About the device & my reasons for wanting one
I recently purchased one of the reasonably new IKEA Tradfri Shortcut buttons and after looking around online (and on this site) I couldn’t find a complete setup guide for DeCONZ so I thought I’d write one!
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about here is a link to the UK IKEA site – Basically though, they’re a simple ZigBee button. I’ve seen them compared to the Tradfri Dimmer and in terms of height and width they are exactly the same (they use the same wall mount) but it’s not as pronounced and only has the one button! What they do come with, which I thought was pretty cool, are 6 stickers that can sit under a plastic cover on the front of the switch. The three stickers included with mine were a pendant light, a tea mug, a bed and three blank stickers (two of which are covered in tiny dots).
A picture of the button, mounts and stickers:
For me, this Shortcut button is perfect as I have a Shelly 1 hooked up to the lights in my kitchen to allow for two switches in the room without any extra wiring! The lights aren’t dimmable, so I only need a single button to toggle the current state. Originally, I had a Tradfri dimmer and I just had this set up so that no matter if you pressed the on or off button it’d toggle the current light state - This worked but wasn’t user friendly.
The Guide
Enough about the device and my usage of it though, on to setup…
Take the button out of the box & unscrew the back (you’ll need a very small Phillips screwdriver!)
Take the device to where it’ll live (this is so that it attaches to the correct ZigBee router first time)
Open up Phoscon and go to Devices, Switches and then “Add New Switch”
You have to select “Other” from the provided list as the button isn’t listed under IKEA. Phoscon will now search for new switches for three minutes…
Press the link button on the device 4 times (the link button is the one that has an icon of two chain links, it’s next to the battery - See picture above). If you’ve done this right then a red LED will flash/pulsate that can be seen from both the back and front of the device (you can see it in the top right of the device in the below picture).
I personally then pressed the button a few times – This is only due to past experience with some Xiaomi Aqara devices where the device needs to ‘send data’ in order to pair. I have no idea if this is necessary for this button!
At this point, Phoscon will not give you a success screen like you may get when adding bulbs etc. In fact it’ll time out and say “Failed to connect”, however, if you open DeCONZ you should see the device on your spaghetti map.
If it’s there then it’ll also now be in Home Assistant. Mine showed up as “TRADFRI SHORTCUT Button”. I didn’t get the battery level showing straight away in Home Assistant but it eventually showed up (YMMV).
So the button is now connected to DeCONZ and Home Assistant. However, at the time of writing, you cannot easily utilise the button in automations and instead have to set up templates based on DeCONZ events! Luckily though, there are a number of Blueprints that have been created by the community – I used this one.
do you see the battery level of the button? I set up three buttons so far, and one of them shows battery (and only one with an entity ID, the others don’t like what you have written).
For the battery, mine took a little while to come in (ie. it wasn’t there straight away but I checked the next day and it was there).
What do you mean by the same name for all 3 buttons? As in the name of the automation created from the Blueprint? Or the friendly name of the buttons? I assume the latter as your screenshot has all 3 with the same name. You just need to go to Configuration > Devices > (find the device) > (pencil icon to edit) > change the name
EDIT: Looks like hitting reply didn’t work, tagging you @arifroni in case you don’t get the notification
Thanks. after editing from devices, now I can differentiate the buttons.
Today I saw the second button is showing battery percentage. still, the third one is missing. maybe i will have to want another day
Thank you for the tutorial for this E1812 button (adding its reference here to help people find this thread)
I had a hard time pairing mine (couldn’t get any pulsating red lights for some reason)
It did work eventually and the pairing process returned a success message and the button showed up in Phoscon
The pairing was a bit flaky before the button finally showed up in the Phoscon web UI (my screenshot above).
Not sure if I understand your question correctly but do you see the button in HA/Lovelace at least ?
If not, have you tried reloading the integration like I did below in that other thread ?
Mine now show in the Phoscon UI now, I’m not sure if this is due to an update to Phoscon/DeCONZ (I run the add-on) or if they just appeared after a certain amount of time. Do yours show now also?
@JeromeO did yours appear straight away in Phoscon?
Yes, my Zigbee devices appear straight away in the Phoscon web UI after a successful pairing.
It does require a reload in the integration on the HA frontend sometimes though (probably that a restart of HA would force the newly devices to show up as well).
My current Conbee II version :
Version 2.13.04 12/18/2021
Firmware 26660700
Admittedly I am brand new to Home Assistant, so there might be something obvious I’m missing (and apologies in advance!). I’ve tried restarting the deCONZ service and HA itself but no success.
Conbee II version: 2.14.01 06/02/2022
Firmware: 26660700
Good day all,
I’m pretty new to HA. I discovered many options already and my next project is to use the IKEA shortcut button. I want to be able to switch on and off any device connected to HA.
In this post, thank you for the guide, I read that I can connect the IKEA button to a Zigbee hub. I’m new to Zigbee and want to purchase a hub that supports Matter and Thread. I was thinking to order this hub: Matter Smart Home Hub, Thread & Tuya Zigbee 3.0, Control Your Connected Devices → https://a.co/d/53Ex4qv I’m open for feedback and suggestions about the hub.
Then I read about Phoscon and DeCONZ. Does this software come on all Zigbee hubs, or only with certain brands. Can I use any Zigbee hub to connect the IKEA button with?
