6 ms·

Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

154 points by Tomte 2y ago

philjohn 2y ago
If you're going down the HomeAssistant route I'd recommend ditching any proprietary hubs and getting a Zigbee dongle instead, I've been using the Sonoff Zigbee dongle and even though it's connected to the server, in a rack, in the garage (so thick breezeblock walls between it and the rest of the house) there are enough always on mesh nodes in the lights themselves that the network is steady. Granted, the Dongle itself isn't inside the enclosed rack, it's on a USB extension cable and mounted on the top. I've also gone the Zigbee2MQTT (ZQM) route instead of the ZHM built into HomeAssistant as it just supports a lot more, and a lot better in my experience. Once you're in the open world of Zigbee, you can also go the Ikea Tradfri route as well for bulbs that are a WHOLE lot cheaper.
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  Another alternative for those who like to tinker is to get Tuya-powered devices which can be reprogrammed to use Tasmota, ESPhome, OpenBeken or something similar. Reprogramming the things can be as simple as running some tool - this used to be the case but it is getting rare since the vulnerabilities used to take over the devices are getting fixed - or as involved as opening up the devices to connect a TTL/USB serial adapter and a power supply after which the thing(s) can be flashed. The advantage of using this approach is that you get close to total control over the devices, you do not need any hubs, your creativity and the hardware are the only limits. I just flashed a batch of 16 'energy metering smart plugs' this way using a TTL/USB adapter, two clothes pegs, three sewing needles, a patch wire and a breadboard [1]. No soldering necessary, just point the needles at the right chip legs, push the patch wire in the right spot and flash the firmware. As far as I'm concerned this is the only way to use IoT devices, using free software under your own control. Software which only communicates with hosts you designate. Software which is not dependent on 'cloud' services. Software, above all, which can not be used to turn your equipment against you - not by spying on you, not by selling your data to others, not to bring down the electricity network by simultaneously switching off and on massive amounts of equipment every 10 seconds. Even so I run these devices on a separate network which can not reach outside of its own /24 (no IPv6 on this network, it is not necessary). I also don't use Home Assistant since I prefer openHAB, at least for now. I've tried HA (core) but thus far I'm not convinced it offers something I can not get from openHAB which I've been using for years now. [1] https://www.elektroda.com/rtvforum/topic4042412-60.html#21334978 https://www.elektroda.com/rtvforum/topic4042412-60.html#2133...
  - stavros 2y ago
    This is OK, but Zigbee is better. It runs offline, the devices can't access the internet so no data issues, and it's a standard protocol that's trivial to interface with over the MQTT bridge.
    - rainsford 2y ago
      My (maybe incorrect) understanding is that Zigbee devices can't independently pair with each other, so if you want a particular switch to control a particular light you still need some sort of controller to be operating even if it's on your own local network. This is better than requiring Internet access, but a notable reliability downgrade from normal light switches unless your controller is 100% bulletproof.
      - Muromec 2y ago
        You can pair zigbee switch to a light without a hub, it just works
      - stavros 2y ago
        Sure, but we're comparing other smart home setups to Zigbee, not Zigbee to old-style wall switches. However, you can also pair Zigbee switches to other Zigbee devices directly (although I've never tried it).
      - cyberax 2y ago
        > My (maybe incorrect) understanding is that Zigbee devices can't independently pair with each other They can! You can bind clusters from several devices together, I have a couple of such devices. For example, you can bind a two wall light switches together. The problem is that the UI for it is typically hidden and/or absent.
- pockybum522 2y ago
  I second all of this. I went with the little blue stick from HA and things have been great.
- audunw 2y ago
  You can use IKEA trådfri with Philips Hue. It’s a bit annoying to pair but once that’s done it just works, at least it has for me.
  - ZekeSulastin 2y ago
    I have some random Amazon Zigbee bulbs connected to my Hue Bridge; the only annoying thing is that, while they show up in the Hue app, Hue doesn't expose them to Homekit like it does its native bulbs. At least Homebridge will get them to show up.
    - mvanbaak 2y ago
      They also cant be part of a multimedia zone so no ambilight/sync with the hue sync box or a philips tv
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    Ironically the IKEA hub is better than the Philips one. Less options for automation, but it's 100% local only by default. You need to specifically enable remote operation.
    - fransje26 2y ago
      The Ikea Dirigera Hub?
  - mvanbaak 2y ago
    There are at least 2 problems with this setup (besides the fact that brightness and colors are a lot better on hue then on any of the others) 1) non hue lights wont be homekit compatible (they dont even get exposed to homekit) 2) non hue lights cant be used in multimedia zones so no ambilight there
- dav43 2y ago
  Have gone this route and exposed a variety of manufacturers devices to HomeKit through HA. Been surprised by the reliability. 3 years in.
- stavros 2y ago
  I agree, this is the way. If you do this, remember to install the devices on their final location and only then attempt to pair, so the device pairs to the closest appropriate router.
- rainsford 2y ago
