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Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

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Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#61

Post by theshrike79 »

dylan604 wrote: post #20

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. App…

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.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#62

Post by silon42 »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #52
rainsford wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Home assistant doesn't require internet access. I'm using zigbee relays placed behind my regular light switches. They work perfectly fine should the home assistant setup ever go down, with the added benefit that i can control them remotely too and react to them being turned on or off in other automations.

Although it does require it for setup, no?

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#63

Post by AidenVennis »

theshrike79 wrote: post #61
dylan604 wrote: post #20

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. App…

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.

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

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#64

Post by gempir »

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/ )

Tasmota is an amazing piece of software that runs on your smart device for example a power plug.

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.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#65

Post by guerrilla »

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.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#66

Post by nirvael »

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.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#67

Post by LiquidFlux »

paxys wrote: post #50

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 fract…

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.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#68

Post by XorNot »

jacobolus wrote: post #49
jliptzin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my Lutron Caseta. Falls back to regular light switches if wifi is out, plus I didn’t have to change any light bulbs! Never had any problems with them. These “smart” devices should always fail back to dumb mode. If there’s ever a situation where the dumb version is better, they’re doing it wrong.

> If there’s ever a situation where the dumb version is better, they’re doing it wrong. Not sure what this means, but personally I dramatically prefer traditional "dumb" wired light switches that flip up or down to interrupt a physical circuit vs. Caseta wireless doodads with their little blinking LEDs, microswitches, and inability for "three way" switches to properly respect the primary dimmer slider's physical posi…

I have Athom mini relays with my physical switches. They work independent of Home Assistant, and leave the physical light switch in place.

It's on my bucket list to try and find a way to cram a full shim of an Australian Clipsal style light switch with a no neutral wifi and relay module so you can do this by just replacing the switch plates (as it is it's my way or going with capacitive touch).

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#69

Post by baq »

philjohn wrote: post #2

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 itsel…

Phillips Hues are just in another league compared to tradfris. One of those cases where you really get what you pay for.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#70

Post by rmu09 »

rainsford wrote: post #12
philjohn wrote: post #2

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 itsel…

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…

With zigbee you can directly pair a switch / motion sensor to a smart bulb so it works independent of any automation.
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