Hi, I have some WiFi outdoor RGB string lights on my patio made by a company called DazzBling. They are controlled through the Smart Life iOS app and also work with Alexa. I searched everywhere to find zwave or Zigbee lights like this but no luck. I tried searching Tasmota supported devices but didn’t see these listed.
Anyway, is there a way that I can control these lights through my Hubitat dashboards and rules?
Some kind of virtual RGB bulb in HE that can be exposed to Alexa to then change the physical string lights?
Or anything through MQTT somehow?
I’m not opposed to a more advanced integration. Two way communication would be great, but I’ll happily settle for one way communication if I can at least get rules and dashboards to control them.
You might consider running Homebridge on a Raspberry Pi along with the plug-ins for Tuya (Smart Life) and Hubitat. In this setup only the HomeKit side of the integration can control the Tuya devices, so you’ll also need a HomeKit hub like an Apple TV or HomePod to handle the automation rules that act upon HE events exposed through Homebridge.
For example, I have a few WiFi outlets that run in Smart Life. I setup Homebridge with Tuya plugin so my HomeKit can see and control the outlets. Then I use Hubitat plug-in to expose HE virtual switches to HomeKit. Then in HomeKit I set automation rules to control the Tuya outlets based on HE virtual switch events.
Not sure you can get RGB control of the Tuya devices through HE, but using the Homebridge method you can turn them on and off or activate HomeKit scenes containing them.
You might try setting up a virtual contact sensor within Hubitat for each of the WiFi bulbs. If you aways turn a group of bulbs on and off at the same time, you could use the virtual contact to represent the group rather than a specific bulb. Then share the virtual contacts with Alexa. Set up a routine in Alexa that turns off the virtual contact whenever the physical bulb (or group) is off and turns on the virtual contact when the bulb(s) are on. You will also need routines that turn the physical bulb on when the virtual contact is turned on and off when the virtual contact is off.
Then in Hubitat, you can set up rules that will turn the virtual contacts on or off based on other sensors. Alexa can see the virtual contacts and set the physical bulbs to match.
In Dashboard, you would include the virtual contacts that would act as surrogates for the real devices.
Thank you, this definitely seems like it would be the closest to being able to control the color in addition to simple on/off. I do have HomeBridge already running to control the HE devices through Siri, just need to check out the Tuya plug-in. I appreciate the advice!
Wow, been using EchoSpeaks since it first came out for ST and never knew this. Thanks for this suggestion too, always learning new things from this awesome community!
Yeah. it was added in the v4.1.0.0 release a few months ago. (The ability to run custom commands was added to the Alexa native routines around the beginning of the year, if I remember correctly.)