  Zigbee is good, but for lights or anything else you really want to always work, I'd recommend going with something that also works independently of HomeAssistant and Internet access even if you then need a proprietary hub to integrate with HomeAssistant. Lutron's Caseta system is what I went with. I've found HomeAssistant with Zigbee to be extremely reliable, but the idea that a botched software upgrade or failed VM could make it so I can't turn my lights on and off feels like a bit too much. Caseta doesn't use an open protocol, but it does allow all your switches, remotes, lights, etc, to work totally independently of HomeAssistant or Internet/WiFi, and the hub allows integration with home automation or remote control. I've played around with Philips Hue and other smart bulbs, but it feels too much like a toy rather than something I'd replace all of my lights with, and ultimately I ended up with an all Caseta light setup for my home.
  - mastax 2y ago
    With zigbee you can “bind” devices together, so that their interactions work without needing the hub to intervene. I bound my IKEA buttons to my IKEA lights with my homeassistant controller (with some difficulty) so that even when the controller is offline the buttons will still work.
    - Rotareti 2y ago
      I think it's called 'direct binding.' All of my lights are directly bound to my switches, so they work even without the server or Zigbee coordinator running. With some switches, you can even bind light scenes directly to the buttons. For example, you can bind the four buttons of a Philips Hue Tap Dial to different light scenes using Zigbee2MQTT. Some switches don't allow direct binding, though. All of the Hue switches I tried support it, but some Tuya switches don't. On the other hand, all lights from different manufacturers which I tried were able to bind directly. The first year I had to fiddle a lot with the tooling. The uptime of HA/zigbee2mqtt wasn't great. It was good to have this as a fall back.
      - addandsubtract 2y ago
        Do you have to choose between direct binding -or- controlling them through HA, or can you still control them through HA even when they are directly bound? Because I directly paired a switch with a light before (in Philips Hue), but then wasn't able to control it through the app anymore. Since switching to HA and Zigbee2mqtt, I just used triggers with switches, but wasn't aware that direct binding is a possibility. Gonna have to look into that now :)
- acidburnNSA 2y ago
  This was my path. After Philips Hue required that I make an online account with them and wouldn't let me use my local-only devices without it, I rage bought a Sonoff dongle and transferred all my HUE lights over to it and then unceremoniously threw away my hue bridge. Zigbee2MQTT is working great. I'll always pay more for freedom from corporate project managers subscription metrics in my smart home devices. This philosophy works too, I've been pretty deep into home automation since 2015 and haven't lost even one device due to deprecation or sunsetting yet.
  - anbotero 2y ago
    This. Also, at least being offline-first should be a must. I went to a friend’s house, and she has a system to enable and disable lights, water, etc. There was a power outage in the area... she couldn’t enable the water to flow. What a joke.
- Caligatio 2y ago
  Going this route then eliminates the free/included Google Assistant integration that comes along with using the bridge and app, correct? I really would like to ditch the hub but also want to use voice activation on a few lights.
- BlackLotus89 2y ago
  Maybe it's just my specific setup, but my Hue lights don't support color when using ZigBee. I still use it this way since I rarely want to change the color temperature, but this is something for people considering such a setup to consider
- baq 2y ago
  Phillips Hues are just in another league compared to tradfris. One of those cases where you really get what you pay for.
  - philjackson 2y ago
    Can you describe how? I have the IKEA bulbs throughout and it's difficult to imagine how they'd be any better.
    - baq 2y ago
      Well... they're better, slightly or more noticeably, at everything: better color accuracy, dims lower, brightness is more linear, transitions are smoother... on paper they're similar, but when you actually use them, the differences become apparent quite quickly. (Disclaimer - have some GU10 Hues and some E27 Tradfris, both RGB).
      - philjohn 2y ago
        At some point though it becomes "are those improvements worth the inflated price tag" and for a LOT of people, the colour accuracy is good enough etc.
        baq 2y ago
        Well there's a reason I have those Tradfris ;)
orev 2y ago
Home Assistant is great. Started with a Raspberry Pi 4, then migrated to a Wyse 5070 running HAOS in a VM on top of libvirt/qemu. Using USB dongles for both ZigBee and zwave, passing the USB devices directly through to the VM. This kind of setup allows making full backups/snapshots of the whole VM in case of any failed updates, or mistakes when making big configuration changes. I don’t use any vendor hubs at all. Everything is directly connected to the USB dongles at the main network controllers.
green-salt 2y ago
Going down this route still requires the Hue hub and managing it through its ecosystem. This means if DNS is not working perfectly or the hub decides to do a mandatory update, you're stuck for a bit until the update finishes or you fix DNS. The DNS part is partially my fault but also because I was blocking all of its calls home to Phillips' servers using pihole. Finally I bought a zigbee dongle and put in the zigbee2mqtt addon for HA and paired all of my Hue bulbs/dimmers/motion sensors to it (https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/9290023351B.html https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/9290023351B.html), unplugged the Hue hub, and its been excellent since.
