How many Hue devices do you have? I noticed delays or missed events only when my ZigBee network grew bigger and more requests were sent to the Hue Bridge.
Iām sitting at 29 devices right now.
Do you see any delays when you turn on/off a lot of bulbs at the same time?
Nope. I even have several lights trigger from my own DIY motion sensors in Home Assistant and havenāt seen any latency between the bulbs.
Okay then thatās fine. I just like the ConBee because you can include so many other devices in your ZigBee network as well, such as the extremly cheap Xiaomi door/window sensors and you donāt need to poll the state from the Hue bridge, but instead get any event pushed to home assistant.
Do you also use Hue Dimmers and motion sensors? Because I had a lot of trouble with these and the Hue bridge connected to home assistant, due to the polling.
I actually wrote a post on the very topic of slow motion sensors in HA. I found a work-around using Node-RED. You can read about it here: https://skylar.tech/faster-hue-motion-events-in-home-assistant-using-node-red/ (I posted it earlier but figured I would again for reference).
Does the ConBee push data directly to Home Assistant or does it have to poll for the data like the bridge? I currently use a 1 second polling rate with Node-RED for my motion sensors and that has been perfect. I could try to reduce it but I havenāt really felt it necessary. I only use outdoor motion sensors from the Hue system (didnāt want to bother with building my own weatherproof battery powered sensors).
I havenāt had any issues with my Hue remotes. I actually wrote a post about using these remotes to trigger any automation within HA/Node-RED:
Iāve been building my own sensors around my house using esp8266 communicating over MQTT instead of buying pre-built sensors (built a garage controller about a month ago with $18 in parts). I have been considering buying some other Zigbee devices recently though (mainly doorlocks) so it may be worth trying it out ConBee. Especially if the data rates are actually faster.
It pushes data to Home Assistant. With the hue bridge I started to get delays on motion and the hue dimmer switch sometimes missed button presses completely. Once I got the ConBee, there was a sale for Xiaomi Door/Window sensors and I bought 15 of them for less than 100 bucks! Hard to beat this price, even with DIY.
Hi
Iām new to HA so bear with me.
I keep getting this error:
Invalid config for [sensor.template]: value is not allowed for dictionary value @ data[āsensorsā][āstue_stuemotionā][ādevice_classā]. Got āmotionā. (See ?, line ?).
The hue bridge is connected to homekit, and I can se the motion sensor working in the app.
The automation is set up.
The error disappears if in /config/sensor.yaml #device_class: motion. also tryed with āmotionā
Any good ideas???
Device class is for binary sensors, not for sensors, put the template code in the binary_sensor: section or create one if you donāt have one yet.
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Thank so much!!! everything is working now
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I am also using Conbee but I can get some weird behaviour when depending on the lux value to turn on a light, are you experiencing the same?
I only have one hue motion sensor and I donāt usr the lux of this one, I (am going to, they didnāt arrive yet) use the Xiaomi Mi Light sensor as I got quite good feedback from other users.
Hi,
Iām new to this and still need to learn alot.
So did you disconect everything from the hue bridge and start all over with the ConBee II or are they still connected to the hue bridge also? I asume they are still connected to the bridge to be able to do upgrades on the hue components?
They are not connected to the Hue bridge anymore. To upgrade firmware you unpair the device from conbee, pair with hue, so the upgrade, unpair and pair again with the conbee.
Yes, I disconnected all my devices from the Hue bridge and paired them with the ConBee II.
Upgrading is an issue, you are spot on there. To upgrade, I need to remove the device from ConBee II, add it to the bridge, do the upgrade and take the device back to ConBee II. A bit of a hassle, but necessary as long as OTA updates for Hue are not fully supported on the ConBee II (as I understand, this is mainly because of Philips not releasing the required firmware data).
However, the gain in functionality beats the slightly cumbersome upgrading path for me.
thereās another way of making Hue sensors more responsive: https://github.com/azogue/fasthue
havent used it myself because I dont need it, but saves you the hassle of switching hubs all the time.
and, if your there, also check https://github.com/azogue/eventsensor which is very nice to have in the toolbox and works flawlessly.
The problem with these solutions is your still polling the Hue hub. If the sensor picks up motion just after polling the Hue bridge, you could be a long way into a room by the time the next polling event occurs. By using Conbee your doing push notifications so itās instant response.
Yes itās a pain to switch back to Hue bridge to do software updates however the last lot of Hue bulbs and sensor updates was early 2019
yes, polling the hub is not what we want, but unfortunately Hue wont push state changes, even after everbody here asked them to change the apiā¦ 
Thing is, I had nothing but issues with the Conbee (2 in my case), and itās rather an unfinished integration/combination I must admit.
The Hue hub is solid as a rock, and never fails to work (standalone). So, if you want to use that, as I do, Fasthue could be an interesting solution. I donāt use it, and have the hub do the work.
Why unfinished?
I switched to the ConBee around 3 years ago and it was one of the best smart home related decisions ever. This way I get push updates from the devices and it letās me use all the Xiaomi ZigBee sensors, no device limits, map of your ZigBee mesh etc.
My ZigBee mesh never let me doqn in the last 3 years.
Did you try other sticks (CC2531 or Nortek) and integrations (ZHA, ZigBee2MQTT) as well?
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@Mariusthvdb when did you last try a Conbee stick? In the last year itās come on leaps and bounds. Itās well polished and definitely a finished product. A bad update did cause me issues once with devices dropping off or not responding. During that time I tried ZHA.
ZHA on the other hand is not a finished product but the devs are still developing that and adding features as time goes on / for me the biggest issue was lack of control as to which zigbee channel to use - it was hard coded when I last tried it earlier this year and was neigh on impossible to change channel. In this day and age with so many 2.4ghz devices deciding your own channel to avoid channel clash is a must have feature, not a could or should have feature