Looking at the Phillips hue go as a night light in the bedroom. Ideally sunrise and sunset effects etc.
Do I need a hub to do all that with it or can I emulate it?
Little confused over the whole emulation vs hub thing…
I don’t think any emulator can overcome the lack of a Zigbee radio, so you need some form of hardware, either the Philips Hue hub or a Zigbee USB stick for your Home Assistant server, like the ConBee.
You’ll need a hub. The emulated hue component is one of the ways you can control HASS devices through Alexa of GA. To actually control your light, you’ll need the Phillips Hue hub, however you could also use zigbee2mqtt, which might be a good idea if you’d like to use Zigbee gadgets from different vendors (I use it myself with my Xiaomi buttons and sensors). If not, the Hue hub is a simple and easy-to-use solution.
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So just to clarify I can use zigbee2mqtt without any extra hardware and control Zigbee devices?
get the hub, it is easy to setup once you have one
No, you will always need a device that talks Zigbee. The easiest way is to use the Phillps Hue Hub. The hard way is to build your own with something like:
Thanks all for the feedback. Not running any hue devices yet and might not need to. Just like the portable go.
Might even build something similar to it…
Just need to decide if we want to go down that path or not regards to investing in the hub etc.
I think it’s all about the level of control you’re looking to have…solutions like zigbee2mqtt or Conbee give you more flexibility, otherwise there is no way that a Hue hub you can find online for 30 bucks can be seen as more of an investment than the time and effort needed to make the others work.
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I agree. The Hue hub is a very easy-to-use solution, especially with the automatic pairing through the HASS ui. You also retain app control over your devices, which might matter to you a lot. The main reason for choosing zigbee2mqtt is its compatibility with lights and other devices from many different vendors, including Philips, IKEA, osram, you name it. It involves a bit more work than setting up the Hue hub, especially as you have to flash the sniffer dongle with a custom firmware first. You’ll also need to have an MQTT server set up already. The entire flashing and installing process took me around 25 minutes with zigbee2mqtt, but YMMV. Oh, and the only way you’ll be able to control your lights will be through Home Assistant.