Hi - I am in the process of setting up my HE - converting over from Wink. In regards to lighting specifically, my condo was built in 1976 and unfortunately I don't have much recess/ceiling lighting, I had to resort to lamps and chose GE Zigbee bulbs in the bedrooms and living room. They worked just fine, until my wife bought me Philips Hue color starter kit for Christmas last year and I replaced my 4 GE Link Zigbee bulbs with 4 Hue bulbs.
From what I've been reading (scenes and groups in hue vs. groups and scenes in hubitat, routines and groups in alexa, having identical names, etc), I feel like keeping Phillips Hue&Hub just creates more complexity. It's not about my inability to integrate Hue with my HE, it's more of an annoyance factor. I'm thinking of selling the Hue bulbs and hubs before before I do that:
In terms of overall reliability/stability, reducing 'popcorn' effects: What are the advantages of keeping my Phillips Hue Hub and bulbs vs. putting my GE Link Zigbee bulbs back? Should I continue to build on the Hue lifestyle or just sell it?
Current Hubs: Wink (to be soon retired), Hubitat, Hue, Lutron BridgePro
Bulbs: GE Link Zigbee, Hue (color)
If you're going to have Zigbee bulbs added to your main Hubitat hub you should consider Sengled bulbs as they are designed to not be repeaters where many other Zigbee bulbs will eventually cause Zigbee stability issues (I'm not sure if GE bulbs have that problem or not). Having the Hue hub lets you isolate those bulbs from the rest of your Zigbee devices reducing the possibility of Zigbee stability issues from bulbs that also repeat Zigbee.
If you don't use the color aspect of the bulbs you could also just go with Zigbee or Z-Wave plugin on/off or dimmer modules and regular dimmable LED bulbs.
To reduce the popcorn effect you'd want your bulbs/plugin modules to be Zigbee rather than Z-Wave.
Thank you - I wasn't aware of the Zigbee stability issues. Are there Zigbee stability issues using the Hue Bulbs/Hub? Money aside, I'm wondering if it would it be ideal having all Hue bulbs? I'm not a huge fan of plugin dimmer or on/off modules.
Hue bulbs are fine as long as they are connected through the Hue bridge rather than directly to Hubitat, they will likely cause issues if connected directly. The Hue bridge integration is good because it is IP based and local and lets you isolate problematic Zigbee devices from your network. The advantage to using Sengled bulbs connected directly to Hubitat would be Hubitat's group ability to reduce popcorn effect with Zigbee devices but Hue may have that ability as well, I'm not sure as I only have a few devices on a Hue bridge.
Hue does: any room (or new: zone) you create uses group messaging behind the scenes. Unlike Hubitat, Hue also supports "real" scenes, whereas Hubitat's are emulated with individual color/level/etc. commands to each bulb (or group) with, in my experience, limited success. (On Hue these are activated with one command.) Scenes aren't exposed with Hubitat's native Hue integration, but at least two community options provide this.
I've used both a Hue Bridge and a separate Hubitat dedicated entirely to bulbs. I've also encouraged a friend to go all-in on Sengleds to avoid either of these, but my experience was really the same both ways. Group messaging helps, but addressing large numbers of bulbs at the same time (setting a Hubitat scene, turning them all off for bedtime, etc.) almost always results in one or two that don't get the message the first time. I found behavior with the Hue Bridge much better.
I am using about 20 hue bulbs/spots (Lily)/path lights (Calla). I tried getting them using Hubitat Zigbee but immediately had issues with the 30+ other battery powered zigbee sensors (even with zigbee outlets acting as repeaters).
Now I am using the hue bridge to control all the bulbs/spots/path lights and I have it connected to Hubitat via the provide app. This gives me a huge amount of control. I can control the lights through Hubitat, without issue. Additionally, I have the outside bulbs/spots/path lights set up to change colors like Christmas lights. Since that is controlled with a Hue Labs Formula, there is no additional load on Hubitat. Last year I wrote an app that changed the colors every 1-2 seconds, but that put too much load on Hubitat and brought my system to it's knees.
In terms of light bulbs themselves, Hue are superior light quality. I can get the Hues to go incredibly low, which I love in the bedroom at night. The Sengleds don't have that dimming range. I find them too bright at the lowest setting.
Same with the Sengleds color bulbs. The colors are washed out. In the majority of places Sengleds are fine but in places where mood or entertainment lighting is important I find myself not using my Sengleds.
Like everyone said the zigbee on the Hues are not friendly. I keep my Sengleds in my Hubitat and my Hues on an Ikea hub (for now as the Philips Hue Hub is coming to replace soon)
The bridge allows the bulbs to work at their best plus all bulbs and all functions are readily available through the HE application to integrate the Hue Bridge, so why even consider to ditch it? Having to buy all new bulbs seems like a terrible suggestion.
I've got about 20 Hue bulbs around the house hooked up through the bridge, and then three dimmer switches and two motion sensors hooked directly to my HE hub. I've never had even the slightest of issues with it all.
My advice: get over the "annoyance", there are way more important things to occupy brain cells
I also have a mix of Hue and Sengled. I find the Hue has better color quality, better dimming, better everything as others have stated. I have struggled doing anything with the Sengleds where I am trying to control individual bulbs, even if it's only 2 or 3. Groups mostly work but sometimes they even fail. It gets frustrating at times and I would probably have never done as many Sengleds as I did knowing this at the beginning.
what is the provided app you used to integrated the phillips hue lights into hubitat even though they are still connected tot he hue hub? im a newbie so if this is a dumb question i apologize.
Got into "Built In App" in HE, and select the Hue Bridge Integration. That will walk you through connecting it. All your lights will be automatically created in HE. FYI, it does not support binary devices (switches) yet. An update is coming for that.
