I have a handful of Phillips Hue indoor/outdoor motion sensors paired with Zigbee directly to a HE C-7 hub today. I use these motion detectors because I found them very fast for automating lights. This is working great, zero issues.
I have also ordered a Phillips Hue Bridge 2.1 and originally planned the single use would be temporarily upgrading firmware on the motion sensors, but afterward pair them back to the C-7 for normal operation and automation. I am now considering leaving the Hue bridge on the network full-time to run the motion sensors.
That is the back story, now for my dilemma. Should I move the motion sensors to the Hue bridge, upgrade the firmware, and then move back to C-7? Another option is move the motion sensors to the Hue bridge and leave them there and use the built-in Hue integration app to bring them into HE automations. The motion sensors could run by themselves on the Hue bridge, or could live on the same Zigbee mesh as handful of Hue bulbs, but not ones that would be automated by the motion sensors, if that makes a difference.
My fear, the motion sensors and light automations are working great right now, very fast and reliable. Will it get worse if the motion sensors are on the Hue bridge?
The Hue integration doesn't subscribe to events from the bridge, it has to poll them.
Therefore, having the motion sensor there wouldn't work for what you need, because you would have to poll every second for it to be almost as quick as now.
Ok thank you, that is the what I am trying to drive to. So if I understand correctly when a Hue motion sensor event occurs the Hue bridge will not immediately notify HE? Instead you would have to wait until the next HE polling interval to get that event and then complete the light automation?
Hubitat's built-in Hue Bridge integration doesn't support sensors at all for the reasons mentioned above. I wrote an integration that does, but it is subject to those limitations--Hue doesn't provide a way for third parties (outside of HomeKit) to get events "pushed" to them, so polling is the only available method. This is true for bulbs and groups too but generally not as big of a deal since Hubitat will still immediately know stare changes if the change was made from Hubitat, and having a bit of delay if not is usually not a problem (unless you make automations that need to "trigger" immediately when a Hue bulb is changed).
If you like the Hue Bridge for lighting--and I do--you could keep the bulbs there, use a Hue Bridge integration, pair the sensors to Hubitat, and still be able to automate whatever you want. If you don't need the power/flexibility that having the sensor on Hubitat provides you, you could keep it on Hue and only use it there. (And you could add a community integration to get it into Hubitat still, but I wouldn't exactly rely on it for possibly time-sensitive automations like motion lighting.)
The only thing I wouldn't do is pair the Hue bulbs directly to Hubitat if you have a "mixed" Zigbee network with both bulbs and non-bulb devices like Zigbee dimmers, switches, outlets, or sensors (not really sure if Hue's own sensor is subject to this but I'm not sure I'd risk it anyway). Many Zigbee bulbs are known to be poor repeaters for non-bulb devices and can cause hard-to-troubleshoot problems on your mesh.
Thank you @bertabcd1234! That is exactly the advice I was looking for. The advice is simple, update the motion sensor's firmware on the Hue bridge and then move them back to the HE for operation and automation.
To add on to this topic, I'm having multiple issues with my hue motion sensors, several of them. Is the only way to update firmware on these is adding them to the hue bridge? Do I have to remove from HE, then move to Hue Hub, then remove from hue hub, then back to HE?
The latest version of Hubitat firmware, v2.2.7, includes support for Zigbee OTA Updates for some devices, including Hue. Thus, it may be possible to update these devices directly from Hubitat, if Hubitat has the new firmware for the Hue motion sensors. I don’t personally have any Hue motion sensors, so YMMV.
I got sick of this sensor's inconsitency and replaced with a brand new hue motion sensor. However, now everytime I add this one, There is not motion attribute? Just battery and sensor. I've tried to readd like 3 times.
You shouldn't have do this manually if it paired with the correct driver (it runs automatically during pairing), but have you tried running the "Configure" command to see if it helps with motion reporting? (You won't see anything happen, but if the device is listening--which if it's healthy on your network, this sensor should be--it will receive Zigbee configuration that, in part, sends your reporting configuration.)
If that doesn't help, if you enable debug logging (keep in mind that this only stays on for 30 minutes by default), do you see any messages coming in (will say parse and something) when there is motion and that's the event you'd expect to see?
I tried that and I get the following error: Firmware update for [name:Studio Outdoor Sensor, manufacturer:Philips, imageFileName:100B-010D-42006BB7, fileVersion:42006BB7] failed, the device doesn't support wildcard file parameters