- na4ma4 2y ago
  The only reason I've still got my Hue hub in use is because I have not found anything that supports ZGP and I've got 4 of the original Hue Tap buttons. I don't have any other Hue products anymore, but the hub still runs for those 4 switches.
gigel82 2y ago
You can ditch the Hue Bridge entirely and just get a Zigbee dongle for Home Assistant: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/migrating-from-a-philips-hue-bridge-to-the-zha-zigbee-home-automation-integration/620862 https://community.home-assistant.io/t/migrating-from-a-phili... Especially since Philips is going the same route as all the other enshittified / cloud home automation services (requiring an account, pushing mandatory terms of service updates after the product is launched, cloud lock-in). It's probably just a matter of time until they stop producing Zigbee bulbs altogether but the current generation works fine with private / free home automation solutions.
dylan604 2y ago
Has anyone done this that can compare it to the Hue app? I've had a few apps/light combinations, and the Hue app is by far the best I've used. It's compelling enough to suffer the beginnings of enshitification, but looking for a parachute when it gets to be too much. I like Hue's rooms where all bulbs in the room are updated at the same time (seems like a basic thing), while others apps don't quite do this right. Applying a color change to the room vs each bulb in the room. I have one room with 3 separate light strips where the app "spans" a light patterns across each device. Again, not something other apps do without setting each individual bulb. The Hue app works really well for me, and being unable to find an equally featured replacement keeps me on it
- kyorochan 2y ago
  You can group lights like this in Home Assistant.
  - na4ma4 2y ago
    You can also do it in ZigBee creating a group, if you just use the group in HA then you get the cascading "light 1 change, light 2 change, light 3 change, light 4 change", but with a ZigBee group it goes "light group blah change" and they all go at once.
- theshrike79 2y ago
  If 100% of your devices are Hue and the automation it provides is enough, there really isn't a reason to switch. But if you start adding a second brand like IKEA (their bulbs are a LOT cheaper than Philips) or Wifi stuff from Shelly, you either suffer the trap of 3+ separate apps or bite the Home Assistant bullet eventually.
  - AidenVennis 2y ago
    I actually have both IKEA bulbs and Hue bulbs, but the appliance is different for both. I use the Hue bulbs where I want high quality lightning like the living room, kitchen, bathroom and office. I use the IKEA bulbs in places where I don't really care how good the lightning is; the hallways, toilet, garage etc. Automations for IKEA bulbs are in Home Assistant and for Hue they are in the Hue app. IMO Home Assistant doesn't really do a good job with controlling the lights. It doesn't have the creative abilities to create or choose predefined "cool" scenes. Besides I don't want to know how much work I need to do in Home Assistant to re-configure the smart switches from Hue and their features. In the end I can still control the Hue bulbs with Home Assistant if I want to. The Hue app doesn't prevent you from controlling the Hue bulbs from Home Assistant
JKCalhoun 2y ago
I went through our house and installed motion controlled light switches in a few key places. Specifically places like a walk-in closet, the pantry, the utility room, the storage room under the staircase. There was, I believe, no need to leave the light on when there is no motion. (I hesitated on adding a motion-activated light to the bathroom because, for example, taking a shower might cause it to time-out and you would be showering in the dark.) In any event I did not use any kind of networked device — just your standard $15 Lutron motion sensor light switch you can get from Lowe's or Home Despot. I mention what is probably obvious because a use case in the article was to activate a light when it senses motion. No need to over engineer that.
- andrewinardeer 2y ago
  I replaced motion sensors with human presence sensors which solved the shower timeout issue.
  - rootusrootus 2y ago
    Which presence sensor are you using? One of the mmWave devices? I've had an Aqara FP2 for a while but haven't really found a killer use for it. Maybe the bathroom is that case.
    - theshrike79 2y ago
      mmWave stuff is great when you have rooms that need to have lights when people are there, but not moving. Toilets, hallways, entrances etc. work just fine with IR motion sensors. See motion -> turn light on for X minutes. Optionally reset timer to X every time you see motion. But for places like offices where you might be sitting relatively still for 30+ minutes, mmWave is better. It knows you're there and won't turn off the lights even if you don't wave your arms around :) The price difference isn't that big though. You can get a HA compatible mmWave device in a nice case for ~50€. The official Philips Hue motion sensors (IR) are around 40-ish €, the really cheap ones like Shelly you can get for around 20€.
  - deleted 2y ago
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Scene_Cast2 2y ago
Fair warning to anyone who hasn't touched Home Assistant - HA brings so much value, but is simultaneously so frustratingly atrocious. For example, it operates on an "update" data model. There is no difference between a sensor being offline and not reporting info vs a sensor being online but reporting a repeating (previously seen) value. Add to that the way data is stored (two week retention; this weird relationship with Grafana and Influx where not all data actually goes to Influx from HA)... Even the date picker is frustrating.
- mjx0 2y ago
