Why is this so hard for me? (Zigbee knob to control lights with dimming)

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Edit / resolution: I was able to use the great new blueprint shared in this comment by amazing community user @jgunny to accomplish what I wanted to do. Check it out if you’re having similar challenges!

Original post:

I’m not a total newcomer to Home Assistant, but when I need to do something new, I often realize that I really know nothing about how to use the platform; this is one of those times.

Background Info

What I’m trying to do: I’d like to use a ‘smart knob’ to control a lighting group. Ideally, I’d like to be able to rotate it to turn the brightness of the group up or down and click it to toggle the group on or off.

What I’m working with: Nabu Casa Yellow with HAOS 16.3 (core currently on 2025.10.0, FWIW). Zigbee controller: Nabu Casa SkyConnect Zigbee integration: ZHA (with 26 devices currently connected and seemingly working well).

About my hardware knob device: it’s a Tuya-compatible Zigbee “Smart Knob Dimmer” that shows up as “TS004F by _TZ3000_402vrq2i” … I bought it on AliExpress.

About the lights that I’d like to control: It’s a lighting group of three lights (one a dumb light with an on/off switch, one a Hue bulb, and one Govee RGB lamp) that I created using the Helpers UI. The group functions well when controlled via software (Home Assistant) and automations, etc.

What I’ve done so far: added the knob via the ZHA ‘Add device’ UI and confirmed that it’s visible and that HA is picking up signals from it.

The problem

Now that I’ve added the button, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get it to control the lighting group - on/off toggle or brightness!

First issue: using the Automations UI, the right triggers are not surfaced - the options when I select ‘Device’ trigger are “turn on”, “turn off”, “dim up”, and “dim down” (plus some definitely unrelated options like firmware update triggers). “Turn on” and “turn off” appear not to be recognized - automations using them never trigger, even when I try clicking, double clicking, long pressing, etc. “dim up” and “dim down” are recognized. When I look at the Activity log on the device page for the knob, clicking it registers activity, but I don’t know how to use that activity as an automation trigger.

Second issue: Even if I could figure out how to capture the right triggers, I don’t know how to control the brightness of the lights group using the Automations UI. The only options for light actions (again, in the Automations UI, at least) are “turn off”, “turn on”, and “toggle”.

So, I can get the knob to toggle the lights when I twist it, but that’s not nearly what I was hoping for … !

I haven’t found any appropriate blueprints for this, and I have no idea how to write my own (especially how to capture the right triggers, etc). Can anyone offer suggestions for where to look or even where to start? That is, if you can just tell me that this is definitely a blueprint issue, or if I should be writing custom YAML automations, or whatever, that will point me in the right direction.

Thank you so much, as always, community members, and sorry for the long (and dumb) post!

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This one? [Resume] TS004F - Smart Knob ZigBee2MQTT & ZHA

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Thanks so much for replying with that good suggestion, and sorry for my delay in replying. I should’ve said in my original post (though I already feared that it was too long) that I’d tried that and other similar blueprints from the community and had trouble with all of them.

The issue with that one seems to be, at least, that, as others in that thread have reported, I need to remove or edit one or more filters (e.g. the manufacturer filter). I think that part of why it may not work for me is that my knob, while reporting itself as the same device, is actually different (I guess perhaps many such devices sold on Aliexpress may report as the same device, perhaps because they use some of the same controllers or something - not sure). It definitely looks completely different than the one in the photo in the thread for that blueprint. And, though this is a minor thing, the code for the blueprint being commented in a language that I don’t speak has slowed me down slightly.

However, I do think that with some close study and adaptation of the code in that blueprint, and continued learning, I’ll get where I want to go. Thanks again, very much, for replying and trying to help out!

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One piece of the puzzle that most probably already know but that I had to learn (so I’m mentioning it here in case others come across this thread in the future): the way to capture the correct triggers for an automation is to use Developer Tools to “listen” for it and copy the information from there. So, in my case, here’s what I did:

In the Home Assistant UI, go to Developer Tools > Events, and under “Listen to events”, type “zha_event” (at least for me, as I use ZHA). Then, interact with the device in the way that you want to capture as a trigger. In my case, that meant clicking the button on the knob. You should see something like “Event 1 fired X:XX” and some code describing what happened. The “data:” therein will give you critical data that you need to include in the automation. In my case, I was able to take the “device_ieee” and “command” fields over to the Automation UI and use them in a manual event trigger that looked like this:

Screenshot 2025-11-24 at 3.46.46 PM
Screenshot 2025-11-24 at 3.46.46 PM473×383 18.3 KB

or like this in YAML:

trigger: event
event_type: zha_event
event_data:
  device_ieee: a4:c1:38:64:06:57:67:df
  command: toggle
id: White Knob Button Pressed
alias: White knob button is pressed

So, I know have a working trigger that I can use to do half of what I want - that is, I can turn the lights group on and off by pressing the button on the device (knob). This is exciting progress (even though it’s probably pathetic to most HA veterans).

Next, I need to figure out how to cause turning the knob to change the brightness of the lights group … wish me luck!

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To answer your question…because it’s hard for everyone! :wink:

Seriously,

Here’s a blueprint I wrote for that controller. See if it works for you

If you’re interested, here’s my notes from a bunch of testing I did on the device:

I did my best to document both such that make sense, but no promises.

For some more context on my journey, here’s a post I wrote a few weeks ago.

Good luck!

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Thank you so much! I can’t wait to dive in to these, and I really appreciate the assistance.

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Just wanted to thank you again and let you know that your blueprint worked wonders, right out of the box! I haven’t even tweaked it at all, yet, and the functions that I wanted are working beautifully. Thank you so much, and nice work!

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