Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's
blog.frankel.ch
Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's
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Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's
#2If 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.
Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's
#3If 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…
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#2133...
Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's
#4Home 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.
Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's
#5If 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…
I second all of this. I went with the little blue stick from HA and things have been great.
Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's
#6Going 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), unplugged the Hue hub, and its been excellent since.
Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's
#7You can ditch the Hue Bridge entirely and just get a Zigbee dongle for Home Assistant: 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.
Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's
#8If 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…
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.
Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's
#9If 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…
Have gone this route and exposed a variety of manufacturers devices to HomeKit through HA. Been surprised by the reliability. 3 years in.
Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's
#10If 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…
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…
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.