Aye, the tradfri hub would be needed for updating firmware if you needed to.
A lot of folks don't run their lighting directly off HE, they'll use the integrations to either Philips HUE or Lutron to manage the lights, some of the more adventurous who run multiple hubs (and who do run lights directly to HE) can have one zigbee mesh on one hub and then a different zigbee mesh on the other to seperate the two.
I don't think there is a local integration to the tradfri hub, but if there was, it would likely work like the HUE does. If you have up to date firmware on the tradfri bulbs, you can unpair them from the ikea hub, and then pair them to the HUE Bridge. Hubitat can then control them via Hue, and they act as part of the Hue managed mesh, rather than the Hubitat Elevation one. There are some youtube vids showing the pairing to hue if that interests.
ah wow, *the more you know.
So - in your opinion, is it a bad idea to run the bulbs directly from the HE without a hub ?
The total lights that I could use in my house is 28 (but currently I only have 2 tradfri bulbs ive been testing) Otherwise I will buy the hue hub and run them through that.
On my original question, is there no australian zigbee powered repeater options ?
I'm still new into this myself, so I'm not sure if there is a better way tbh, but i've decided to go the Hue bridge route and connect smart bulbs to that, and then use z-wave dimmer/switches behind clipsal lightswitches to control sets of standard downlight spots (directly to HE).
I'm only aware of the NUE socket that you linked. Z-Wave is more common in our market. The IKEA and Philips Hue stuff have been the more mainstream introductions of zigbee as far as I know. Most of the smart home products we've got here are WiFi based, and are more for home control purposes (alexa/google home).
Really weird that we have HE support for the bulbs and outlet but not the hub?
Since not running the hub means that the bulbs wont get anymore firmware updates.
I have wemo bulbs and yeelight bulbs in my setup (wifi) - but really wanted to move all the bulbs to a locally sold, but cost effective smart home setup.
So its not possible to leave the zigbee ikea bulbs connected to their ikea hub, but also have control of them through HE? (ie they can only have one controller?)
Thank you very much G for your replies, I realise this is a young SH community and we are all kinda stumbling around to integrate our own personal SH accessories into this ecosystem/HE hub
I don't think so no. The reason we can control the bulbs is that the control protocol is zigbee, the hub communicates with whatever app over LAN/Net. So in order for HE to control the bulbs via the hub, it would either use an api connection to whatever cloud server it uses (if that exists) or direct communication to the hub via IP address. Local communication is not always available with these devices, and often not intended by the makers in the first place, so most of the time the community is reverse engineering the communication to the local device in order to get it to work. The local integration with LIFX is an example here of the community figuring out it's own way.
You hopefully don't need to update the firmware all the time though, and if you did find you needed to then you can unpair the bulb from Hue, pair it to tradfri and do the update. A lot of folks hold onto hubs for this purpose, just in case.
Sorry - just on that.
I bought 4 smartthings contact / door sensors - does that mean they wont work unless I have a smartthings hub?
Also - its quite misleading as the wiki states that the ikea bulbs are supported and *not requiring any additional hardware, as do the ST door sensors. Who do we talk to about updating that because from what you have said - they do require additional hardware.
No they don't, they are ZigBee so you pair them directly to the hubitat hub. What other are asking is whether there is a local intrigration between hubitat and their hubs.
It is confusing, for sure.
My understanding is that ikea lamps and ST door sensors will work, just like the iris one's I'm using, without their respective 'hubs'. The use of the specific hubs allows a more robust zigbee mesh to be created as Zigbee is fairly short range and as has been mentioned lamps have proven NOT to be good repeaters.
If all your lamps are in the same room as your hub - you shouldn't have a problem but for the signals to "reach out" to another room, then you need repeaters.
It's about lamps being Zigbee ZLL (Lighting Link) and other sensors etc being ZHA (Home Automation).
