Beginners question: which zigbee coordinator in combination with hue pro

Hue pro installed. HA installed on Synology via VMM. I want to add Zigbee devices that are not compatible with the Hue, but can be used with another Zigbee coordinator (SMlight SLZB …) . Which Zigbee coordinator is best to use (usb or network controlled) in this configuration and how can both coordinators work together? Thanks in advance for your information.

I don’t have a dongle recommendation, but the Hue hub and the Zigbee dongle you use for non-Hue devices aren’t going to “work together.” You will have two separate Zigbee networks. In most cases, you’ll want to take care to make sure they’re running on distinct channels.

The “best” would be to ditch the Hue hub and pair everything to a single coordinator, to keep everything in one network and not have two competing ones.

If you must keep the Hue hub and run this on a NAS I would look into the ethernet based coordinators from smlight for example.

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Not really. There are good reasons to use the hub, especially if you’ve already paid money for it and have it.

Thanks for the fast reply :grinning:

From the Zigbee point of view, there is no advantage of running two different networks instead of one complete network.

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Sure, but the hub offers functionality that you won’t get if you use Hue devices as generic Zigbee devices. If you care about that functionality, suffering two separate Zigbee networks is a no-brainer.

I know, hence why I wrote “best”.

That’s exactly my point. You said it would be “best” to ditch the hub. That advice isn’t right for most people who’ve paid the premium for Hue devices…

You seem to not understand that I wrote “best” in quotations marks for a reason.

I also stated that if the poster needs to keep the Hue hub (one example could be the motion sensor features) smlight coordinators are a good choice.

That advice is right for most people except those who have paid the premium for the Pro hub. Besides the mentioned network technicalities there are other good reasons to not use the Hue hub too.

Right now, I am using the HUE bridge for all my hue bulbs and have that integrated to Home assistant. All my other ZigBee devices are on home assistant with Zigbee2MQQT on a Sonoff dongle. I set my HUE ZigBee channel to 15, Sonoff to 18 and avoid as much as you can with WIFI interference. I also have 2 Hubitat hubs with various stuffs. No problem here with all the devices.

Are there no Hue alternatives to the devices you want to add?

In a Zigbee network most problems can be traced back to flaky devices, so whether you keep both or switch to Zigbee, you’re inviting trouble.

If Hue works, stick to it.

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