Hello! I just started with home automation. My first device was a TPLink plug and I got that working fine. Now I’ve bought a Phillips Hue E12 candle bulb for the kid’s nightlight and am wanting to automate it. The box indicates that it “requires a Hue Bridge” but I was wondering if this was still the case if using Home Assistant.
Isn’t my Raspberry Pi functioning as a bridge-type device?
my understanding, (happy for someone else here to jump in if incorrect) but the system works better with a Philips bridge, you can get them to work without but you need a Philips dimmer to pair to the device to be able to reset it and get it ready for HA.
We can emulate v1 Philips bridges in HA but this is the reverse to what you need.
Forgot to mention these are also zigbee so you will need a device plugged into your raspberry like a ConBee II to control them.
I use to have a smartthings hub an dmost of the above comes form posts I was reading at the time to get the smarthome hub to work with philips without a hub
how to factory reset you philips hue bulb with dimmer (if they are reset ir change zigbee channel)
I have several hue bulbs and don’t use a hue bridge, but you do need something to run the zigbee network. Some kind of dongle and software such as deconz, zha (built in to HA), or zigbee2mqtt. If you’re only going to use hue (and a few compatible devices), probably easiest to use their hub - I think it gives you some good mobile apps as well.
If you want a more flexible solution for hardware the others support more types of devices.