It's a rabbit hole........
so do I need to unpair the tradfri lights from their hub, since HE doesnt support the hub ? (which seems redundant)
But if I get a hue hub, HE connects to the tradfri bulbs through that hub...?!?!?
Thirdly, will my ST sensors repeat off the hue hubs, or do I need to invest in a good repeater ?
(again, doesn't seem like there is a zigbee good repeater for sale in aus)
Sorry man I'm not playing with any other hubs at this stage.
I've got a centrally located HE hub, in my open plan 2 story house and I've been strategic in making sure iris devices are closer to it than my Zwave devices.
That said I am wanting to push the Zigbee range out a little more and have also been researching zigbee repeaters. I've been thinking of grabbing some international ikea repeaters as they're USB powered.
too easy,
is the ikea repeater the right zigbee frequency for aus ?
I dont see them being international, could be wrong. (or am I getting confused with z-wave)
zigbee is the same frequency across the world, only z-wave is different. The ikea repeaters are usb plug-in, they're the ones I mentioned before. They plug into a UK/US socket, but we can just unplug them and plug into an appropriate AU plug.
Hubitat has a local integration directly to the Philips Hue Bridge, which allows it to control any bulbs that are connected to Hue (Philips bulbs and any other brand that can pair with the Hue Bridge). Zigbee sensors usually just connect directly to the Hub (i.e. smartthings motion etc). Some zigbee sensors from companies like Xiaomi don't repeat well through many zigbee repeaters, but folks have found that the ikea usb repeater to work pretty well.
All the different hubs and protocols are definitely confusing at the start.
Still no go with AU secure zwave pairing with my Aeotec garage opener.
Is there anyone in Aus that has successfully securely paired an Aeotec garage opener with their Hubitat and zwaveme dongle its supplied with post the 2.1 update?
Let me see if I can simplify the Zigbee multi hub question...
Hue uses a different Zigbee profile than what is used by other Zigbee manufacturers. One is ZLL (lighting) and one is ZHA (home automation).
You can pair either/both to Hubitat.
We all recognize the need for repeaters to create a solid mesh. Repeaters repeat Zigbee without regard to the profile.. usually. Bulbs are the #1 exception. They are very poor repeaters in general, and worse for ZHA. This is in part because they are so small and inexpensive. There's really no way to have enough memory for a large Zigbee mesh for the price.
What happens then, is that the bulbs tend to become routers for traffic they route poorly. You can read up about people reporting Zigbee devices falling off the mesh constantly.
The very simplest of answers then is don't use bulbs as routers.!! Simple to say, hard to implement on a SINGLE Zigbee mesh.... you see where this is going now?
People have chosen to keep the horrid bulbs and segregate them to their own Zigbee network.. via another hub of some sort. A very large quantity use the Hue hub as the Bulb/Lighting hub and build out one mesh just for bulbs/lighting. Hubitat, then becomes the Zigbee hub for all other Zigbee devices that are not lighting.
Some don't have a Hue hub handy and when faced with buying another hub, choose another Hubitat. The point is, the segregation, not which hub brand is implementing it.
If all your Zigbee devices are bulbs, then pair them directly to Hubitat and enjoy. If not, and you can create a mesh that shares both, enjoy. For everyone else, when the gnashing of teeth occurs, know that the well worn solution is, another hub for bulbs. Hue or Hubitat or... it's your (budgetary) choice.
i've been to three bunnings trying to track down the white (not the yellow white) bulbs in the classic element range and they are pretty hard to find. Most of the new range are not listed on the Doc page as supported.
Same. Noticed not much is available in Bunnings at the moment. They are starting to push heavily into Smart Home territory, so hopefully they'll get more range. Still mostly Hue/Lifx and a bit of Sengled/Wizz
Baby steps. There was some articles recently where they claimed they wanted to provide more in that space, but currently it's pretty limited. I think most common products in HA retail space end up being Home Control via a wifi app, which is not really the kind of HA we're attempting to do here.