  Have you found a better alternative? I'm trying to center around MQTT, myself, but looking for a way to use many of the wonderful integrations created by the Home Assistant community. I'm also trying to find a good solution to "react to state changes".
  - BeefWellington 2y ago
    I've replaced all of HA with just some Python interacting with an MQTT server. I just script all the automation and don't have to care about the other 90% of what HomeAssistant brings to the table. Not for everyone obviously but it's simple and works well.
    - theshrike79 2y ago
      Have you looked into AppDaemon or Pyscript, both provide a Python interface to HA. They let you use HA's massive library of supported devices, but you don't need to bother with their YAML "programming" horrorshow.
      - BeefWellington 2y ago
        I haven't because what's described didn't really suit my needs. I can run my own daemon that will handle the integration with MQTT, and that's all I needed.
  - Scene_Cast2 2y ago
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paxys 2y ago
I feel like the point of buying Philips Hue products and paying 4x the normal price is that everything is mostly set up out of the box and the app is very intuitive. All the non technical people I know use them and have no problems. If you want to go the Home Assistant route, you may as well go all the way and get a Zigbee/Matter hub and off-brand bulbs. That way you keep full control of the ecosystem and pay a fraction of the price.
- felipelemos 2y ago
  Maybe the point is for the people who already have it and want to avoid being locked in on proprietary ecosystem.
- LiquidFlux 2y ago
  Their Hue bulbs are particularly high quality as light bulbs go, and their motion sensors are one of the PIR & Zigbee best in class available (a big thing being their short trigger CD). It's separately a reasonable upgrade path for people becoming increasingly familiar with smart home tech, smart bulbs are a particularly easy entry point with clear added value with new features (white temperature is a personal favourite) and battery operated motion sensors, with a clear path to further home automation adoption with Home Assistant.
  - cillian64 2y ago
    Yep, for me the reason to go with Hue is that the bulbs have good CRI, good colors, and the colors match between all the different types of fixtures. I've also not had a single Hue bulb fail in the 6 years I've been using them.
UberFly 2y ago
Win-win for Philips. I don't have their hub but still buy tons of their bulbs and sensors for HA. Higher price but the best quality for sure.
gempir 2y ago
I have more than 5 years experience with Home Assistant and Zigbee devices. (No zwave experience) Generally I am happy with Zigbee, it's super annoying to pair, but for battery powered devices it's unbeatable. I went from a some AliExpress USB Stick to a ConBee2 to the Home Assistant Yellow. I use Ikea, Sonoff, Xiaomi (Aqara) Zigbee devices all of them "just work". The one big thing Zigbee is good at is not requiring you to need some proprietary App, all devices are just paired locally, you don't need to question if that app you just installed phones home. For general hardware advice: Overall the Home Assistant Yellow was the best choice overall, I would anyone who doesn't want to spend a ton of time on HA hosting to just buy it. Everything works pretty flawlessly with it. Conbee 2 ist still my current stick because I am experimenting with the Matter/Thread Support on the Home Assistant Yellow, sadly without success though. My best recommendation if you want to tinker with smart devices is get anything that you can flash Tasmota on. (List of Devices https://templates.blakadder.com/ https://templates.blakadder.com/ ) Tasmota is an amazing piece of software that runs on your smart device for example a power plug. https://tasmota.github.io/docs/ https://tasmota.github.io/docs/ Get MQTT running on your Home Assistant device, or any in your network and start connecting stuff to it. I have Shelly powerplugs flashed with Tasmota and that opens up so many possibilities.
guerrilla 2y ago
Even easier and cheaper: 1. Get a Zigbee USB adapter (e.g. SONOFF's is great) 2. Get a Raspberry Pi Zero W 3. Install mosquitto and zigbee2mqtt. 4. Enroll your devices and schedule them using bash scripts and cron. There was no way I was going to be paying Phillips for one of their shitty bridges or hubs after they intentionally gimped their Bluetooth control in order to force you to need one and then rugpulled everyone about not needing to register and log into the app. Dirty business. I'll never buy anything from them again. The above took just an afternoon. Zigbee2mqtt documentation is great.
nirvael 2y ago
I have very recently been setting up HA and various Hue products and tbh I'm quite disappointed in both. For one thing, the Hue bridge requiring an ethernet cable is mind-blowing to me. My router doesn't have an ethernet port, and yes it does say on their website, but I wouldn't have expected it to be a requirement, especially when it actually has wifi capabilities on-device, they're just disabled. Setting up HA was a real pain, it's definitely not "Plug and play". I used a Pi 4 and got a bunch of weird errors, and debugging it is not for the faint-hearted. Eventually I did get it working by downgrading to a year-old version, but now it doesn't recognise my Tapo (TP-Link's brand) lights, the integration just doesn't work. Overall, it's quite a hassle to get set up so I see why people don't bother unless they've got a lot of free time or are really into it, or just pay the premium for an all-Hue system that does actually work out of the box.
- philjackson 2y ago
  Did you try going down the HA Docker route? Definitely not plug-and-play - there was tinkering - but no weird errors for me.
  - nirvael 2y ago
    I considered it but the full OS route seemed cleaner, I wanted to use the Pi for it.
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154 points by Tomte 2y ago

