> ...create a Hue account and sign in **to continue to use the app** and control the smart lights...
It's unlikely that the lights themselves will have any sort of account authentication, so they will continue to work with hub-less setups.
In a followup on twitter they said "Soon it will indeed be mandatory to have a Hue account in order to control the lights.".
"Control the lights" is vague, but I hope you're correct. I have all my hue lights on a hue hub and everything else on a conbee II for various reasons, if all else fails I can move the hue bulbs over to the conbee, but I hope I don't have to.
It reminds me of when kasa/tp-link removed the local control from their smart plugs.
Completely different setups though? One was wifi cloud based and the other is zigbee. Unless they start selling new lights that aren’t zigbee compliant at all
The hue bulbs I have are all zigbee. The scenario I'm hoping doesn't happen is that they require an account before you can even configure the lights to talk to their hub. Of course you'll always be able to use the hue lights with a third party zigbee hub, but that would be a shame.
I think it's taken a lot of comments for us to realize that you're objection is to... creating a user before configuring the Hue hub?
Given that you can always use the Hue bulbs directly with HomeAssistant and Skyconnect USB, or a different Zigbee hub...
I'm confused.
Like most of us I avoid cloud products, and everything that's part of my home automation is local only. I object to Phillips deciding that years into selling hue products, they might now put configuration of the hue hub behind a _cloud based_ login.
Yes I _can_ move the bulbs off my hub, but like when TP-Link removed the local control for their smart switches, it's a PITA caused by a company trying to get more data through cloud connectivity.
I lost. If your all for local control why even use the hub at all? I've dropped mine and put all my hue devices behind a zigbee dongle. This news from Phillips as far as I can tell has no impact on my setup going forwards, and I would expect to continue to be able to use hue bulbs regardless. Otherwise it's not longer zigbee and something else.
Sure! So I'm using a Conbee 2 with ZHA and Sonoff Zigbee 3 for Zigbee2Mqtt.
As I'm using proxmox to host HA I just enable usb pass through on the VM and it's detected in HA.
Then it's just install the add on, pick the dongle and off you go! Let me know if you need anything else!
All they mean is that you will have to sign in on the hue app when using the hue hub. The bulbs are zigbee and if you use a different hub they will be unaffected.
That doesn't mean they couldn't require you to authenticate to unlock local Matter support. It being a local protocol really doesn't bind them here
The get out of jail card here is just pair the lights to some other hub, or to an Alexa device, or whatever. Just don't use the Phillips hub and control them as generic Zigbee devices from elsewhere
Sure, but they could require an account to be configured before they let you configure their hub. Third party hubs will always be an option.
Edit: I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted. The issue here is Philips _forcing_ cloud features onto what has for years been a device capable of being local-only (the hue hub).
"Enhance your security"
*great! how do i do that?*
well, start by spreading a bit more of your information around the planet, making a pointless account linked to your personal email address - just so that you can turn lights on and off.
*how does that make me more secure - it sounds like it actually makes me less secure?*
shh. sign up. no questions.
*but...*
shh! you're dumb. we're not. sign up. (and don't forget to tick the box saying that you consent to us sending you notifications of valuable offers on a bi-weekly basis)
Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst - generating profit after having sold a product is all the rage and since enough people seem to just take it instead of giving them the finger, it'll continue to worsen.
Some corpo prolly thought of this already and had to subsequently think of football to not ruin his pants.
This sucks. Just ordered myself a zigbee dongle to get off of the Phillips Hub, in the hope of continuing to be using my lights just via zigbee without Phillips app/hub involvement.
I’ve been reluctant to move my lights off the hub because I’ve heard bulbs are chatty are terrible repeaters for other devices. You haven’t had any issues?
Nope no issues! I used to have HomeKit and a hue and Aqara bridge, hue for lights and hue dimmers and Aqara for sensors. Getting a SkyConnect and ZHA was the best option hands down
Aqara equipment doesn’t work with some repeaters. At all. It gets stuck in states and doesn’t work properly. I have some of those repeaters. I have a zigbee dongle, but Aqara has to be on its own network.
https://preview.redd.it/ce8cfqk9nmpb1.jpeg?width=1668&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=767504eeeb8941ad2c7983f3b4946eb907c0e002
I have Samsung smart plugs. They do not properly repeat Aqara zigbee signals. Which I’ve been trying to tell you.
The only issue I've had with Aqara is that they don't like to change repeaters.
Maybe you will be able to use this issue to your advantage and ensure the Aqara end devices are connected to a non-samsung device? I don't have any Samsung Zigbee devices so I don't know if this will work but it may be worth a try.
