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I've never really been into home automation, but when I stumbled upon Philips Hue bulbs on sale for $5 at Home Depot a few years ago, I went ahead a bought a fe

I've never really been into home automation, but when I stumbled upon Philips Hue bulbs on sale for $5 at Home Depot a few years ago, I went ahead a bought a few. It turns out that they are great to wake up the kids on a schedule in the morning. I used the Philips app because it worked well enough that I couldn't be bothered to look for alternatives. Then recently I got a notification saying that the app wouldn't work without a Philips account. Yeah, no thanks. The bulbs don't directly work with Home Assistant for protocol reasons (I think). I went ahead a bought a ConBee II dongle, which is a kind of USB stick that interfaces with the Philips bulbs (and devices from other companies). Plug that into a Raspberry Pi that has Home Assistant installed and you got yourself a single app that can manage smart devices from almost all imaginable companies. It works very well for my use case. If you have devices from several different manufacturers, you should definitely look into HA to have a single app manage everything, and to future-proof your setup against shady moves by some these companies.

agloe_dreams 3y ago
> The bulbs don't directly work with Home Assistant for protocol reasons They are based on the Zigbee networking standard, that's why you had to buy the stick. It is effectively a networking adapter like a wifi usb adapter. That said, you can buy most other Zigbee devices now as well. Ikea has far cheaper Zigbee switches than Hue or almost anyone and you can configure them to also cross control other HA features.
- acidburnNSA 3y ago
  Yup. I got mad at Hue for forcing an account, so I got a $20 USB zigbee hub and spent 2 hours swapping all my Hue stuff over to it with zigbee2mqtt with Home Assistant. I've never felt better about my ability as a consumer to give a vendor the middle finger. I gleefully tweeted them some pics of my Hue hub in the trash. https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/ https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/
  - smith7018 3y ago
    I recently did the same and have been thrilled with it though I'm sad that the bulbs don't transition to new colors. They immediately change which looks a little jarring.
    - acidburnNSA 3y ago
      I had the same thought at first since that's the default, but it's configurable! In the zigbee2mqtt control panel, click the device, choose "Settings (specific)", and change transition to 1. The look/feel ends up being indistinguishable from the Hue defaults.
      - xd1936 3y ago
        Hey nice! Is there an equivalent in ZHA?
      - DavideNL 3y ago
        Thank you for the info! Why is that not the default... :/ For reference: "Settings > Devices & Services > Zigbee Home Automation > Configure > Global Options > Default light transition time" = 1 PS. Not sure what this does exactly: "Enable enhanced light color/temperature transition from an off-state"
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - agloe_dreams 3y ago
    Bingo. I just used the standard Zigbee plugin to do the same but purely so I could manage everything in one place. A good trick others should know is that if you have any Hue Switches, you can use them to rapidly reset a bump by holding the on and off switches down for like 10 seconds next to a bulb.
- H8crilA 3y ago
  Wait, do all Philips Hue bulbs come with Zigbee, even the Bluetooth ones? I had to reverse engineer their Bluetooth, and it works, but obviously I'd prefer Zigbee. BTW, the Philips app is garbage in exactly the ways one would expect (requires some account, doesn't work on some phones, requires your phone to be close to the bulb, etc)
  - agloe_dreams 3y ago
    All "Hue"-branded bulbs are Zigbee, some additionally add BT connectivity. All "Wiz", "Connected by Wiz", and "Phillips smart bulbs" without Hue branding are Wifi based. Incidentally, both are compatible with HA.
- LeafItAlone 3y ago
  > Ikea has far cheaper Zigbee switches than Hue Not beating the $5 sale price that the parent mentioned. I love the IKEA smart home devices (practically all of the commercial smart devices I have still in use are IKEA). But the size and shape of their US outlets is absurd.
  - agloe_dreams 3y ago
    > cheaper Zigbee switches OP got bulbs for $5.
smith7018 3y ago
They do "directly work with Home Assistant;" your computer just didn't have the hardware to communicate with them. You bought the dongle which is just a Zigbee modem that allowed Home Assistant to talk to the bulbs using ZHA (which is built-in to Home Assistant). Zigbee is the hardware wireless protocol that Hue uses.

agloe_dreams 3y ago

> The bulbs don't directly work with Home Assistant for protocol reasons They are based on the Zigbee networking standard, that's why you had to buy the stick. It is effectively a networking adapter like a wifi usb adapter. That said, you can buy most other Zigbee devices now as well. Ikea has far cheaper Zigbee switches than Hue or almost anyone and you can configure them to also cross control other HA features.

acidburnNSA 3y ago
Yup. I got mad at Hue for forcing an account, so I got a $20 USB zigbee hub and spent 2 hours swapping all my Hue stuff over to it with zigbee2mqtt with Home Assistant. I've never felt better about my ability as a consumer to give a vendor the middle finger. I gleefully tweeted them some pics of my Hue hub in the trash. https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/ https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/
- smith7018 3y ago
  I recently did the same and have been thrilled with it though I'm sad that the bulbs don't transition to new colors. They immediately change which looks a little jarring.
  - acidburnNSA 3y ago
    I had the same thought at first since that's the default, but it's configurable! In the zigbee2mqtt control panel, click the device, choose "Settings (specific)", and change transition to 1. The look/feel ends up being indistinguishable from the Hue defaults.
    - xd1936 3y ago
      Hey nice! Is there an equivalent in ZHA?
    - DavideNL 3y ago
      Thank you for the info! Why is that not the default... :/ For reference: "Settings > Devices & Services > Zigbee Home Automation > Configure > Global Options > Default light transition time" = 1 PS. Not sure what this does exactly: "Enable enhanced light color/temperature transition from an off-state"
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- agloe_dreams 3y ago
  Bingo. I just used the standard Zigbee plugin to do the same but purely so I could manage everything in one place. A good trick others should know is that if you have any Hue Switches, you can use them to rapidly reset a bump by holding the on and off switches down for like 10 seconds next to a bulb.
H8crilA 3y ago
Wait, do all Philips Hue bulbs come with Zigbee, even the Bluetooth ones? I had to reverse engineer their Bluetooth, and it works, but obviously I'd prefer Zigbee. BTW, the Philips app is garbage in exactly the ways one would expect (requires some account, doesn't work on some phones, requires your phone to be close to the bulb, etc)
- agloe_dreams 3y ago
  All "Hue"-branded bulbs are Zigbee, some additionally add BT connectivity. All "Wiz", "Connected by Wiz", and "Phillips smart bulbs" without Hue branding are Wifi based. Incidentally, both are compatible with HA.
LeafItAlone 3y ago
> Ikea has far cheaper Zigbee switches than Hue Not beating the $5 sale price that the parent mentioned. I love the IKEA smart home devices (practically all of the commercial smart devices I have still in use are IKEA). But the size and shape of their US outlets is absurd.
- agloe_dreams 3y ago
  > cheaper Zigbee switches OP got bulbs for $5.

smith7018 3y ago

They do "directly work with Home Assistant;" your computer just didn't have the hardware to communicate with them. You bought the dongle which is just a Zigbee modem that allowed Home Assistant to talk to the bulbs using ZHA (which is built-in to Home Assistant). Zigbee is the hardware wireless protocol that Hue uses.