If you're going down the HomeAssistant route I'd recommend ditching any proprietary hubs and getting a Zigbee dongle instead, I've been using the Sonoff Zigbee dongle and even though it's connected to the server, in a rack, in the garage (so thick breezeblock walls between it and the rest of the house) there are enough always on mesh nodes in the lights themselves that the network is steady. Granted, the Dongle itself isn't inside the enclosed rack, it's on a USB extension cable and mounted on the top. I've also gone the Zigbee2MQTT (ZQM) route instead of the ZHM built into HomeAssistant as it just supports a lot more, and a lot better in my experience. Once you're in the open world of Zigbee, you can also go the Ikea Tradfri route as well for bulbs that are a WHOLE lot cheaper.

hagbard_c 2y ago
Another alternative for those who like to tinker is to get Tuya-powered devices which can be reprogrammed to use Tasmota, ESPhome, OpenBeken or something similar. Reprogramming the things can be as simple as running some tool - this used to be the case but it is getting rare since the vulnerabilities used to take over the devices are getting fixed - or as involved as opening up the devices to connect a TTL/USB serial adapter and a power supply after which the thing(s) can be flashed. The advantage of using this approach is that you get close to total control over the devices, you do not need any hubs, your creativity and the hardware are the only limits. I just flashed a batch of 16 'energy metering smart plugs' this way using a TTL/USB adapter, two clothes pegs, three sewing needles, a patch wire and a breadboard [1]. No soldering necessary, just point the needles at the right chip legs, push the patch wire in the right spot and flash the firmware. As far as I'm concerned this is the only way to use IoT devices, using free software under your own control. Software which only communicates with hosts you designate. Software which is not dependent on 'cloud' services. Software, above all, which can not be used to turn your equipment against you - not by spying on you, not by selling your data to others, not to bring down the electricity network by simultaneously switching off and on massive amounts of equipment every 10 seconds. Even so I run these devices on a separate network which can not reach outside of its own /24 (no IPv6 on this network, it is not necessary). I also don't use Home Assistant since I prefer openHAB, at least for now. I've tried HA (core) but thus far I'm not convinced it offers something I can not get from openHAB which I've been using for years now. [1] https://www.elektroda.com/rtvforum/topic4042412-60.html#21334978 https://www.elektroda.com/rtvforum/topic4042412-60.html#2133...
- stavros 2y ago
  This is OK, but Zigbee is better. It runs offline, the devices can't access the internet so no data issues, and it's a standard protocol that's trivial to interface with over the MQTT bridge.
  - rainsford 2y ago
    My (maybe incorrect) understanding is that Zigbee devices can't independently pair with each other, so if you want a particular switch to control a particular light you still need some sort of controller to be operating even if it's on your own local network. This is better than requiring Internet access, but a notable reliability downgrade from normal light switches unless your controller is 100% bulletproof.
    - Muromec 2y ago
      You can pair zigbee switch to a light without a hub, it just works
    - stavros 2y ago
      Sure, but we're comparing other smart home setups to Zigbee, not Zigbee to old-style wall switches. However, you can also pair Zigbee switches to other Zigbee devices directly (although I've never tried it).
    - cyberax 2y ago
      > My (maybe incorrect) understanding is that Zigbee devices can't independently pair with each other They can! You can bind clusters from several devices together, I have a couple of such devices. For example, you can bind a two wall light switches together. The problem is that the UI for it is typically hidden and/or absent.
pockybum522 2y ago
I second all of this. I went with the little blue stick from HA and things have been great.
audunw 2y ago
You can use IKEA trådfri with Philips Hue. It’s a bit annoying to pair but once that’s done it just works, at least it has for me.
- ZekeSulastin 2y ago
  I have some random Amazon Zigbee bulbs connected to my Hue Bridge; the only annoying thing is that, while they show up in the Hue app, Hue doesn't expose them to Homekit like it does its native bulbs. At least Homebridge will get them to show up.
  - mvanbaak 2y ago
    They also cant be part of a multimedia zone so no ambilight/sync with the hue sync box or a philips tv
- theshrike79 2y ago
  Ironically the IKEA hub is better than the Philips one. Less options for automation, but it's 100% local only by default. You need to specifically enable remote operation.
  - fransje26 2y ago
    The Ikea Dirigera Hub?
- mvanbaak 2y ago
  There are at least 2 problems with this setup (besides the fact that brightness and colors are a lot better on hue then on any of the others) 1) non hue lights wont be homekit compatible (they dont even get exposed to homekit) 2) non hue lights cant be used in multimedia zones so no ambilight there
