So, I’ve been in the market for a decent wireless outdoor camera that I can connect to Home Assistant locally. I’ve been relying on a Logitech Circle camera to fulfill this for a bit, but the spot in which it’s mounted has terrible reception and the lifx bulb sitting next to it struggles as well. As a result, I went shopping around and found offerings from Eve, Philips Hue, and future offerings from Aqara. Since Aqara’s offerings aren’t here yet and Hue’s cameras were discounted pretty heavily for a while, I decided to pick of them up. It says Zigbee certified right on the side and figured it’d pair with my existing ZHA setup. However, it doesn’t seem like camera wants to pair when I put it into setup mode. I’ve seen some chatter about how it’s not the “correct” Zigbee certification, but given how well my other Hue products have been able to make their way into the ecosystem, I’ve been operating under the assumption things have changed in recent times? Am I mistaken or has anyone had any luck pairing Philips Hue’s camera to Home Assistant? Any feedback would be appreciated. Thank you!
FYI, there is existing discussion about Zigbee Direct Specification and Philips Hue Secure camera here:
Anyway, there is no current Zigbee specifications that contains cameras, so not, the camera part is not Zigbee, only the light (floodlight part on that camera product that uses Zigbee, (that camera part uses some propritory IP-based protocol over WiFi and has Bluetooth commisioning that has notthing to do with Zigbee). See ZHA Device Handlers and zigbee-herdsman converter (Zigbee2MQTT) discussions about just the Zigbee part here:
and here:
Note the commends there seem to indicate that the Zigbee (light) part uses the Zigbee Direct Specification Version 1.0 and that is not yet support zigpy (ZHA) or zigbee-herdsman (Zigbee2MQTT). See:
and
So in regards to the camera part there is no one to blame but Philips for making customers believe that even the camera part is using Zigbee and not being a propriatory Philips Hue implemtation that is combined with a Zigbee Direct solution where the Zigbee part will only ever be able to control the light and not the camera (as making it clear that “Zigbee Direct” is not the same as the Zigbee specifications that other Zigbee gateways support).