Hi there, first topic here, awesome community you all have and one of the best software projects I’ve ever seen, kudos!
I’ve been considering buying Tradfri bulbs on account of their cost vs. Hue bulbs and have read in the past of general instability with the IKEA gateway.
Thus, would I be better off using them strictly with the Hue gateway (which I already own) or should I also get the IKEA gateway?
I’m interested in rock-solid stability, which I have had so far with both my Hue bulbs and my Vera-connected zwave smart plugs, don’t want to add something to the mix which might require periodic reboots & stuff.
For better interoperability with different manufacturers of zigbee devices I’d recommend you to go with a third party bridge like deconz or zigbee2mqtt.
I’ve run deconz for several months now and so far have been stable. I previously ran the Hue bridge but got annoyed by all its limitations.
So you’re suggesting a USB stick with Zigbee support (like the Conbee one) and software like deconz or zigbe2mqtt?
When you ran the Hue bridge, what exactly annoyed you? At the moment I can’t say I feel limited by it and if I could preserve its current features and stability with Tradfri bulbs (I only heard that the Tradfri bulbs don’t show up in Homekit, not a big deal yet for me), that would be fine.
Well, two things mainly where annoying with Hue bridge for me
No real time notifications for sensors or states of lights, no possibility to integrate remotes and other sensors that you want instant trigger from when doing automations in Home assistant.
Doubtful behavior from Philips in supporting other manufacturers, they’ve been on and off with supporting 3rd party hardware. They even disabled support all together without any advance notification to end users. Also on the point of Homekit, there is no reason for Philips for blocking other lights from being available in Homekit, another dubious behavior from them.
Also using Tradfri system.
Would guess the best option is the Tradfri Gateway, as it allows you to make firmware updates, which you can with the other both options.
Also i was (or still am) trying to get all the things to work with third party zigbee adapter (from dresden electronics) and it’s like … not working like i want it to.
The configuration is pretty much hard work, with a lot tutorials reading and half working workarounds, and as you mention to pair the devices, the connection is getting lost every few minutes and you still can’t do more with it, than you can with the Tradfri gateway at all.
Regarding not being able to do more with Trådfri than with Deconz. That is true, but there are some convenient differentiators like not needing all lights to be assigned to a remote that is good to have.
Also, I’ve never used the Trådfri gateway myself so I don’t have all details surrounding it.
@renegade2k , so with the Tradfri gateway your lighting has been stable?
At the moment all I really want would be:
stable system, no lights dropping out of Home Assistant’s reach
the possibility of mixing/matching lights across Hue/ZWave/Tradfri for certain scripts & automations
viewing of real-time individual light status in the HA interface
@Robban, you say that point 3 would be a problem if I attach Tradfri lights to a Hue gateway? What about the other 2 points?
Nice to have extras would be:
Being able to control any (including Tradfri) lights with the Hue dimmer (I’m pretty sure that would work, the dimmer works fine on my ZWave plugs)
Being able to control any (including Hue) lights with the Tradfri dimmer - this I think is not yet possible if I don’t also get the Tradfri gateway, I read that with the Hue gateway you can only pair one Tradfri bulb to a Tradfri dimmer (direct connection strictly between them)
So, what could cover both the basics and the nice to have extras? I think it’s very unlikely that I will want to do more than what I wrote above with lighting, so if the Tradfri gateway (or even better, just the Hue gateway I already have) would be enough, than I’d rather not yet jump into USB Zigbee adapters.
In any case, thanks for all the info provided already!
@Robban: they also already fixed adding lights only into a group with remote.
You need just one remote to pair a light with the gateway. Once paired, you may move lights and remotes to several idfferent groups, just as you want. Including groups with only remotes (which makes no sense ^^) and only lights, which you also can only control by app then (or by HA), as you got no assigned remote.
Also with the last update you are able to move devices across groups without having to pair them again.
Just one more aspect, you say Hue polls with a timer of ~10 seconds, is that something it does just with non-Hue lights or also with Hue lights? I ask because with my Hue lights I never noticed a significant delay between switching off a light and seeing its status updated…or are you referring strictly to situations where I don’t use a manual switch to change the light’s status, like some automation that runs in the background and does something to the light?
It is the component in home assistant that polls Hue every 10 seconds.
So it is actually only when reading states that it polls every 10 seconds. So I you where to have automations that trigger based on your light going on, and you have turned the light on with a remote, then it would take up to 10 seconds for the automation to trigger.
as always „better“ depends. one advantage of using tradfri bulbs with the tradfri gateway is that the homeassistant integration gets you instant updates. i also like the fact that you can use tradfri bulbs with traditional switches, that cut the power to the bulb. after turning them on again, they turn on with the same (white) color and brightness as before. don’t know if that works with tradfri-lights connected to the hue hub.
i also have the feeling that the radfri integration to HA is more stable than the hue integration. after the most recenent overhaul of the hue component, i regurlarly get messages in the logbook, that a hue bulb became unavailable. there seem to be many disconnects happping. the tradfri integration seems to be more flawless in that regard.
small disantvantage for tradfri: if lights really get unavailable (because they were turned off by a traditional switch), the tradfri gateway does not immediatly report that. you’ll need to turn the light off or an, to make the gateway realize a bulb is missing.
i’d also recommend the IKEA lights, but it really depends on what you value most. hue bulbs have better color management (i think) and can be dimmed down much further than tradfri bulbs.but the most important advantages of the tradfri bulbs is that they remember their state, are bit cheaper and really well integrated into HA.
The light keeping its brightness after power off is a firmware thing, Philips have stated that they will allow this in the future. So it has nothing to do with which gateway you’re using.
If the light is unavailable it is a representation of its visibility in the zigbee mesh, still nothing to do with the gateway.
Having the light represented properly with available/unavailable is a personal taste thing. It might signal issues with the mesh if you can see light intermittently go unavailable.
I wouldn’t recommend Ikea lights, my experience so far is that Hue firmware is much more stable and dependable than Ikea. Although, they’re making great improvements and the difference is shrinking and will probably be gone within a year or so.
At the moment, at least where I live, the price difference is quite large, 10 EUR vs. 22 EUR for a white bulb and 32 vs. 60 for color ones (and in the case of the color one I also get a dimmer included for the 32 EUR).
When you say that the Hue firmware is much more stable and dependable, are you referring to the bulbs themselves? What sort of instability issues have you had with the Tradfri bulbs?
Oh, I see, so it was mostly issues with (more or less) one-time activities like adding/resetting?
I did see in the setup guides that initial pairing of Tradfri to Hue is quite a pain in the ass, but I can live with that as long as day-to-day operation is OK, major infrastructure changes for me are about once a year
I’m not online everyday there.