dav43 2y ago
Have gone this route and exposed a variety of manufacturers devices to HomeKit through HA. Been surprised by the reliability. 3 years in.
stavros 2y ago
I agree, this is the way. If you do this, remember to install the devices on their final location and only then attempt to pair, so the device pairs to the closest appropriate router.
rainsford 2y ago
Zigbee is good, but for lights or anything else you really want to always work, I'd recommend going with something that also works independently of HomeAssistant and Internet access even if you then need a proprietary hub to integrate with HomeAssistant. Lutron's Caseta system is what I went with. I've found HomeAssistant with Zigbee to be extremely reliable, but the idea that a botched software upgrade or failed VM could make it so I can't turn my lights on and off feels like a bit too much. Caseta doesn't use an open protocol, but it does allow all your switches, remotes, lights, etc, to work totally independently of HomeAssistant or Internet/WiFi, and the hub allows integration with home automation or remote control. I've played around with Philips Hue and other smart bulbs, but it feels too much like a toy rather than something I'd replace all of my lights with, and ultimately I ended up with an all Caseta light setup for my home.
- mastax 2y ago
  With zigbee you can “bind” devices together, so that their interactions work without needing the hub to intervene. I bound my IKEA buttons to my IKEA lights with my homeassistant controller (with some difficulty) so that even when the controller is offline the buttons will still work.
  - Rotareti 2y ago
    I think it's called 'direct binding.' All of my lights are directly bound to my switches, so they work even without the server or Zigbee coordinator running. With some switches, you can even bind light scenes directly to the buttons. For example, you can bind the four buttons of a Philips Hue Tap Dial to different light scenes using Zigbee2MQTT. Some switches don't allow direct binding, though. All of the Hue switches I tried support it, but some Tuya switches don't. On the other hand, all lights from different manufacturers which I tried were able to bind directly. The first year I had to fiddle a lot with the tooling. The uptime of HA/zigbee2mqtt wasn't great. It was good to have this as a fall back.
    - addandsubtract 2y ago
      Do you have to choose between direct binding -or- controlling them through HA, or can you still control them through HA even when they are directly bound? Because I directly paired a switch with a light before (in Philips Hue), but then wasn't able to control it through the app anymore. Since switching to HA and Zigbee2mqtt, I just used triggers with switches, but wasn't aware that direct binding is a possibility. Gonna have to look into that now :)
acidburnNSA 2y ago
This was my path. After Philips Hue required that I make an online account with them and wouldn't let me use my local-only devices without it, I rage bought a Sonoff dongle and transferred all my HUE lights over to it and then unceremoniously threw away my hue bridge. Zigbee2MQTT is working great. I'll always pay more for freedom from corporate project managers subscription metrics in my smart home devices. This philosophy works too, I've been pretty deep into home automation since 2015 and haven't lost even one device due to deprecation or sunsetting yet.
- anbotero 2y ago
  This. Also, at least being offline-first should be a must. I went to a friend’s house, and she has a system to enable and disable lights, water, etc. There was a power outage in the area... she couldn’t enable the water to flow. What a joke.
Caligatio 2y ago
Going this route then eliminates the free/included Google Assistant integration that comes along with using the bridge and app, correct? I really would like to ditch the hub but also want to use voice activation on a few lights.
BlackLotus89 2y ago
Maybe it's just my specific setup, but my Hue lights don't support color when using ZigBee. I still use it this way since I rarely want to change the color temperature, but this is something for people considering such a setup to consider
baq 2y ago
Phillips Hues are just in another league compared to tradfris. One of those cases where you really get what you pay for.
- philjackson 2y ago
  Can you describe how? I have the IKEA bulbs throughout and it's difficult to imagine how they'd be any better.
  - baq 2y ago
    Well... they're better, slightly or more noticeably, at everything: better color accuracy, dims lower, brightness is more linear, transitions are smoother... on paper they're similar, but when you actually use them, the differences become apparent quite quickly. (Disclaimer - have some GU10 Hues and some E27 Tradfris, both RGB).
    - philjohn 2y ago
      At some point though it becomes "are those improvements worth the inflated price tag" and for a LOT of people, the colour accuracy is good enough etc.
      - baq 2y ago
        Well there's a reason I have those Tradfris ;)

