After a recent failed (unrelated) experiment I find myself with a unused hue hub. I have a few Innr bulbs that are compatible with the Hue hub, and have confirmed they will pair with it. Is there any reason to remove them from being direct paired to Hubitat and pair them through the hue hub and he bridge? So far I have not had any issues with them paired directly, just curious if I would gain any expanded control or features with them paired via hue. I may end up adding some actual hue bulbs somewhere along the line . though I'm not in a hurry to do that.
With actual Hue bulbs, you would get more features: default power-on state, native HomeKit integration, etc. With third-party bulbs, you won't get that, but I suppose there are still some features that might be easier on Hue (out-of-home control with an optional Hue account but no additional setup?). As you probably also know, sometimes Zigbee bulbs are notoriously bad repeaters, and then there's an advantage to keeping them separate from non-bulbs, whether that's a Hue Bridge or another hub. I haven't heard reports off Innr being one, though I don't know anyone has objectively tested any newer bulbs with a Zigbee sniffer for sure.
So, in your case, I'm not sure there's any advantage, other than maybe being able to keep more or all of your lights on the same system (not totally without advantage: it's easy to open the a Hue app and turn off all lights with a single tap when you're away or even home, if you want; and I think it handles "groups" via rooms and zones quite easily). But if that's not a concern for you...
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Ill be honest, those Innr bulbs are the only ZigBee devices I have other than a couple hue outdoor motion sensors. I'm the opposite of most, ZigBee has caused me more headaches than Zwave, so I tend to stick with Zwave. I don't know if they are repeaters or not, but I can say of all the ZigBee bulbs I have had, they have given me the least problem (running the generic ZigBee bulb driver) , they have just been rock solid. They replaced a bunch of Sengled bulbs, which were only marginally better than Cree for me. It sounds like there may not be any real advantage to moving them.
From your described setup, likely the issue with the Sengled bulbs was a lack of repeaters (Sengleds don't repeat). Sengled is probably one of the most reliable zigbee bulbs out there and they play well with ZHA devices (like your outdoor motion sensors). If you do put them back into play, just get some good zigbee repeaters (sengled outlets make excellent ones). Though for regular bulbs nowdays I use Lifx because native integration, superior color and brightness. Excellent for the occasional table lamp in our home.
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I'm not currently having any problems or issues with these bulbs. I was just curious if I would gain any function by pairing them directly to the Hue hub (really just looking for a reason to have/ keep it). It really doesn't sound like I would gain much by re-pairing them all to the Hue hub.
These are the Innr bulbs I am currently using. None are directly tied into a motion sensor for motion, though I do have three in a group (a 3 head torcher lamp ) that use the lux sensor on that hue outdoor motion sensor for a cog. When I had all the issues with ZigBee before, I swapped all of the Sengleds I had for Inovelli RGB bulbs. The Inner were a later addition as I needed more bulbs and they were a reasonable cost. I only have four in service. The other one is in the office lamp in the same room as the hub. I honestly haven't had any issues with them. I was more curious if I could gain more features tieing them in to the hue Hub. They say they are compatible with the hub, and I have confirmed they pair just fine.
Right now, I really don't anticipate adding much more zigbee, though if I do, I will have to look at adding a repeater or two (my house isn't that big, 2100sq ft., all on one level, we're empty nesters).
I have two guest rooms that I have considered putting wifi bulbs in just because if a guest physically turns them off I don't have to worry about that messing with my mesh. I hadn't tried Lifx yet, I may look into them. I tried Shelly, and had issues with their bulbs initially being difficult to discover, and once discovered, tending to drop off and being hard to recover. These are also the rooms I plan to test the hubivue guest dashboards in, so we shall see how this plays out.
My nightstand lamp was unplugged for about 2 weeks and the bulb showed up in hubitat 5 mins after being plugged in.
Was that the Lifx?
Yeah....
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