Best way to controll Ikea Trådløs light - cross Ikea/HA/Google

Configuration
1

HI Community

I’m in the process of replacing my lights with ‘smart light’, and have tried to use IKEAs trådløs for my living room.
I have added 4 lamps with ikea bulbs. They work fine with the Ikea remote. I can turn all off, change colors, and the IKEA app works fine… here I can control the lamps individually.

I have integrated the 4 bulbs with HomeAssistant - that works fine - I can turn off, and change each light (color can get out off sync… but the ikea apps fixes this…).
I HA I have created a Group with the four lights, so now there is just one ‘light’ to turn all off and on.
Works fine.
I have Google integration from HA - the Nabu Casa setup, and here it is possible to import my ‘Group’ into Google - works fine, and I can now say to google ‘turn off lights in living room’, and the light is turned off.

This is fine… but now to the problem… When using/mixing these different ways of controlling, some times the four lamps gets out of sync… one of them is being missed, or color/brightness is out of sync…

What is the proper way of configuring a IKEA setup, so it works from HA and Google ?

Or is it just better to go with Wifi bulbs ?

Thanks.

/Joern

2

Hi Joern,

And welcome into the rabbit hole that is home automation. Get ready to spend lots of money.

To answer you questions:
I would put your lights in the same area under Home Assistant. This area will sync to Google Home as a room. By calling your area ‘Living Room’ your lights will appear in the ‘Living Room’ in Google Home. Asking Google to ‘turn off all the lights in the living room’ will then do just that, no need to create a group.
In the Home Assistant interface you can create an ‘Entities Card’ with all your lights. At the top it will show an extra toggle to turn off/on all your lights. Or create scenes to set your lights to specific configurations.

If you still want a group some lights together I would suggest looking at creating a ‘Light Group’. As groups have been deprecated as of version 0.104. However this is more intended for multiple lights in one fixture.

Wifi bulbs wouldn’t change anything regarding your setup. The desynchronising of your lights has probably to do with the Ikea hub as it is not the best.

Cheers,
Daan