IKEA Trådfri bridge ZigBee alternative with Google Home integration?

Third party integrations
#1

I have HA running on a Synology, and integrate successfully with my separate IKEA Trådfri bridge to control some lights and switches. I can also voice control my bulbs using Google Home.

I’d like to use this blueprint to leverage IKEA remotes to do other things, such as play music.

However I understand that for this to work, I need an alternative to the IKEA bridge, so that I can use the ZHA integration instead of the Trådfri integration. Correct?

If yes, can you recommend me a standalone bridge that:

  • will work for the HA ZHA integration including the blueprint
  • will work with my existing IKEA bulbs and switches
  • will integrate with Google Home like the IKEA bridge does

I’d prefer standalone, as I don’t trust Synology to continue to work with USB dongles. Would something like this work?

Thank you!

#2

You’re going to get a lot of thread readers who arrive to say “Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 USB” works well or future Nabu Casa SkyConnect, and then read no USB dongles.

One hard lesson learned is don’t use a WLAN connected Z-Bridge. Really, just don’t. As said in several threads already, the best part of my device was smashing into small pieces with a large hammer! :boom: :hammer:

My sense is that it may be better to look to fix Synology USB support, if at all possible (sorry, no idea - as unhelpful as that is :frowning: ). I’ve not seen any data on the device types ZHA is used with, however the HASS Analytics on integrations shows:

  • 3.1% IKEA TRÅDFRI
  • 17.5% Zigbee Home Automation

There are a few other threads on remote bridges if Synology really can’t be fixed (use the search):

#3

Thank you a bunch for the response, very helpful! As best I can tell, Synology as it exists can be fixed to work with the dongle, but since such dongles are officially unsupported now, I would foresee at best, headaches upon upgrades, and at worst, support simply breaking in minor updates.

If I read you correctly, the Sonoff standalone bridge I linked falls in the category of WLAN connected Z-bridges — the ones to clearly avoid it sounds like. Is that right?

I’ll dive into the archive to read about alternatives. Thanks again.

#4

I found these which look ethernet connected. If you care to look, do either of them seem like they’d work? It sounds like “no” to all of them, since they aren’t listed on the page you linked.

Would the Philips Hue Hub work?

#5

You can not just use any Zigbee gateway you find online, it needs to provide a compatible serial interface for it to work with ZHA.

You can use a CC2652P based wired Zigbee LAN gateway from ZigStar or TubeZB with ZHA, but as mentioned above seriously stay away fel any bridge/gateway that require WiFi. Tunneling a a Zigbee adapter over Wi-Fi is bad, mmmmmkey!

Anyway, I use a Zigbee Coordinator USB adapter to my Intel-x86-64 based Synology NAS where I run Home Assistant OS in a virtual machine in Virtual Machine Manager (Synology VMM).

Tip I got there is to not only a very long USB extaion cable but also make sure to connect the Zigbee dongle via a powered USB 2.0 hub as any USB 3.0 port are know to cause interference with Zigbee unless use it via a USB 2.0 hub. Aslo follow all these tips → Generic best practice tips on improving Zigbee network range and general stability · zigpy/zigpy Wiki · GitHub

#6

Thank you, that’s good knowledge.

By running in a VM (as opposed to Docker) does that reduce the chances of USB support for dongles breaking in a future update? (Presumably since the VM can provide drivers itself?)

#7

You could also buy a Raspberry Pi 3B, a Conbee II USB stick and an USB extension cable. Connect the Raspberry wired to your switch and place it somewhere in your house where there is little interference. This is the deCONZ way.

#8

Presumably I’d need to run HA on the Pi then? Seems like it would be a fairly future proof solution, though I do like the idea of having only 1 server (the synology) running all the time.

#9

I’ve found a solution so far.

The thing is, the IKEA hub + HA integration works fine for what it is, even controlling a couple of Hue bulbs. So the main reason I wanted to migrate to the native ZHA integration was the added openness, which would allow me to use the IKEA 5 button remote as a media playback controller.

But it sounds like the best solution at the moment is the USB dongle route, which would add some headaches in the initial setup, and potentially when Synology updates. Those headaches just to get the remote to work don’t seem worth it at the moment.

(Though if you find a great wired hub that integrates well, I’d still love to hear it.)

Also, I found an old Harmony remote + hub in a drawer, I guess I’ll tinker with that integration and see how valuable a media remote actually is in practice. Thanks for the responses!