Zigbee via Deconz or via Hue bridge?

My current use-case is that lights turn on and off based on LUX and presence detection in my garden / front door to turn the lights to full intensity when needed. I can also turn different scenes on and off using the friends of Hue switch i have installed in my living room. All hue lights and accessories are connected towards Deconz, and controlled via node-red.

Reason back then was because i wanted to have local control, but downside is that i have to add Google assistant support for lights / routines etc myself and that i have no firmware updates. All this DIY logic also needs to be maintained, so i am kind of re-thinking my setup but i would like to have your input on it.

So what i am now thinking of is the following:

  • Remove all ‘official’ HUE lights from Deconz and move that back to the Hue Bridge. This would give me firmware updates, remote control and google assistant.
  • Reconfigure the Friends with Hue switches to turn on/off scenes and dim lights.
  • Add the Hue bridge to Home Assistant
  • Use Node-red only as glue, e.g. react on state changes from HA devices (e.g. Lux), and control HA devices (indirectly controlling the Hue lights via that route)
  • Custom Zigbee devices would still be connected via Deconz (e.g. Xiaomi stuff). Events will be handled in Node-red and controlling HA entities.

Are there any downsides on such an approach?

I don’t think so, that’s basically the setup I have.

The main (only?) point of using “pure” zigbee for Hue is to spare having to buy their hub, imho, at least when range is not an issue. If range is an issue, it is an advantage to have a single zigbee network rather than 2 (Hue + Deconz).

If you already have a Hue Hub, the Hue integration makes it basically transparent whether you’re using their hub or deconz/zha.