I think that addon is no longer maintained but is now this. (I have no experience with either)
Can you use the entertainment part to use with sync box?
Which probably easily outperforms the proprietary hue stuff in every aspect.
Friend “cloned” his realtime video output on a esphome RGB matrix with Hyperion over WiFi - very impressive what’s possible on low end hardware when combined with powerful FOSS! (Same goes for HA!)
I agree, in theory… but the hue product line’s performance and quality are tough to beat.
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So, everyone needs to make that decision for themselves on what they want/need.
Privacy? Ease of use? Can you get both? Maybe. But, the setup might be more. Is that in your wheelhouse?
I am always leaning towards privacy, local control, no cloud services, etc. But, again, it is up to each individual to decide.
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Paulmann has a lot of really nice looking “hue compatible” bulbs.
They might be a good option for people already invested in hue, but don’t want to support Signify.
They don’t distribute outside Europe though.
Really want to import one of these, but Paulmann says they are 220v only.
Lies! I suspect there’s a 110/220 switcher powering the whole bulb, I might just import one anyway and find out.
While some people only go for the good looks (not sure when on or off…) but I’m mainly astonished how low the light output of a 6.3W bulb can be… as low as 470lm.
Not sure if it is the rgb part but I own led bulbs that output the same amount of lumens at around half the watts.
Haha, you got me, I want these for a fixture where the bulbs are exposed. Only zigbee/rbgcct/filament bulbs I can find.
I know the efficiency of some hue bulbs isn’t great either. California won’t let them sell the Rgb gu10’s!
(So I have to sneak them in from AZ, lol)
maybe a off-topic question: Can you connect those Paulmann Zigbee bulbs and led strips to the Philips Hue Hub?
I wouldn’t say HomeKit could never go away: it could be excluded from a future revision of the Hue hub.
The MyQ Home Bridge Hub (with homekit) was a thing that existed and then Chamberlain claimed that nobody used it so it was discontinued. Maybe that’s true or maybe they are just bent on making sure everyone only uses their walled garden, either way HomeKit support was lost.
According to hueblog, yes. Apparently they work quite well and even match the color temperature.
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If like me you’ve just ditched the Hue hub but kept the bulbs and switches you might find the blueprint I just uploaded useful, it mimics, as far as I can, the behaviour of the switches when attached to the hub by cycling around scenes within a given area (as well as some things the hub didn’t do like double and triple click actions for the switch buttons). There aren’t any of the fancier things like dynamic scenes or entertainment areas, but I never used those in the first place, and because it’s now cycling between HA scenes rather than hue ones I can include my tasmota smart plugs in the scenes to turn on other non-smart lights.
Blueprint is at Switch scenes using Hue Dimmer Switch attached directly to ZHA, hopefully it’s useful to people who are not me 
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Well, I’ve switched away from ZHA (with ZBDongle-E) again. After almost a week of fiddling and trying to get it stable it just wouldn’t stay stable. Every few hours it would crash with no obvious culprit to point to.
Have now moved everything to Z2M (with ZBDongle-P) and put some more effort into setting up and optimizing Z2M and it seems to be rock solid now. Let’s see if it will be stable for at least a week without reboots…
Also exchanged the USB3 extension cable I had with a USB2 extension cable for the Zigbee dongle and it makes a positive difference in the LQI/signal quality.
Pretty sure that a USB2 extension cable is recommended, not USB3. I would suspect that this was your original problem (noise) and that zha would be more stable too.
Yeah, I haven’t tested it with ZHA again. As for some devices Z2M has a more complete implementation anyway so I am going to stick to Z2M for now.
Just posted it here for anyone else trying to move away from the Hue Hub.
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I think you need to check the box that says “I understand all the above” for the delete button to be available.
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Indeed - I didn’t see the checkbox at first (very faint). Now successfully deleted. Bye, bye Hue (and Signify)
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Article from NU.NL what Philips tells about requiring a account:
"Heb je verlichting van Philips Hue? Dan is het je mogelijk opgevallen dat je wordt uitgenodigd om een account aan te maken. Maar vrijblijvend is het niet. Binnenkort heb je dat account nodig om je verlichting te bedienen.
Nu kun je je Philips Hue-verlichting nog zonder een account bedienen via de Hue-app. Maar om het systeem beter te beveiligen, gaat verlichtingsfabrikant Signify alle gebruikers vragen om een Hue-account aan te maken, laat het bedrijf aan NU.nl weten.
Er is nu sprake van een overgangsfase. Mensen zonder Hue-account kunnen daardoor hun verlichting zonder account bedienen zoals ze gewend zijn. Maar ze worden uitgenodigd om een account aan te maken. Nieuwe gebruikers krijgen tijdens het instellen de optie om zich te registreren.
“Tot nu toe werd de eigenaar van het Hue-systeem geïdentificeerd op basis van de nabijheid van een Philips Hue-apparaat. Bijvoorbeeld door hem of haar tijdens de installatie op de knop van de Bridge te laten drukken”, legt woordvoerder Dominique Zaman uit. “Wij zien echter de noodzaak om dit proces veiliger te maken.”
Daarom wordt het binnenkort verplicht om een account aan te maken, vervolgt Zaman. “Daarmee kunnen we de eigenaar van het Hue-systeem op een veilige en betrouwbare manier identificeren.”
Signify belooft dat niemand voor verrassingen komt te staan
Wanneer het verplicht wordt om een account te hebben, kan Signify nog niet zeggen. Maar gebruikers hoeven volgens Zaman niet bang te zijn dat ze hun verlichting thuis plots niet meer kunnen bedienen als ze bijvoorbeeld op vakantie zijn. De verandering zal volgens de woordvoerder niet van de ene op de andere dag ingaan.
De verlichtingsfabrikant belooft Hue-gebruikers stapsgewijs te informeren, zodat niemand voor verrassingen komt te staan. Ook nadat gebruikers een Hue-account hebben aangemaakt, blijft de app lokaal communiceren met de Bridge of een bluetoothlamp. Signify is niet van plan om deze offline modus te verwijderen, onderstreept Zaman.
Hue-accounts maken het volgens haar mogelijk om in de toekomst nieuwe functionaliteit toe te voegen aan Hue-systemen. Zo werkt Signify aan een optie waarmee je andere gebruikers op basis van hun Hue-account toegang kunt geven tot je Hue-systeem."
They say it will be required in near future. Toake system more secure. Also the say the local use of communication (offline modus) will stay in the bridge. No plans to remove that.