Philips Hue Color Bulb and Zigbee through HA limitation

Hardware
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2nd HAOS Noobie question on this forum

My home assistant is running on a Mini-PC ( HAOS) and I will soon receive my Zigbee dongle

For now I am using Alexa to do stuff with my Philips Hue Bulbs ( Echo speakers connect to BULBS using BLuetooth)

MY question :
When I stop using Bluethooth and use :

  • Alexa to speak to Home Assistant
  • HA will be connected to my Philips bulbs using Zigbee

Will most of the stuff related to Philips Hue Color Bulbs still work ?

Light “Green”, Lower the light, light at 50% etc

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I think Zigbee should give you the same level of control over your bulbs as you have with the Hue bridge. There’s a section in the docs about re-setting them so that they can join the new network. (If you have a Hue dimmer switch that’s by far the easiest method.)

You may have to re-think the way you use voice control, however. Each bulb will have to be “exposed” to Alexa in Settings | Voice Assistants and given aliases to fit with the commands you intend to use. I’m not sure whether it will be possible to use generic commands like “Lower the light” - I don’t know whether Alexa can identify which lights are in the same room if you’re using Zigbee. Perhaps someone else can clarify this.

This assumes that you have a Home Assistant Cloud subscription, of course.

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Just unpair them from the current setup and pair them directly to the HA setup once you get your zigbee co-ordinator setup.

For use with Alexa or other voice assistant you want to use with HA just make sure devices and entities with appropriate names are exposed to it for control in the voice settings of HA.

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