WEMO Application

[airmandan]

Have you got LED devices on your WeMo Link that go “offline” on the regular? For the longest time I figured my problem device was because it was the farthest away.

Nope!

I had to reinstall the WeMo app and it re-ordered all my devices. The LEDs oh my WeMo Link now appear first in the list. And none of them, including my distant porch lights, ever show offline.

It seems like there is some arbitrary timeout when the WeMo app is looking for Link devices. And if your devices are at the end of the list they won’t respond in time and get marked as offline.

Move your Link devices up in the device list and this seems to be easily avoided.

[MikeP]

Makes sense, but this'll be a different problem than the one I've been complaining about.  My app continually checks with the Wemo Link for zigbee device status - it's the link itself that reports the devices offline.  It starts with short periods of reporting offline and then back online, which typically grow longer until the link decides enough is enough (actually I think it's a bug and the link stops checking).

It's usually but not always the furthest LED bulbs.  I suspect it's the ones with the weakest signal due to distance + manufacturing tolerances (or lack thereof).

Once the bulb disconnects the belkin app can't (won't?) control it, though my rules engine sometimes can since it tries regardless of the link's reported bulb status.  Eventually the troublesome bulb goes for good and only a power cycle of the bulb causes the link to begin speaking to it again.

All proven by switching to the osram lightify hub - same bulbs, same locations, never one lost.  Belkin really should offer to buy back our wemo links and bulbs if they can't fix this bug.

[airmandan]

The problems may be more related than at first they appear. I acknowledge that the WeMo Link is way too aggressive in reporting a device as offline, a problem which the Osram Gateway doesn’t have.

Given that the hardware of both hubs is identical (except the Osram having a different cover plate for a status LED) and the hardware of the WeMo Bulb and the Dimmable White Osram Bulb is similarly identical from a hardware standpoint, I think it’s safe to assume Belkin entered into a license agreement with Osram (a European brand) to rebadge and resell their products for North America. This agreement likely specified precisely which products were eligible to be sold in this way, explaining the otherwise inexplicable choice for Belkin to deliberately block non-whitelisted Zigbee bulbs at the app level.

When Sylvania ate Osram, the agreement was dissolved, and Belkin’s authority to sell Osram devices (the Link and the Bulb) was deleted, and the product discontinued.

Sylvania/Osram continued development on their Gateway while Belkin was forbidden from touching the hardware/firmware beyond what they’d already done when that agreement expired. This is why the Osram Gateway and Osram LED products continue to receive updates—some of which the legacy WeMo code detects, but fails to install because Osram pulled Belkin off their HCL—that mitigate the issues relational to devices being marked offline.

Belkin has attempted to address this at the app level by doing a thread-locking poll of all devices when the app is invoked. For people with 2 or 3 WeMos, this is hardly noticeable. For those of us with several dozen, it creates a huge wait — long enough for the last device in the app list to time out if the polling is run sequentially.

If you feel like humoring my theory, reorder your bulbs in the WeMo app according to my recommendation. Then leave the WeMo app alone, and let the WeMo Link give up on the farther ones and mark it offline. Then do a cold launch of the WeMo app.

I’ll bet you a beer it polls all devices and forces the bulb back to online status on the Link.

[MikeP]

It's not worth a beer to me to pair that crappy link and bulbs back up again.  I'd need the entire case .

They might be the same hardware but the firmware is completely different.  Belkin's is built from a bunch of cobbled together freeware (it's wrt based) and a different protocol/API from osram.  I don't see any sign of evolution from a common ancestor.

I'm pretty sure the bulbs are interchangeble because they're following the zigbee standard - remember they'd declared cree as a partner for a short time and the GE bulbs work too.  AFAIK osram has owned sylvania/lightify for decades.  I'm sticking with assuming belkin stopped selling the link 'cause it was an overpriced piece of junk filled with bugs due to development outsourcing and the loss of their original design team .

I understand what you're saying about the search order but I wonder if you're seeing bulbs being marked as lost in the app if they can be recovered from there.  The command set of the wemo link doesn't have a "recover bulb" command (the commands are advertised by the link itself using upnp).  I tried all of the available connect, pair, and discover APIs and none work to reconnect a bulb once it's lost to the link.  A power cycle of the link doesn't even bring it back, nor does an unpair/repair it as the link doesn't try to tell the bulb it's unpaired (so the bulb thinks it's still paired and won't accept a pairing request).  Only a bulb power cycle brings it back.

OTOH the Osram hub doesn't lose the bulbs at all.  I don't know the full lightify command set (which is very different from the link's web services API) and I haven't needed to implement any of the discovery or pairing APIs since the bulbs just stay found and paired.

I only use the osram and belkin apps for firmware updates and reconfiguring devices so it's not a poll/blocking sequence issue - my app uses multiple threads when talking to different wemos.  And wemos don't poll - the wemo devices report status changes asynchronously using SDDP subscribe/notify.

Actually I didn't know you were having problems with link/bulbs - I was assuming that if the bulbs were close enough to the link they wouldn't go missing (mine are spread out a fair bit) - even more fuel that belkin needs to fix it or refund it.

[airmandan]

So, th Cree Connected bulbs that are still for retail at Home Depot do still pair with the WeMo Link, for whatever credit that is worth.  Most of my inside LED bulbs are those.  My original 2 WeMo bulbs and one more that I was able to source in decent condition are in high-humidity areas like my porch, patio, and oven range, as they are fully enclosed.  

I had had only one problem light, a GardenSpot on the porch that was a couple concrete walls away from the Link, but mere feet away from the porch WeMo bulb that was never a problem.  The WeMo app would show that gardenspot as offline constantly, even though I could still control it fine with Alexa and my HomeBridge, so the Zigbee mesh was obviously working fine.  I had to do a manual reset of the WeMo app to get it to show as available again, and it would only stay that way for a few minutes.

Recently I stopped bothering to care when the WeMo app reorganized all my devices again.  The LEDs now show up at the top of the app and none ever get listed as unresponsive.

Sounds like the app is giving up on devices even more quickly than the Link!

Your success with the Osram Gateway makes me really want one.  I would just hate to lose the convenience of a single app.  Ugh!

[Bilim35CI7]

I've basically forgotten about my Link and bulb problems. Actually deploying bulbs again with the Osram Gateway. I've never had to reset it or a bulb. They work great with AM too.

[airmandan]

Do you by any chance have RGB bulbs on the gateway linked with Alexa? Can you control the color thereon?

[Bilim35CI7]

I don't but plan to get some within the month when I have time to deploy and test.

[MikeP]

To harp on the same old same old ... The AM Server supports the Lightify RGB bulbs including the gardenspot, and supports color control with Alexa/Voice.  If you added the AM HomeBridge for the wemos the belkin bridge doesn't support (or replaced that bridge completely) you'd have everything (including color) in HomeKit and you won't need to use the belkin app except for firmware (or if you were asked by belkin support to "try a different handheld device"!).

My gardenspot was so often the first to be dropped by the wemo link that I seldom used it.  The lightify gateway is now centrally located and further away from the gardenspot than was the link, and it always works now.

[Bilim35CI7]

Thanks Mike!! I was actually using some of the Sonoff's to reset bulbs that would go offline and had ones on the links as well. I pulled that all off as the OSRAM gateway has been so reliable for me.