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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

#71

Post by cillian64 »

LiquidFlux wrote: post #67
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 favour…

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.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#72

Post by slowmotiony »

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 the hue app works for you then don't switch. You'll spend days learning and configuring everything and in the end it will not work reliably anyway.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#73

Post by theshrike79 »

AidenVennis wrote: post #63
theshrike79 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

The only fancy thing I need for my lights is what Apple calls "adaptive lighting", so that the colour temperature changes according to the time of day. The new IKEA Dirigera hub supports this too.

In the mornings and evenings all my lights are more yellow and bright white during the day.

The colour changing thing was cool for like 2 months, haven't touched it since (Except for my Hue Sync setup behind my TV)

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#74

Post by philjackson »

baq wrote: post #69
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.

Can you describe how? I have the IKEA bulbs throughout and it's difficult to imagine how they'd be any better.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#75

Post by philjackson »

nirvael wrote: post #66

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…

Did you try going down the HA Docker route? Definitely not plug-and-play - there was tinkering - but no weird errors for me.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#76

Post by [deleted] »

andrewinardeer wrote: post #25
JKCalhoun wrote: post #22

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 wo…

I replaced motion sensors with human presence sensors which solved the shower timeout issue.

[deleted]

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#77

Post by addandsubtract »

Rotareti wrote: post #29
mastax wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 switche…

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 :)

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#78

Post by baq »

ramses0 wrote: post #27
JKCalhoun wrote: post #22

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 wo…

There's a few others: humidity sensor switches (bathroom/laundry fans), and the "auto-timer-off" button light switches (for the front entryway/exterior lights). _back_ that with an additional "Shelly" dongle (wifi control that is installed _behind_ the switch-plate), and you get both direct switch control, as well as direct WiFi control. AFAIK the switch will override on/off when you hit it from the wall, and the WiF…

You can configure Shellies in basically every possible useful way - switch, button or detached (wifi independent of the switch). The two gang variant (2PM) can control blinds or garage doors.

Re: Replace Philips Hue Automation with Home Assistant's

#80

Post by Scene_Cast2 »

mjx0 wrote: post #45
Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #39

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 w…

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".

I haven't found anything better. I want to try Hubitat and OpenHab at some point, maybe they'll be better.

All the community is behind HA though, so it has the most integrations.

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