Or can I skip the phillips bridge/hub and just use the hubitat?
You should be able to directly use them with Hubitat.
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thanks!
Yeah the Hue motions work fine directly connected, I have a number of them.
Do you think I could use hubitat to use the phillips indoor motion detector to trigger power on a zigbee or some other smart outlet?
Sure. That kind of automation is easy with Hubitat.
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Yes, this is one of the benefits to linking the motion sensor to Hubitat vs the Hue bridge, i.e. you wouldn't be able to do that (I think) if you have the sensor linked to the hue bridge. Just make sure the outlet can work with Hubitat.
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any benefit to using phillips bulbs over sylvania smart bulbs you think? Thanks for the advice btw
I may be out of date here but the hue bulbs require their hub. The motion sensors are fine direct to HE.
Personally, I’d use Sengled bulbs over either of those two. Many bulbs get accidentally turned off at the switch and thereby wreck the zigbee mesh they are part of.
Sengled bulbs are designed not to repeat, and therefore don’t create this problem.
I’d recommend getting 6-10 zigbee outlets paired to Hubitat that are positioned throughout your house to form a good stable zigbee mesh. And leave them plugged in!
There are several brands of zigbee outlets that work well as repeaters. I’ve used outlets from Ikea (Tradri), Samsung (zigbee not WiFi), Centralite (Iris), and Innr.
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I can't comment too much on comparing manufacturers, but I have just recently moved my hue setup to my new he C-7. From memory the main reasons to stay on the hue bridge we're splitting the mesh, performance, a couple of minor features available on hue and firmware updates.
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I believe Hue bulbs can be paired directly to Hubitat, but zigbee mesh performance can become unacceptable since they’ll revert to the ZHA profile rather than the ZLL profile they would use when paired directly to a Hue bridge.
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Do you have any motion detectors you can suggest I look into buying for hubitat to link with sengled bulbs? (or should I stick with the phillips indoor motion detector I've been looking at) I also plan to get some compatible zigbee outlets to link to the motion detector in the hallway that will essentially trigger the beginning of my day.
If you can still find the Iris V2 motion, I have a ton of these and they work great. There was some sellers on ebay that were selling a pack of them for cheap, not sure if they are still available
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The Phillips sensors are fine. Also, if you can find them, Iris v2 or v3 motion sensors. The key thing for an excellent automation experience with Hubitat is forming strong mesh networks. In your instance, since your end-devices (sengled bulbs and motion sensors) are zigbee, I would recommend focusing on making a strong zigbee mesh.
Hence the suggestion for the Ikea Tradfri outlets or Innr outlets.
This is recommended reading:
https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=How_to_Build_a_Solid_Zigbee_Mesh
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There also used to be pack of the Iris V2 plugs on eBay which will work as repeaters like the Ikea outlets.
The Hue motions also work well for lux.
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hue is the big name and user friendly, but if you're going to invest in a hubitat, look into other brands. tons of other brands are not only cheaper but integrate directly with hubitat and can give you the functionality you're looking for
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Very true.
However, for someone starting out new, I'd zigbee 3.0 devices over these plugs. An ancillary reason is that there are multiple reports of the z-wave repeater portion of these plugs playing havoc with C-7 z-wave networks.
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The Z-wave radio is separate and needs to be paired separately as a Z-Wave device, so you would have to explicitly pair the device in both ZigBee and Z-Wave. I personally have no issues with them, but I do not use the Z-Wave radio since I have many Z-Wave plus switches.
When they were $10 a piece on ebay it was hard to beat for the price.
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Yup. And there are (new) zigbee 3.0 plugs available for around that price now.
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