Conbee only or combination with hue and Tradfri bridges?

Hardware
1

Hey,

I wanted to reduce the amount of local pull I have on my network and i would like to have more reliable instant reaction when using dimmers/switch’s so i ordered a conbee and a raspberry pi to see if that works.

While waiting for it to arrive i wonder if it makes sense to just drop my hue bridge or it makes to keep the lights on the hue bridge and just have the switches and sensors on conbee ? That way i can still use hue and family apps to control the lights.

i also got a (still wrapped) tradfri bridge as i just installed 20 E14 and GU10 bulbs - haven’t yet figured out which bridge it would make sense to put them on.

What have you guys done ? Put all in one bridge or some combination making homeassistant the master of getting them to speak together ?

2

Hi,

I started right away with a Pi, a ConBee stick and the deconz software. For me it works fine. Up to know I have three Milliskin spots and a E27 bulb from Philips, all controlled by Busch Jaeger ZigBee Light Link eqiupment and of course Home Assistant. So far it works fine for me. I don’t need any other bridge.
A friend of mine is also using deconz running an a Pi. He controls both: Philips and Ikea lights. He is also satisfied with this solution.

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3

I’ve migrated everything to deCONZ. Multiple reasons.

  1. Fewer gateways, also fewer extra hardware and one mesh for all devices
  2. Integration between manufacturers better than most other implementations.
  3. Realtime events on remotes and sensors for better automations
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4

yeah, #3 is my main driver to get the conbee.

only real reason i’m hesitant to kill the hue bridge is that I do actually use it for two things:

  1. setup wake up light alarms (the time changes occasionally and the app is the fastest way I know to change that)

  2. my kids love when I use the hue disco app to have the kitchen lights rock out in color to the beat of the music.

I assume neither of the above is feasible with conbee “owning” the lights ?
(I do plan to move all my switches and sensors to conbee as I never if rarely adjust those via the hue app(s))

5

Deconz api is based on hue. So at lest some apps should work with deconz just as with hue. I don’t know how well. I once paired the hue app with deconz as well

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6

Interesting! I’ll try pair one bulb to see if the hue apps sees it and can manipulate. That would be the best of all worlds :slight_smile:

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7

My experience with deconz has mainly been positive.

I have some hue lights, xiaomi door and window sensors and ikea trådfri lights.

My primary reason for deconz was to have only one zigbee hub and mesh and to avoid some Chinese sniffing through the xiaomi hub (reasonably or not). Furthermore to use hue dimmers and sensors as a part of my HASS setup.

Most of the time it works fine, hue works best and seldom comes unavailable while the xiaomi is a little more unstable. Trådfri is in between but closer to hue.

If I should do it all over I would choose deconz again.

8

People are also reporting some good stability improvements with the latest firmware for conbee :+1:

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9

just got conbe up and running - added some lights and switches all good.

I havent though found any way to pair any of my hue apps with it - did you do anything special ? (I’ve tried manually typing in ip but no luck)

10

Hmm. How are you running deconz? Through a container? You might need to run it in host mode for discovery to work

11

Running on hass.io.

12

note, I think i’m going to run conbee on a separate raspberry pi - seems it prefers to have more native access plus docs says to disable bluetooth and I need that part for other things :wink:

13

You don’t need to disable anything if you’re using the conbee. And it works perfectly fine in a container ;). But you can potentially use the full desktop version of deconz if you run it on a separate Pi, which has its advantages

14

Well, any ideas on how to get apps to pair with the conbee then ? :slight_smile:

Also having the issue that motion activation lights never seem to trigger so I ended up doing all that in home assistant instead.

15

Hi there, digging this up from the grave as I could not find any better…

I have theConBee II, a Hue bridge (V2) and some Hue bulbs and switchs.

I was wondering if there was a way to have the ConBee join the network from the Hue bridge ? The idea would be to still be able to use the Hue app (GF loves it + hue firmware updates) but also be able to add some sensors (like Xiaomi Aqara motion / door) and avoiding to have 2 separated network, so all my bulbs can be relays for the sensors.

Or maybe the opposite, have the Hue hub join the ConBee network ?
Or I could give emulated hue a shot but not sure it would behave as good as the bridge…

Any ideas ?
Cheers !

16

No this is not possible. It’s one gateway per network. And if you want Xiaomi on that one network hue is not the way.

17

Thanks, figured that out :slight_smile:
What I was wondering is if I would be able to have my ConBee join the existing Hue network as a “client” (router ?) ?

18

No. That’s not possible

19

Ah, that’s sad… Thanks a lot for your answers though… :slight_smile:

20

I think you’re asking the wrong question.
No, you can’t have a bridge joining another bridge. But since you already have a ConBee, you could pair all your devices on your ConBee.

As for the Hue App for the GF, you can an emulated Hue hub on Home-assistance and everything should work fine.

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