Philips HUE Bridge and Sonoff Zigbee Dongle - Parallel Usage

[axl131 (Alex)]

Hi,
I have in my Home Assistant a lot of Hue Bulbs connected via the Philips Hue Bridge.
I recently bought a Zigbee USB Stick from Sonoff which I would like to add as well.

The questions are:

• do I have to remove the Hue Bridge?
• can I use both in parallel - with separate devices connected?
• can I use both in parallel - with same devices connected?

could not find a similar question/thread.
I hava a lot of Hue (and Innr and so on) devices which are connected to the bridge. I do not want to go thru the pairing process again.

any suggestions appreciated.
thanks, alex

[CO_4X4 (Colorado Four Wheeler)]

@axl131

The questions are:

• do I have to remove the Hue Bridge?
• can I use both in parallel - with separate devices connected?
• can I use both in parallel - with same devices connected?

• No, you can keep your Hue bridge
• Yes, you can put some on Hue and some on your dongle
• No, you can’t have them on both

Your Hue stuff is mostly Zigbee, you could move them over if you want (not all Hue devices but most of them are Zigbee).

If you are on a rPi just make sure you get an extension cable for the dongle and have a powered USB hub, you’ll thank me later.

[jchh ((not John))]

Just to add to @CO_4X4’s comments, whilst you can run them separately, it means 2 separate networks rather than a single, stronger one. Make sure you select the correct channels so the 2 networks don’t interfere with themselves and your 2.4G WIFI network.

ZigBee and Wi-Fi Coexistence

[GH2user]

Indeed as mentioned above keep the networks separated and if you have any old Living Colours from Philips make sure to use a ZLL channel. I had good results with HUE bridge on channel 11 and the Conbee stick on 25 but n=1 in this case.
ZLL channels are 11, 15, 20, and 25

But currently switching over to z2m (on channel 11) for the HUE units as well so I won’t need an account at Philips/Signify.

[axl131 (Alex)]

actually thank all of you for the answers.
I will check the channels and check how to configure this in my house, actually I use channel 11 with the HUE Bridge.

is there any preference when it comes to zigbee controlling? should I completely switch to the ZHA on Homeassistant with all my HUE Bulbs?

Actually I am (not 100% new but) more or less new to home automation and home assistant in general - and because of that I am a little bit afraid of complete switching over to a rasperry pi driven system (please dont missunderstand this I love playing around with this SW).

[k8gg]

Start small, maybe one or two room at a time, and see how that works out for you and your situations. And then you can make a call on whether you plan to move everything over, or move back, or keep 2 separate zigbee networks in place.

Maybe in the end you could even do a write up of comparison / experiences regarding HUE bridge vs sonoff+ZHA, for future users on the same boat as you are today.

[jchh ((not John))]

I use Z2M, but it essentially does the same thing as ZHA in this context. Make sure that those 1 or 2 devices you start with are closer to your co-ordinator and maybe best if they are also routers (eg: powered lights rather than battery sensors). This means that as you grow the network (further away from the co-ordinator) the network already has the routers in place to reach those further places.

[yvan.perrenoud]

Hi Alex,

Were you successful? I am in the same situation, but run in significant problems when adding a single hue bulb to my sonoff zigbee network.

I have aqaras, sonoffs mostly.
Thanks
Yvan

[fleskefjes]

It would be easier to help you if you explain what issues you are having. Does the bulb not pair? Have you tried another bulb? How are you putting the bulb into pairing mode? Are you using ZHA or Z2M?

[Hedda]

Consolidating all Zigbee devices on a single Zigbee network is better than using two Zigbee network because Zigbee depends heavily on mesh networking.

Recommend read and try to take insight from this

Migrating from a Philips Hue Bridge to the ZHA (Zigbee Home Automation) integration

Don’t forget that the first post in a community guide is a wiki - feel free to add to it or correct it. This guide was written and tested these versions but should also work similarly with later versions: Home Assistant 2023.8.4 Supervisor 2023.09.2 Operating System 10.5 Frontend 20230911.0 - latest Background Until recently Philips Hue devices have been controlled locally through a bridge, but the company has now started asking users to open a cloud account, which will ultimately hold det…

And more importantly these best practice tips:

Zigbee networks: how to guide for avoiding interference + optimizing using Zigbee Router devices (repeaters/extenders) to get best possible range and coverage

Who is this guide for? I have tried to make this guide to be a comprehensive collection of the most basic yet essential tips with a set of actions and best practice steps that should be applicable to all types of Zigbee setups, regardless of what type of Zigbee adapter/gateway/hub/bridge/devices that you are using, however, it has been written with a point-of-view in mind of Zigbee solutions that use a Zigbee Coordinator adapter locally via USB dongle/stick or remotely using a serial server ove…

[yvan.perrenoud]

Hi everyone,

Thanks already for your support, my apologies for the missing information.
I have gone through both posts, and I have proceeded as described, but to no avail.

My current hue mesh has no connectivity issues whatsoever.
My current Z2M also work very well it has the following
Coordinator: SONOFF ZB Dongle-E latest firmware 7.4.2 ember
Router: Philips Hue Switch (9290024426)
Devices:
2 Aqara Window/Door Sensors ( [MCCGQ11LM])
1 Aqara motion sensor P1 ( [MCCGQ11LM])
6 Sonoff Window/Door Sensors (SNZB-04)
2 EnOcean Green Power FOH (PTM 215 Z)
2 Philips Dimmer ( [MCCGQ11LM])

Now when I start the move, the first device goes very smoothly, (remove from hue and then gets automatically discovered by Z2M), but after that it is impossible to discover any additional one, and after a while, the bulb becomes irresponsive or has a big lag.

HA OS, supervisor and versions all upgraded to the latest.

Thanks
Yvan

[fleskefjes]

What if you try turning off the Hue network, still issues adding to Z2M? You might need to put the bulbs into pairing mode, not always just removing them does that. Try using a dimmer.

[yvan.perrenoud]

Hi,

Well that was the one thing I had not tried, and it seemed to have done the trick, well there are probably also many other things that I had not tried, thanks a million. I will run with just those two for a couple of hours and see how that goes. I have already noticed that somehow the maps shown in Z2M doesn’t seem stable yet, that dashed lines green and blue come and go, and I am receiving more Received network/route error ROUTE_ERROR_MANY_TO_ONE_ROUTE_FAILURE for than before.
Will keep you posted, but already glad for any other thoughts.

Yvan

[fleskefjes]

In general, adding more routers to your network will make it more resilient.

[yvan.perrenoud]

All going really well, added successfully 17 hue lights, I have 4 left that keep returning: Interview failed for '0x0017880100ba5e4c with error 'Error: Interview failed because can not get node descriptor ('0x0017880100ba5e4c')'
Some of them are probably the farthest away, but some are closer than others that connected successfully.
Is it worthwhile to keep adding them for longer, with the optics that the mesh improves over usage (to a certain extent)?
Thanks

[yvan.perrenoud]

It seems that the devices that I struggle with are the first generation of light bulbs, which seem to need to be much closer to the controller than the others.
Hardware 100b-100 with current firmware: 67.101.2.