Add a device manually from scratch to home assistant

I am completely new to smart homes, automation and home assistant.

I have a wifi lifx bulb. Out of the box the bulb would not be discovered on the integrations page of HA and could not be added using that route.

After this I downloaded a lifx app to my phone and connected to the bulb that way.

Once the bulb was set up using my phone, I went back to the HA integrations where it found the bulb and could add it the the HA and be controlled in HA as well.

Although I can control the bulb in HA, I have not entered anything into the configuration.yaml file.

  1. Should the configuration file have information about the bulb within it?
  2. What happened when I connected the bulb to the phone that made the bulb discoverable to HA?
  3. How can I, or is it possible to add a device to HA by adding information to the configuration file?
  4. Is there resources or beginners guides to show me?

Hope this makes sense, am struggling to find the correct information.

Thanks,

Dan

That is the correct way to do it. You have to get the bulb on your network before you can see it with HA. FYI you don’t have to add the bulb to the Lifx cloud. It can be safely removed from this if you did, and you will still have control via HA.

No. Information for this is in an area not (meant to be) user editable called .storage it is an alternative system maintained set of data for discovered devices. To configure this device the correct way: check the configuration / integrations / lifx menu. That’s where you can override the name or entity_id. Do this by cliking on the light card and clicking the cog wheel icon in the card that pops up.

You added the light to your local wifi network. Before this there was no connection route from the light to HA.

Not done this way for Lifx.

Not for Lifx that I know of. You seem to have worked it out. The docs mainly cover how to interact with your light using services in automations or scripts:

1 Like

Thanks for your help tom makes sense now, was hoping for a way to add without going through apps and phones etc.

Thanks again
Dan

That is the correct way to do it. You have to get the bulb on your network before you can see it with HA. FYI you don’t have to add the bulb to the Lifx cloud. It can be safely removed from this if you did, and you will still have control via HA.

Apologies for bumping this thread after so long but I can’t find the answer I’m looking for.

Referring to your comment above, how do you add a device to the network without adding to the cloud? Also, if already added to the cloud, how can it be removed whilst still keeping it in HA?

Sorry for my ignorance but I’ve just started out with HA and I’m still learning.

Use the Lifx app to add the light to your wifi network. It’s ages since I’ve done it but from memory it goes something like this:

  1. connect your phone to the wifi network you want to add the light to
  2. start the app and choose add a light.
  3. follow the instructions, (go back to your wifi settings and add the light, then go back to the app)
  4. Skip the add to cloud step.
  5. check home assistant for the discovered light. Can take up to 5 minutes. Add it.
  6. Done. Connected to wifi and HA locally, no cloud.

Go the the Lifx app, select your light, go to settings for that light, somewhere there you can remove it from the cloud. This will not affect HA.

1 Like

Excellent. Thanks for your help, Tom.

1 Like