I just got an e-mail from Hue this morning announcing a new Hue-compatible product, the Click for Philips Hue: Philips Hue Page – RunLessWire
This is a "Friends of Hue" product that can be paired to your Hue network and configured via the mobile Hue app like, I assume, the first-party Tap and Dimmer. I suspect it could also be paired to a ZHA network like Hubitat and used similarly to the Hue Dimmer, but I'm unlikely to buy one just to find out. It costs $60 USD, over over twice as much as the similar Hue Dimmer with what I see as only a few advantages: I assume each side can control different lights/rooms if you want, and it fits in a standard decorator plate (the Hue Dimmer is a bit too large). It also looks a bit more like a standard, albeit bifurcated, decorator switch, though the Dimmer is close and probably equally intuitive.
Plus, I'm on Hubitat and I already have something I can fit into a standard decorator plate and make control Hue lights or whatever I want for a fraction of the price: Pico remotes. (Though if I'm only using them for Hue lights, I confess being paired to the Hue network makes Hue devices like the Dimmer and presumably also this device a bit snappier...)
Sadly, I have a feeling that like the Tap, it won't be compatible with HE.
You might be right, I guess they're both human-powered and not battery-powered, so they have that in common, and the Tap uses a different kind of Zigbee payload Hubitat does not (at least currently) support, or at least I seem to remember that was the issue.
I'm not sure I'd consider it sad, though, since these puppies are $60 and there are a variety of cheaper button devices that do work natively with Hubitat. Heck, two of these would be enough to buy you a Smart Bridge Pro and at least two Pico remotes from Energy Avenue. But I guess it might be nice to have natively supported, decorator-style Zigbee buttons.
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Picos are WAY more functional anyhow. I don't know who Philips is targeting with this product, but upon closer inspection, it reminds me of this with a different asthetic. LOL
Confession: I have two of those. I tried to sell them on eBay after using them for a bit when I rented. One of them had zero bidders; the other one had a low bid from a buyer who refused to pay. I ended up keeping them (not that I had a choice when I could barely give them away if I tried) and try to repurpose them somehow. I saw a project someone did here with one of those auxiliary switches for Z-Wave switches/dimmers, so I'm thinking maybe "use" it (sans battery) and wire their contacts (if I can find them) to a SmartThings Button to use as a giant, light-switch-covering Zigbee switch for switches that control smart bulbs.
I'll give Switchmate this, though: their devices are the prettiest of all the over-the-switch devices (compared to the Ecolink TLS-ZWAVE5 and the RealitySwich, for example). The RunLessWire product above is at least just a Zigbee switch, not a Lockitron v2 (anyone else get one of those?) of switches like the above, albeit one we currently don't know anything about the payloads of.
totally powered by the press of the button
Now that is interesting at least.
If it lasted a very long time, I suppose the price could make up for batteries or electricity. We might live on Mars by then though.
I have purchased a couple of the runlesswire switches. I would give them 4.5 out of 5 stars. They integrate into the Hue hub very well. I used them in locations where the switch was turning on power to Hue Lights like under and over cabinet lights replaced with Hue light strips. Each switch can control 4 actions plus dimming of 2 settings.
The only reason for taking off .5 stars is that the action of pressing the switch creates enough of an electrical charge to activate the Zigbee connection to the Hue hub. You have to press the switch with purpose to get it to work the first time. If you aren’t firm with the press it doesn’t generate enough electrical current to connect the Zigbee.
It would be great if the runlesswire switches could be integrated into HE to be a trigger for other actions beyond beyond the Hue Lights. I would like to add a couple of Lutron switches into the rule.
This came across my attention again. Anyone tried to pair this to Hubitat or have any idea whether it would work? I just saw a question answered by the manufacturer on the Amazon page: Amazon.com: Customer Questions & Answers
Question: Can this act as a Zigbee input for SmartThings?
Answer: Click for Hue switches transmit standard ZigBee Greenpower messages which is part of the ZigBee 3.0 standard. It is our understanding that ZigBee 3.0 support is coming to SmartThings and that it does not work now but might in the future.
If ZigBee 3.0 support is available, the Click for Hue can be configured to transmit on 1 of 4 ZigBee channels by holding one of the buttons for >10 seconds. Button to channel mapping is:
Button 1 : lower left (BO) - ZigBee Channel 11
Button 2: lower right (AO) - ZigBee Channel 15
Button 3: upper right (AI) - ZigBee Channel 20
Button 4: upper left (BI) - ZigBee Channel 25
-RunLessWire [Seller] • January 31, 2019
So...it looks like will only transmit on the ZLL channels, or at least that's the only way you can make it use a specific channel (not sure if it can fall back to ZHA and use whatever channel that network is on).
