Use Ikea Trådfri Dimmer in Home Assistant?

Hi,

I’m thinking of purchasing Ikea Trådfri gateway and bulbs for my home to integrate with Home Assistant. I would also love to use the Trådfri Dimmer, but instead of using it with the bulbs I would like to use it with Home Assistant. To press it and play music and turn it to turn volume up and down.
Is it possible to integrate this dimmer?

I read somewhere that HA doesn’t pull Ikea Trådfri state etc in real time, that there is a delay. Is this true? And is this going to be fixed?

One other thing. “Please make sure you have autoconf installed” What does this mean? I have Home Assistant installed in a Docker container, which means if I install things to the container it will be gone next time HA is updated and a new container is created? Is there a work around?

Please help me out, thank you!

You could go with an alternative zigbee stick supported by Home Assistant that exposes the remote directly to hass.

Check this one out as one possible solution https://home-assistant.io/components/zha/

Can I use this instead of the Ikea gateway for the lights too? Which is the best zigbee controller which has a decent price and full support?

Of course! It is all the same protocol.

Search the forums, there are some good discussions about what zigbee stick to choose.

I found out that Conbee is a popular alternative that seems to work well with HA.
But I need to know a few things. From what I understand you have to install Deconz to use Conbee. Do this have to be installed inside of my docker container which runs Home Assistant, or can I install this on the main server, and then add the USB-path to the container for access to the usb stick?

Next thing, I read somewhere that you have to use NodeRed to get updates from the lights quickly, is this true? Without it it would take 30 seconds before getting a response?

Would love to know more before I pull the trigger.

Deconz is more or less a webserver. It only needs to be run on the same machine that has the conbee /raspbee.

I’m working on a component for deconz that will give direct integration to HASS without any need for node red as part of integration.

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Okey, great! That will make it easier for me. Do you know if it is possible to select which port Deconz run on? As I have multiple webservers running, and the standard port 80 + 443 is populated.

Fantastic, how far away in the future will that be? I’m looking for as much ease of setup as possible, that means if something fails it is easier to locate it. So I’ll hold of until you release this I think!

We’re testing the last changes and then it goes up for integration review. Hoping nothing major is needed so I aim for next release

Yes you can configure both http port and websocket

You can check it out here https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant/pull/10321

Fantastic! Looks like I might be buying a Conbee soon!

By the way, is it possible to install Deconz to docker? Found two images:
https://hub.docker.com/r/smartparking/deconz/
https://hub.docker.com/r/tentacledock/docker-deconz/

Don’t know what they mean with “Intel Docker Container” though.

I use it on a Debian Linux server running x64, so I haven’t got a RPi, so which should I run?

People seem to have issues with deconz communicating with the gateway when in docker.

There are other zigbee sticks that don’t need the extra software gateway just so you know.

Okey, that’s not good.

Can you name any good?

And why is everyone using Conbee when it needs more software? Is there any advantages to this?


I don’t know if it’s any good but it’s said to work with hass

How does the connection part work with this?
With Conbee you add lights and stuff via Deconz. How does it work with the one you linked?

Check the zha component

Sounds good too, but I really can’t understand if there are any pros or cons to use the ZHA component with a HUSBZB-1 USB stick instead of the Conbee. To me that seems like a more complete solution than Conbee, as you get Z-Wave for free too?
By the way, do HUSBZB-1 and Conbee support the same Zigbee protocols, like Zigbee Pro?

Please tell me what you believe is the best solution, as I cannot figure out the pros and cons!

EDIT: By the way, is there any difference in frequencies, or does these Zigbee/Z-wave work as good in Europe as in US? I live in Europe, and I plan to use this Zigbee controller with Ikea Trådfri lights and Xiaomi sensors (like door sensor, humudity sensor, temp sensors etc).

Zwave have different frequencies in different parts of the world. So if you’re in Europe it’s probably not compatible with devices you have easy access to.

Well if you choose a device that directly supports hass you have one less software you need to host. But I can’t say anything about specific differences in protocol and device support. There are some threads on the forum as I said earlier. I don’t want to say that conbee is the best one since I honestly don’t know.

I chose conbee because it was easily available to buy.

If it will be easy to install Deconz to Docker I think I will go with that. As you said, this is the only thing easily available here in Europe, or Sweden to be exact.

To get back to my original question, do you think the Ikea Trådfri Dimmer will work with Home Assistant? From what I understand there is no button, you turn it on by twisting it fast, and dim by twisting it at normal speed, and turn off by twisting it fast the other way.
Would Home Assistant be able to pickup these different states? To turn on and off, and change volume by twisting?

That’s one of the remotes I’ve used during development of the deConz component.

A guy in the big deconz thread said that he’d be doing a docker image for deconz

Are you referring to this: deConz / RaspBee integration

I’m not sure if Raspberry Pi docker images work for my server. I have a Debian server with amd64 (normal Intel processor). From what I heard RPi are ARM-based images?