How to use Zigbee bulbs in HA, with Alexa too

Configuration
1

I have a number of Zigbee bulbs which work great in HA.

How can I use Alexa to operate these bulbs, set scenes etc?
These particular ones are going in a bathroom, which I am installing an Alexa in as well.
I want the family to be able to set a scene, for example when taking a relaxing bath etc.

2

You’ll need to set up some way for the Alexa app to communicate with HA.

The easiest way is to use a Nabu Casa Cloud account. But that is a paid service. Right now I believe it is $6.99USD /month. It’s what I (and it seems most people) use right now.

You can try to take the free route and set up your own Alexa integration but it’s way harder (but not impossible). Just look in the integrations section of the HA documentation for “Amazon Alexa” and the instructions are there. I haven’t tried to use that so I don’t know how well it works.

3

Theoretically the bulb may be controlled from Alexa directly, will check out which models need to be used (with built in Zigbee)

4

Yeah you can control the bulbs thru alexa directly as long as your alexa devices have a zigbee hub built-in.

but that will prevent you from controlling the bulbs with home assistant. HA will not be able to know about any bulbs you have paired directly to your alexa devices.

5

Emulated Hue from the Components listing. You build it in your configuration.yaml file like this:

#######################################
# Amazon Echo to emulated phillips hue
#-|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
emulated_hue:
  listen_port: 80
  expose_by_default: false
  entities:
    switch.carport_floodlights_switch:
      hidden: false
      name: "Floodlights"
    switch.garage_powerstrip_switch_3:
      hidden: false
      name: "mower"
    switch.garage_powerstrip_switch_4:
      hidden: false
      name: "trimmer"

    light.pantry_ceiling_light:
      hidden: false
      name: "Pantry Light"
    light.bedroom_light:
      hidden: false
      name: "Bedroom Light"

You can go global entries like all lights but I highly discourage that… it will make a really slow responding, difficult to maintain… mess. I advise taking the time to make individual entries.

6

Breaking News!.. actually, about 6 months old now. Emulated Hue is broke. If you installed it before July 2025 yer still good. If you made any changes since then… yer toast.

7

Hi,

This is not correct. If you make any changes to the emulated Hue config, you have to delete all emulated Hue devices in the Alexa app and clear the cache and history of the Alexa app. Re-login and setup the Alexa app. Then search for new “Others” devices and the Alexa app will find all of the entities from the emulated hue config. Did this 3 or 4 times last 2 months.

8

https://github.com/home-assistant/core/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+label%3A%22integration%3A+emulated_hue%22

9

I have just ordered a couple of the Wi-Fi version of the bulbs, to see if this is an easier option. They are compatible with Alexa and should also be able to be integrated into HA.

I assume that Zigbee devices can only be paired with 1 controller? So HA OR Alexa?

10

Emulated Hue is back working again. Since then, I have installed the Matter Controller on HA and started the transition of my 5 year old zigbee bulbs to Matter bulbs as they have started aging out. I’ve found the Matter bulbs and switches are cheaper, faster and can talk to; HA and Alexa and Google just fine right out of the box (Emulated Hue still works with the matter devices also).
So now, with a rather robust Wifi mesh at home, I have determined that zigbee is obsolete and I am having no issues with my 90+ matter devices running on my wifi mesh.