Ikea trådfri bulb and remote (dimmer wheel)

[ajma]

Does anyone have a setup where they pair the trådfri dimmer wheel directly with a bulb and then have the bulb connected to Hubitat? Is this possible? Or would I have to connect the dimmer wheel to Hubitat as well?
I'm trying to get a setup where the bulb will always be controlled by the dimmer, even if I mess up my hubitat setup or my zigbee mesh gets wonky.

[stevebott123]

Hey Ajma,
plenty of info on the forum if you search up the topic you're looking for.

Anyone used Trådfri Remote or Dimmer?

UPDATE (late 2020): For anyone reading this thread now who wants a quick summary, most of the Ikea remote/button devices will not work with Hubitat. (Yes, this is an old thread, but the fact that they don't work is still true. ) One exception is the Symfonisk Remote (works with built-in driver) and unofficially the "wireless dimmer" (plain, round white knob; custom driver required, and no guarantees). The warm white bulb is also officially compatible; you may have mixed luck with …

IKEA Tradfri Bulbs

Does anyone know if the IKEA bulbs cause any "repeating" issues?

[bertabcd1234]

I've paired my five-button device to the Hue Bridge to which I also had a Trådfri bulb paired, and that worked. I can't remember if I ever tried pairing one to Hubitat (if it even does pair) and doing it that way, but I probably mentioned it in one of the posts above if I did.

This is for SmartThings, but if you ignore the first section about adding the DTH (driver), which you don't need to do on Hubitat, the directions for pairing it to the hub and the bulb may work. I believe you do need to get it paired with the hub, otherwise it will steal the bulb's pairing away from Hubitat: IKEA Trådfri - Devices & Integrations - SmartThings Community

Also, I assume you've heard the warnings of smart bulbs on a Zigbee network that contain non-bulb devices. If not, give the last section of this doc a read: How to Build a Solid Zigbee Mesh - Hubitat Documentation

[msiekkinen]

@bertabcd1234

I've paired my five-button device to the Hue Bridge

bertabcd1234, when you added to the Hue Bridge which device did you pick from the accessories list exactly? I have one and hadn't thought of trying that. There's a long list in Friends of Hue but all seem very brand specific and none are Ikea.

I'm currently trying on hubitat but beyond being found as a zigbee device I can't get anything useful going with it there.

[bertabcd1234]

I didn't pick a device. I paired it via TouchLink using a third-party app, which I think is still the only way you can do this. It isn't usable via the Hue app afterwards, either; it's just a way to get it on the Hue network so it doesn't steal pairing away from other devices if you also directly link it to one of those. I can't remember twheexact process I followed off the top of my head anymore, but there are a few websites I remember that detail the procedure that you can probably find with a search.

[msiekkinen]

Yeah I shortly found several YT videos about using Hue Essentials to get it working. I got passed the first step of (i think) pairing with the bridge. But I think I think I'm still SOL b/c I think all the YT guides are about controlling a complete Tradfri bulbs. I don't have any nor care to get any.

Hence the reason I was trying to see if I could get hubitat working as an intermediary to trigger lights accordingly if it could just recognize the button presses

[bertabcd1234]

You won't be able to get the button presses from Hue to Hubitat via any existing integration, and no hypothetical integration would be able to do it any meaningful way due to the fact that Hue can only get polled for changes rather than "pushing" the button presses immediately to third parties like Hubitat. (HomeKit actually might be able to help you there if you have HomeBridge set up since HomeKit is the exception to this, but non-Hue products on Hue are not exposed to HomeKit, and I'm not sure if/how Ikea's Trådfri Gateway, should you have one, would handle them, either.)

Further, even if you're using a bulb as a "proxy," I've found that the bulb state was not reliably updated in Hue when manipulated via a Trådfri remote. Thus, even getting that into Hubitat and using the bulbs on/off state or dim level as a proxy for button presses wouldn't work, unless your luck there is different from mine (at least one person has said it was for them) and you were planning on using a bulb to fill this role (not elegant for most use cases, probably).

I think most of my Ikea devices have ended up in my Drawer of Shame for now, possibly forever. (I did take one to work and have it working nicely on its own without the Trådfri Gateway, which is only needed for setup, to have a motion sensor turn on/off my desk lamp if lux is low enough, with the 5-button remote I can use for manual changes when desired. That's about the most I'll probably ever get out of them.)