Having a really difficult time getting started with HE. Need input

Hello everyone;

I am finding it very difficult to get started with HE in moving to the platform. Here is what I tried to do and have failed. I think in particular to these companies that like to hold their info to them self.

  1. Tried to move Nest intergration to HE.. It failed due to limited # of users able to use NEST from HE.

  2. Tried to get my Osram Lightify's moved to HE failed. I don't think HE supports color choices on the lightify bulbs. Please correct me if I am wrong.

  3. Tried to get my wifi color bulbs to work on HE. I am unable to do this due to no drivers.

  4. Tried to get my GE thermostat t100 working in HE but that does not work either. It does not scan it in.

These are just a few things that I've tried that work in ST. Can anyone give me any direction as to where I should go here. I really would like like to use HE because I really like the rules engine but I am meeting alot of resistance here.

I have not tried my Lutron light switches yet.

Thank You for advising me from my rant,

JJ

Did you search out these items in the community for drivers that others may have written? I have osram and they connect. Not using the gateway. The Osram gateway, I don't think is compatible. I have a bulb and several LED RGBWW. Did they properly exclude from your previous platform? Did you check the compatible devices page? Most of them link to the driver if it's not native. Are you starting your mesh close to your hub and working out? This is very important and will give issue if your mesh is weak. If you don't have a large distance to cover to your hub from each point, you should be ok, but It can be an issue you want to keep in mind. I believe you'd need to create an ifttt applet to connect your wifi color bulbs. I don't use wifi for any of my automations, so I can't offer sound advice on that one, but look into that. If I can offer any more help, please let me know. Just waiting for the ball to drop so I can go to bed.

Mine work fine (there not great repeaters for anything other than them selves BTW), but you will need to factory reset them or exclude them from the old platform before they will pair. To factory reset them you need to turn them on / off 5 times for 5 seconds at each state 5 seconds off then 5 seconds on.

This is a nest issue, I think if you search the community your find a work around, I was luckily enough to get one of the original licenses.

Happy New Year and welcome! I had a similar issue and as @BorrisTheCat mentioned this is a Nest issue. There's more info in this post.

TLDR; email support, They'll be able to get this sorted for you.

If that’s a z-wave thermostat then you need to make sure that you correctly excluded and factory reset the device before trying to pair it to your HE hub. The procedure for doing so should be in the device’s user manual.

Do you have a Lutron caseta pro bridge? If so, then your lutron devices will work great with HE. If you have a non-pro caseta bridge, then there’s no way to integrate them with HE. There are other lutron devices (not from the caseta line) that work with HE, but I’m guessing you don’t have those.

In case you're having trouble getting any colours out of them, check your saturation parameter. I spun wheels on this until I realized saturation was at zero...changed to 100, instantly fixed.

A "native" Tuya/Smart Life driver would be nice.
One without an external server that doesn't slow down the hub. :wink:
Really like HE Overall, I just think it needs a little horsepower boost.

+1 for Tuya/SL driver...

So I don't know how in love with re-flashing the firmware of your device(s) with Tasmota but there is a method to do so which only requires a raspberry Pi and no soldering or opening of the device. It worked very well for me. There is a driver for a Tasmota switch (even for multiple relay devices) and an RGBW bulb.

Let me know if you want more info, there's a bunch here:

Info on flashing the firmware below.

Tasmota is open source, now some random Chinese company doesn't get your usage info and have a device doing who knows what on your network... But they probably still do anyway :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I've nothing against Rpi (still I have my 1st gen 1st delivered bunch one..) but I do'nt like one more box in the net just to nurse my tuya devices .. I'll get Ikea plugs as soon as they'll be available in Italy (schuco standard)...

You don't have to keep the RPi hooked up. It's just needed to be able to flash the Tasmota firmware over the air for your Tuya devices. Once the devices are flashed, you can turn the RPi off (or leave it running with TasmoAdmin running on it :wink: ).

I don't have any Tyua devices, but I do have a TON of Sonoff switches and every one of them is running Tasmota. I have the Sonoff/Tasmota driver running in HE and everything works flawlessly without ever leaving my local network.

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What @corerootedxb said.
It's a one and done procedure.
Tasmota firmware runs on the device from then on.
The device can be integrated into Home Assistant, SmartThings, Hubitat... It's open.

I honestly had a hard time getting Home Assistant to see my devices and gave up on it again.
The Hubitat http drivers work good enough for me.

Yeah, HA gave me TONS of headaches and honestly, as much as I love to tinker, the constant cycle of editing yaml/restarting HA/editing more yaml/more restarting of HA/rinse/repeat/rinse/repeat drove me nuts.

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OK. What's about a smart inwall switch? I actually use a powahome wifi (italian product) with Alexa. No way to let it be controlled by HE i fear... Which are the best alternatives ? Shelly? ...?

There are many Tuya clones that use the same chips and same servers.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was. Each device I've gotten has told me to download a different app, but they're all the same and they all work in the Tuya app.

Try adding your switch to the main Tuya app.
If it works the Firmware replacment tool will probably work.

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I've never heard of powahome, but I'd bet they are all all Tyua clones. Shelly, Sonoff, etc, are all supported by Tasmota (basically anything that runs on the ESP8xxx chipset is (or can be) supported by Tasmota). You can see the full list of devices at GitHub - arendst/Sonoff-Tasmota: Provide ESP8266 based itead Sonoff with Web, MQTT and OTA firmware using Arduino IDE or PlatformIO.

You could replace the in-wall switch with something like the Sonoff T1 or (if you want to get fancy) the Sonoff Touch. Both of them work really well and there are Italian equivalents available.

With that said, I have a few Shelly switches, and while they are OK (especially with DC applications), but I prefer Sonoff. Just my opinion.

Sonoff are unfeasible for me, as they are not compatible with my current wall boxes. The new Shelly2.5 are MQTT compatible. Are there drivers able to manage them (the 2 channel version) or I have to install tasmota at first ?

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You'd want to flash them to Tasmota first (which is also MQTT compatible).

Yea so the driver I use is made to address a Tasmota device, but you designate which relay you want to access.
So 2 devices in Hubitat for 1 Tasmota dual relay device.
(I know the Shelly, Hubitat MQTT is just a mess right now...)

Ok. After installed Tasmota, can I use the HE native drivers for both channels ?