orev 2y ago

Home Assistant is great. Started with a Raspberry Pi 4, then migrated to a Wyse 5070 running HAOS in a VM on top of libvirt/qemu. Using USB dongles for both ZigBee and zwave, passing the USB devices directly through to the VM. This kind of setup allows making full backups/snapshots of the whole VM in case of any failed updates, or mistakes when making big configuration changes. I don’t use any vendor hubs at all. Everything is directly connected to the USB dongles at the main network controllers.

green-salt 2y ago

Going down this route still requires the Hue hub and managing it through its ecosystem. This means if DNS is not working perfectly or the hub decides to do a mandatory update, you're stuck for a bit until the update finishes or you fix DNS. The DNS part is partially my fault but also because I was blocking all of its calls home to Phillips' servers using pihole. Finally I bought a zigbee dongle and put in the zigbee2mqtt addon for HA and paired all of my Hue bulbs/dimmers/motion sensors to it (https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/9290023351B.html https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/devices/9290023351B.html), unplugged the Hue hub, and its been excellent since.

na4ma4 2y ago
The only reason I've still got my Hue hub in use is because I have not found anything that supports ZGP and I've got 4 of the original Hue Tap buttons. I don't have any other Hue products anymore, but the hub still runs for those 4 switches.

gigel82 2y ago

You can ditch the Hue Bridge entirely and just get a Zigbee dongle for Home Assistant: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/migrating-from-a-philips-hue-bridge-to-the-zha-zigbee-home-automation-integration/620862 https://community.home-assistant.io/t/migrating-from-a-phili... Especially since Philips is going the same route as all the other enshittified / cloud home automation services (requiring an account, pushing mandatory terms of service updates after the product is launched, cloud lock-in). It's probably just a matter of time until they stop producing Zigbee bulbs altogether but the current generation works fine with private / free home automation solutions.

dylan604 2y ago

Has anyone done this that can compare it to the Hue app? I've had a few apps/light combinations, and the Hue app is by far the best I've used. It's compelling enough to suffer the beginnings of enshitification, but looking for a parachute when it gets to be too much. I like Hue's rooms where all bulbs in the room are updated at the same time (seems like a basic thing), while others apps don't quite do this right. Applying a color change to the room vs each bulb in the room. I have one room with 3 separate light strips where the app "spans" a light patterns across each device. Again, not something other apps do without setting each individual bulb. The Hue app works really well for me, and being unable to find an equally featured replacement keeps me on it

kyorochan 2y ago
You can group lights like this in Home Assistant.
- na4ma4 2y ago
  You can also do it in ZigBee creating a group, if you just use the group in HA then you get the cascading "light 1 change, light 2 change, light 3 change, light 4 change", but with a ZigBee group it goes "light group blah change" and they all go at once.
theshrike79 2y ago
If 100% of your devices are Hue and the automation it provides is enough, there really isn't a reason to switch. But if you start adding a second brand like IKEA (their bulbs are a LOT cheaper than Philips) or Wifi stuff from Shelly, you either suffer the trap of 3+ separate apps or bite the Home Assistant bullet eventually.
- AidenVennis 2y ago
  I actually have both IKEA bulbs and Hue bulbs, but the appliance is different for both. I use the Hue bulbs where I want high quality lightning like the living room, kitchen, bathroom and office. I use the IKEA bulbs in places where I don't really care how good the lightning is; the hallways, toilet, garage etc. Automations for IKEA bulbs are in Home Assistant and for Hue they are in the Hue app. IMO Home Assistant doesn't really do a good job with controlling the lights. It doesn't have the creative abilities to create or choose predefined "cool" scenes. Besides I don't want to know how much work I need to do in Home Assistant to re-configure the smart switches from Hue and their features. In the end I can still control the Hue bulbs with Home Assistant if I want to. The Hue app doesn't prevent you from controlling the Hue bulbs from Home Assistant

JKCalhoun 2y ago

I went through our house and installed motion controlled light switches in a few key places. Specifically places like a walk-in closet, the pantry, the utility room, the storage room under the staircase. There was, I believe, no need to leave the light on when there is no motion. (I hesitated on adding a motion-activated light to the bathroom because, for example, taking a shower might cause it to time-out and you would be showering in the dark.) In any event I did not use any kind of networked device — just your standard $15 Lutron motion sensor light switch you can get from Lowe's or Home Despot. I mention what is probably obvious because a use case in the article was to activate a light when it senses motion. No need to over engineer that.

andrewinardeer 2y ago
I replaced motion sensors with human presence sensors which solved the shower timeout issue.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Which presence sensor are you using? One of the mmWave devices? I've had an Aqara FP2 for a while but haven't really found a killer use for it. Maybe the bathroom is that case.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    mmWave stuff is great when you have rooms that need to have lights when people are there, but not moving. Toilets, hallways, entrances etc. work just fine with IR motion sensors. See motion -> turn light on for X minutes. Optionally reset timer to X every time you see motion. But for places like offices where you might be sitting relatively still for 30+ minutes, mmWave is better. It knows you're there and won't turn off the lights even if you don't wave your arms around :) The price difference isn't that big though. You can get a HA compatible mmWave device in a nice case for ~50€. The official Philips Hue motion sensors (IR) are around 40-ish €, the really cheap ones like Shelly you can get for around 20€.
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Scene_Cast2 2y ago

Fair warning to anyone who hasn't touched Home Assistant - HA brings so much value, but is simultaneously so frustratingly atrocious. For example, it operates on an "update" data model. There is no difference between a sensor being offline and not reporting info vs a sensor being online but reporting a repeating (previously seen) value. Add to that the way data is stored (two week retention; this weird relationship with Grafana and Influx where not all data actually goes to Influx from HA)... Even the date picker is frustrating.

