That’s largely what I’m also worried about, that and the propensity for companies to suddenly decide that the use of their product now requires a monthly subscription because the world isn’t subscription fatigued enough already. Of course a lot of what we are talking about is purely speculative, but we know there are options.
For me I have found Hue to be hugely reliable, but they are the only smart bulbs I’ve owned (except for as of today when I got a batch of Inovelli bulbs). So long as there are options I will likely still purchase Hue, and I’ve already blocked all internet traffic to and from that Hue hub without any problems so that may be my solution for as long as it can be because I do like the extra features of Hue if I can have them.
To me it’s important to NOT have an account just to setup a device, it’s highly illogical and very stupid (I have a desk lamp that supports homekit, that cannot be configured unless you create an account on their cloud) if the device can work locally it must be used like this.
THEN I could accept an optional cloud account to use it remotely
Their hardware is good, it’s pricey, but works very well. the good thing is that all the light are zigbee so it’s wasy to manage them with a different hub
All good to move to a Zigbee Network and burn the Bridge. How about when you using a Sync Box for entertainment… You cannot remove the bridge, then the sync box won’t work…
Problem number 2. Not only to move all bulbs to a zigbee network but you Sync box is useless then.
Second. I disabled my wifi on my mobile and open the HUE app. Can can control my bulbs from outside of the local network. (I have already an account. Registered when I got my first HUE bulbs)
Maybe everything is a miscommunication that a account is needed when you want control your bulbs outside of your local network?
Actually yes, the bulbs are zigbee, which is a standard, so they can used as you please
for the hub is partially true, before this the device was locally configurable, and is still usable without it’s app, but by using local api.
It’s the app the problem, you don’t own it, the can enforce anything they like on it, and with it, apply restrictions to the devices.
as above it’s partially true, it’s safe to use hue bulbs which follows zigbee standard right now
our software part is ZHA/Z2M+HA
ZHA can do it, did it a month ago to improve stability and it didn’t even require me to re-pair my devices.
I just changed the channel under the config of ZHA, in the network settings there is the option “Channel” with a pencil icon to change it.
It will depend on your devices if and how well they take that change, if not just remove the device and pair it again.
It sucks but as long as Home Assistant does not feature a user friendly app to control the lights there is nothing me or my close circle can do. I can have all my lights in home assistant but it would take me 2 minutes to even find the light in the default dashboard (I don’t know anything about yaml)
I think your hub is still talking to the cloud. To make it local-only you need to block internet access from its IP address, which you do on your router.
Just messaged their twitter account with my dismay over the decision.
Also removed all lighting from my Hue hub and removed the integration. TBH, the only thing I’ll miss at all is the Hue scenes, which are marginally easier to use than HA scenes. Not worth the risk of being forced into a cloud account to use the bulbs.
Overall, I am almost grateful to Hue, though, as this was something I’d been meaning to do for a while, for the sake of consistency, since I have a mix of Hue, Ikea, and other lighting, and now they’ll all be automated the same way. One less connected device to worry about as well.
For folks considering the move, I used both the Hue dimmer technique (Hold On + Off for 12-15 seconds immediately after turning the bulb off and back on, then after the bulb flashes, turn it off and on again to enter pairing mode) and simply removing the bulb from the Hue app. The latter technique is much faster, as the bulb immediately enters pairing mode, and ZHA was able to pick it up almost instantly. I have about a dozen Hue bulbs, two dimmers, and a switchable plug, and was able to get it all migrated (including repairing dashboard references, and adding automations that had been running in Hue) in a couple hours.
Most of the lights in the main living area are turned on at sunset / off at bedtime by automations. Two sets of these lights are tied via automation/blueprint to Hue dimmers, which can turn on/off the group of lights, and make them brighter/dimmer. I’ve also got the long press on the dim up/down tied to individual scenes.
A less-used set of lights is set up with an Ikea 5-way button, with the center button being toggle on/off, and left and right controlling two scenes.
My family mostly uses a tablet dashboard I set up centrally. Each button controls a group of lights for a given room, and the UI makes it easy to either toggle the lights, or set the brightness/color, etc.
emulatedhue has better integration with ha; I really like their feature that auto populates HA areas as rooms in the virtual bridge. Unfortunately, it only supports hue api v1 - so is basically worthless at this point.
Perhaps Signify’s decision will spark more interest in further development of both!
I’m interested in diyhue
so basically is something that emulates the hue bridge so it can be used by the app? in that case the app will still need login even with the emulated bridge right?
I wasn’t specific enough. I’m not really wanting to spend additional money to buy a zigbee stick and then load zha or one of the alternatives.
I’m wondering if home assistant can use the api of the (now blocked from internet access) hue hub to change channels.
For whatever reason I have issues about once a year where bulbs start dropping out and a channel change seems to be the only thing that makes them come back. This is probably somewhat coincidental, but it works.
