Philips Hue hub vs non-hub question

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1

I apologise in advance if anything is not quite coherent, I’m home with a cold today. I’m having a problem similar to what is described here: https://community.home-assistant.io/t/how-to-turn-on-2-light-concurrently-without-using-groups
I’m currently using the gen3 bulbs with no hub installed, just a lightgroup in HA. When I turn the group on/off, sometimes one or two bulbs decide not to do anything. They seem to end up settling down if I change the dimming or flip the lights off and on again. The problem is it’s random and every time it’s done it, I’m dead tired and don’t want to dig through logs. This setup worked fine for the last 6 months or so with hue white ambiance bulbs and sengled led bulbs at various times, but I wanted the ability to have color, flash, and transition which (as far as I’m aware) hue color are the only ones that check all of those boxes.

So, to my question, do most folks use the hue hub or do they connect the bulbs straight to HA? Are there any specific advantages of one over the other? I’ve tried searching through the forum for the last couple of days, but have come up short. Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

2

How did you connect the bulbs directly to home assistant without the hub? Do you use a ZigBee USB stick? Otherwise it’s impossible to connect the light without the hub.

3

Oh, yeah, sorry. I’ve got the husbzb-1 connected.

4

As far as I read the native ZHA integration of home assistant doesn’t support creating light groups.
Let’s assume you have 4 bulbs in one group. If you create a light group in home assistant, it will send one request per bulb -> 4 requests, sometimes too much for the ZigBee network (requests get lost/delayed). If you create a group on the ZigBee side, it will send only one request and it works fine.

I use the ConBee stick with DeCONZ to integrate my bulbs into home assistant and I don’t have any delays/errors when turning on/off a group of lights, because DeCONZ supports creating ZigBee light groups. I think ZigBee2MQTT supports this as well. So for me it looks like your only option is to wait until home assistant implements this feature in the native ZHA integration or you buy another stick and change to DeCONZ/ZigBee2MQTT.