mjx0 2y ago
Have you found a better alternative? I'm trying to center around MQTT, myself, but looking for a way to use many of the wonderful integrations created by the Home Assistant community. I'm also trying to find a good solution to "react to state changes".
- BeefWellington 2y ago
  I've replaced all of HA with just some Python interacting with an MQTT server. I just script all the automation and don't have to care about the other 90% of what HomeAssistant brings to the table. Not for everyone obviously but it's simple and works well.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    Have you looked into AppDaemon or Pyscript, both provide a Python interface to HA. They let you use HA's massive library of supported devices, but you don't need to bother with their YAML "programming" horrorshow.
    - BeefWellington 2y ago
      I haven't because what's described didn't really suit my needs. I can run my own daemon that will handle the integration with MQTT, and that's all I needed.
- Scene_Cast2 2y ago

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paxys 2y ago

I feel like the point of buying Philips Hue products and paying 4x the normal price is that everything is mostly set up out of the box and the app is very intuitive. All the non technical people I know use them and have no problems. If you want to go the Home Assistant route, you may as well go all the way and get a Zigbee/Matter hub and off-brand bulbs. That way you keep full control of the ecosystem and pay a fraction of the price.

felipelemos 2y ago
Maybe the point is for the people who already have it and want to avoid being locked in on proprietary ecosystem.
LiquidFlux 2y ago
Their Hue bulbs are particularly high quality as light bulbs go, and their motion sensors are one of the PIR & Zigbee best in class available (a big thing being their short trigger CD). It's separately a reasonable upgrade path for people becoming increasingly familiar with smart home tech, smart bulbs are a particularly easy entry point with clear added value with new features (white temperature is a personal favourite) and battery operated motion sensors, with a clear path to further home automation adoption with Home Assistant.
- cillian64 2y ago
  Yep, for me the reason to go with Hue is that the bulbs have good CRI, good colors, and the colors match between all the different types of fixtures. I've also not had a single Hue bulb fail in the 6 years I've been using them.

UberFly 2y ago

Win-win for Philips. I don't have their hub but still buy tons of their bulbs and sensors for HA. Higher price but the best quality for sure.

gempir 2y ago

I have more than 5 years experience with Home Assistant and Zigbee devices. (No zwave experience) Generally I am happy with Zigbee, it's super annoying to pair, but for battery powered devices it's unbeatable. I went from a some AliExpress USB Stick to a ConBee2 to the Home Assistant Yellow. I use Ikea, Sonoff, Xiaomi (Aqara) Zigbee devices all of them "just work". The one big thing Zigbee is good at is not requiring you to need some proprietary App, all devices are just paired locally, you don't need to question if that app you just installed phones home. For general hardware advice: Overall the Home Assistant Yellow was the best choice overall, I would anyone who doesn't want to spend a ton of time on HA hosting to just buy it. Everything works pretty flawlessly with it. Conbee 2 ist still my current stick because I am experimenting with the Matter/Thread Support on the Home Assistant Yellow, sadly without success though. My best recommendation if you want to tinker with smart devices is get anything that you can flash Tasmota on. (List of Devices https://templates.blakadder.com/ https://templates.blakadder.com/ ) Tasmota is an amazing piece of software that runs on your smart device for example a power plug. https://tasmota.github.io/docs/ https://tasmota.github.io/docs/ Get MQTT running on your Home Assistant device, or any in your network and start connecting stuff to it. I have Shelly powerplugs flashed with Tasmota and that opens up so many possibilities.

guerrilla 2y ago

Even easier and cheaper: 1. Get a Zigbee USB adapter (e.g. SONOFF's is great) 2. Get a Raspberry Pi Zero W 3. Install mosquitto and zigbee2mqtt. 4. Enroll your devices and schedule them using bash scripts and cron. There was no way I was going to be paying Phillips for one of their shitty bridges or hubs after they intentionally gimped their Bluetooth control in order to force you to need one and then rugpulled everyone about not needing to register and log into the app. Dirty business. I'll never buy anything from them again. The above took just an afternoon. Zigbee2mqtt documentation is great.

nirvael 2y ago

I have very recently been setting up HA and various Hue products and tbh I'm quite disappointed in both. For one thing, the Hue bridge requiring an ethernet cable is mind-blowing to me. My router doesn't have an ethernet port, and yes it does say on their website, but I wouldn't have expected it to be a requirement, especially when it actually has wifi capabilities on-device, they're just disabled. Setting up HA was a real pain, it's definitely not "Plug and play". I used a Pi 4 and got a bunch of weird errors, and debugging it is not for the faint-hearted. Eventually I did get it working by downgrading to a year-old version, but now it doesn't recognise my Tapo (TP-Link's brand) lights, the integration just doesn't work. Overall, it's quite a hassle to get set up so I see why people don't bother unless they've got a lot of free time or are really into it, or just pay the premium for an all-Hue system that does actually work out of the box.

philjackson 2y ago
Did you try going down the HA Docker route? Definitely not plug-and-play - there was tinkering - but no weird errors for me.
- nirvael 2y ago
  I considered it but the full OS route seemed cleaner, I wanted to use the Pi for it.

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