Zigbee is great, but it sometimes can be quirky

[Richel]

I'm loving Zigbee, but it can be quirky. We have a new Ikea store in town and I purchased and installed a bunch of Tradfri E12 bulbs, which are not on the list of compatible bulbs for my deConz/Conbee. Nonetheless, the installation and implementation has been flawless. So, I decided to buy more Tradfri bulbs. This time I bought the E26 bulbs, which also are not on the list of compatible light bulbs. I tried and tried to get these bulbs linked to the Conbee and failed. So, I was going to return the bulbs today to Ikea and I was looking to see which Tradfri bulbs were compatible with deConz/Conbee, when I stumbled upon a post on github discussing Ikea bulbs and deConz. The fix to include the bulb was to reset it (starting with bulb on, turn off and on 5 times), while adding a new light bulb in the Phoscon app. This worked and all 4 bulbs were imported properly into JowiHue.
I would also like to mention how amazed I am at the range of Zigbee devices. I have a wine cave in a relatively remote location in my home. I tried with X10 and with Z-Wave to get a temperature sensor inside the cave to report to HomeSeer. This did not work, even with a secondary Z-Net in relatively close range to the cave. Yesterday, I received in the mail 3 Xiaomi Aqara multisensors (temperature, humidity, barometric pressure [apparently]). I was amazed to see that this tiny (and inexpensive) device has no trouble reporting in from inside the cave.
All this is just for general information.
Elliott

[w.vuyk]

Xiaomi often come with some suprises on how reliable they work. I do advise approx 7 meters/21 feet for max distances between bulbs and sensors. But I also had a door sensor that shoud be considered arund 10 meter/30 feet apart. And indeed it still worked...