refunded me. I told them I'd eat the cost of 2 motors since I ordered them after initially starting my support thread with them.

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@sweet idol mine also indicate 1.0.0. I hope you have better luck than I've had 😬

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@loud coral I just have roller shades, not honeycomb. I haven't yet acquired an eve motor but I did take a cap off one of my smartwings shades and I thought it was a fairly standard tube that should work w/ eve. I'll try and get around to taking one down again sometime later this week and get a photo of it.

sweet idol
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@grim igloo That's nice of them. I have my "SmartWings 1.0.0" firmware motors, and still having occasional non-response issues. They claim this branded firmware supports OTA and they are working on new firmware. Now I heard that months ago, so I'm taking that with a grain of salt. I'd be surprised if the Eve motors are a drop in replacement for the Smartwings in terms of the "outside" end cap attachement to the valance.

grim igloo
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Oh I'm not planning on reusing the valance. If I do replace them, I'll use the eve mounts.

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I doubled up each window with a white shade (without valance) and a black shade (with metal valance). The idea was that the black shade would effectively hide the white shade mounted behind it so a valance wasn't necessary and would actually just look strange.

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Turns out the shades without the valance are MUCH quieter. Something about that aluminum valance, especially on the wider shades, causes some sort of resonance that makes those shades notably louder.

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If I go that route I'll figure out a custom valance solution that doesn't attach to the shade.

loud coral
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True, valances make more noise. But with our motors you can lower the speed to drastically lower sound level.

grim igloo
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@loud coral what do you mean by " I develop the eve motionblinds motor"? Do you work for Eve? Or do you mean you work for the company that creates purely the electrical motor (that Eve then integrates into their product)?

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And do you hang out here purely voluntarily or at the behest of your employer? 😂

loud coral
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@grim igloo coulisse is the developer of the motors. I work for coulisse and am responsible of the development of our motors. We have a partnership with Eve. They deliver the eve core for our motors and together with them we create eve motionblinds. The identical motor is also sold under the name motionblinds but does not have the eve core and no thread and matter. And the reason I am here is because I am a HA enthusiast. And want to create the best Smarthome motor for window coverings.

grim igloo
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Thank you for your assistance!