At this price I wouldn't necessarily gravitate towards this, but it comes in a variety of colors that the Hue Dimmer doesn't (only white) or are harder to find or more expensive on the Picos (the white and usually light almond ones are cheap, but everything else tends to cost a lot more, to say nothing about the cost of the Bridge if you're not already using the system). And it's now clear that it can mount in a box or on the wall (still not sure if it can mount over an existing switch without rewiring...) and comes with all necessary hardware for either, so it's not quite as bad as I thought. Tempted to get one for my friend who doesn't have the Lutron Bridge and would like black switches to match the rest. (But not that tempted since he doesn't have a Hue Bridge to fall back on if this doesn't pair to Hubitat.)
I have a few of these in rooms that have Hue BR30 lights. I just removed the switch and wired the it on. The RunLessWire switches work pretty well. I liked the fact that I can set them up for specific scenes. I do run all my Hue lights thru the Hue Hub and just use the cloud integration of into HE. The only issue I have is the status of the Hue lights don't update when they are changed by the RunLessWire switches (or on the Hue App). Causes issues with Dashboard / SharpTools reflecting the correct status.
So I tried to hold down the button that corresponds to the channel that my HE is on, but no luck when I was in Zigbee discovery mode. Curious if anyone else has had success...
Given that it says "Zigbee Green Power," which Hubitat doesn't support, I guessed that the odds are slim, and forcing it to pair on your ZHA channel was probably the only shred of hope that remained. Sorry to hear that it didn't work!
Pico remotes cost a little more but are awesome and also come in other colors. This is what I sold a friend on before he went with Hue anyway and could have just used this (as you still can on the Hue system via the Bridge).
Ahh, got it. Thanks! Any idea if this will be supported in the future?
Only staff can say for sure, but if I had to guess, I wouldn't count on it happening any time soon. (But Hubitat does have a lovely Hue Bridge integration, so you can always use this device to control your lights on a Hue Bridge but also get the Hue lights--not this device specifically, as "sensor"-type devices aren't supported--into Hubitat so you can still automate them.)
I'm with RunLessWire directly and saw this discussion from a few years ago. We understand that at the time our GreenPower switch couldn't work directly with the Hubitat because HE doesn't receive the GreenPower messages. We are thinking it should work now that Matter and ZigBee 3.0 support. We'd love to work with someone in this community to create a working proof of concept. Is anyone interested in helping figure out a driver that can make this work?
Assuming these behave like "native" Hue button devices (Hue Dimmer, Hue Tap, etc.) and other "Friends of Hue" devices like the Lutron Aurora, they should be exposed over the Hue V2 API, in which case integration should be possible. @bcopeland owns the Matter integration for Hue (introduced in Hubitat platform 2.3.9.192; not sure button devices work through that), and I am working on changes for 2.4.0 that are not ready for public discussion yet but could be done via PM with one or both of us if you want!
I also have a custom Hue Bridge integration, which would be another way to test these devices. I don't have any, but if they're exposed over the V2 Hue API, there's no reason they shouldn't show up (if you have that option enabled in the app configuration): How to use double tap and hold switch capabilities?
@bertabcd1234 Thanks the response. I'll reach out via DM and explore synergies. Getting better support for the RLW switch through the Philips Hue bridge will be cool, and we are wondering what it would take to support a direct connection between the switch and the Hubitat gateway. Is is possible the latest stack could receive the ZigBee GreenPower packets directly? The switch transmits a press and release message which a driver could interpret as a short press, long press, double press, etc and faciliate controlling anything device pair with the gateway with a kinetic switch. Would that be useful to this community?
@mike.maxwell would be the one to ask about direct Zigbee pairing, though AFAIK that is all still the same as it was when the response above was written (and would be unrelated to Matter).
Green power devices aren’t currently supported directly on Hubitat. We have discussed this in the past however right now it isn’t on the near term roadmap.
Thanks for the response @mike.maxwell Clarifying question: The green power switch sends a message on a pre-selected channel for a switch press and on a release. While we understand that a full GP implementation would include designated Green Power Sinks and Green Power Proxy nodes. We are wondering if it would be possible to create a driver that parses the 802.15.4 packet transmitted by the switch. We have multiple options for the switch, some of which support 4 ZLL channels and others that can be manually configured to transmit on any Zigbee channel. (Note that we offer 3 different GP switch models with 3 slight variations on the data structure of how the switch press/release information is encoded.
Is this feasible?
(I tried embedding an image showing the packet structure and links to ZigBee Green Power specification document and module user manuals and the forum didn't allow me to do that at this point)
If the device is capable of sending data to the hub without being part of the zigbee network, then yes we could receive the payloads,
Currently there isn’t a way for a green power device to join the existing network that’s in place, the join process is very different from 3.0 and ZHA 1.2 devices.