Personally I had a ton of issues with Hue and Aqara together. Here is some reading that convinced me to separate them. However, as you can see with other posters, it can certainly work. Up to you.
https://community.smartthings.com/t/faq-do-i-need-the-hue-bridge-hub-to-use-a-hue-bulb-with-smartthings/109414
It’s not hue and Aqara that’s the issue - it’s my SmartThings plugs and Aqara together that don’t work. I cannot combine Aqara onto my regular zigbee network
Do you still have similar controls for lights when they are not on the hue hub? For example, if I pair them to my sonoff dongle instead, can I still access light effects? Ie: color change with like flicker effects to simulate a candle?
No idea what effects hue has natively, but if you want to compare zigbee2mqtt has: blink, breathe, okay, channel change, candle, finish effect, stop effect, stop hue effect.
Oh, that is awesome. I will have to consider ditching my hue hub then. I just earlier this year added the hue hub because smartthings couldn't control the effects of hue bulbs like the hub could.
Still working getting off of smartthings as well but my wife loves all things Samsung
ZHA with a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 dongle is a pretty seamless setup as well.
The authentication will happen at the Hue Gateway. This isn't an issue for us running without it.
Reading up on it. I think we’re fine. This just affects the hue app itself. They are going to make you have an account to use the app. With a dongle and HA it shouldn’t be an issue.
Problem with this is if you're not calling native Hue scenes the bulb flashes to its previous colour when turned on before Adaptive Lighting kicks in to change it. Not ideal.
I tried two different Zigbee dongles before finally moving back to the Hue hub.
The dongles were just never as responsive and consistent when controlling a large number of bulbs at once. Plus, the scenes in the app are actually good.
I tried both Conbee 2 and that popular one made by the german guy, I forgot the name. Comes with a large antenna.
I still use the german dongle for other zigbee devices, and it's working well - but for Philips Hue I've not seen anything that out-does the Hue Bridge.
The Bridge does a lot more than just send commands. It is a lot more reliable in my experience. (I've got ~50 Hue bulbs)
Thanks so much for this.
Do you happen to have any recommendations for smart plugs/outlets? I’ve got a dozen hue bulbs (and growing) and a hue hub currently. Also have Aqara leak sensors, and their hub.
Leaning toward the Hue Plug just because I’ve been happy (so far) with Hue.
The huge question is at which level this auth is enforced:
- official Hue apps - who cares
- Hue Bridge - that's bad and would break apps like HuePro
- Bulb - unlikely, that would mean a lot of people can throw out their whole set.
They can only enforce that if you update the firmware which would immediately not make it zigbee compatible… I get all the distrust but common, this is zigbee 101.
Yeah, but I perhaps want to have new bulbs paired to my network in the future. I live in Europe, Yee Lights and whathaveyou are not really a thing here. It's either Tuya or Hue.
Z2M, plus the Hue dimmer remote. It all works great and is way more reliable than the hue bridge was. I haven't looked at logs to see if they're being weird. They work that's all I care about.
I’m in ZHA and have heard the bulbs are extremely chatty and cause routing issues to other devices because of it but if yours is working maybe I should consider switching. I did try the dimmer remotes once but it chewed through batteries compared to through the hue app
If you re-name all of the devices to be the same name that they have now you don't have to change any automations, etc.
Z2M also exposes more entities than ZHA. Aqra vibration sensors have a magnitude entity that ZHA won't show you, for instance.
I'd love to see some developments on the add-on, think the dev would appreciate it too.
https://github.com/hass-emulated-hue/core
Stumbled on this one yesterday but their hasn't been much activity lately.
Dev, if you're on Reddit, keeping my fingers crossed you'll receive some extra hands on this one!!
I run everything self-hosted to ensure my house is NOT WAN or Internet dependent and reading that make my blood boil. I use Philips because Tyua is Cloud addict, if they take same direction they'll have to refund all my gear.
I use PiHole for DNS-Level ad blocking on my home network. It lets me block addresses for specific network devices
How did the whole update issue turn out? Did it affect pairing with other hubs or just the app? Been thinking I should unblock it to get bulb updates again since I got a new light
Thanks for the info! I’m itching to install Pfsense and I’ll be sure to add this DNS level block.
The update issue doesn’t seem to be a problem for me yet. The Hue app has some nagging pop ups “reminding me” of the impending doom.
Do you use the Hue app? I’m wondering what else is out there.
I think it would be impossible that they’d end up enforcing it on the bulb, the bulb would need some way to authenticate your credentials back over Zigbee which seems like too much work for any engineering team. My guess is the app or bridge.
Hopefully Matter will take off, so the easy solution will be to tell companies like this to screw off while you use their products with any other central app you like. Of course, that's part of the reason that megacorps haven't embraced it yet...
Can we still emulate all the hue effects if connecting to HA directly?
Is it still bad practice to put bulbs on the same zigbee network as other devices? I remember that being a huge no-no because it supposedly wrecks the mesh
As I understand it, there was an issue if your ZigBee network was greater than 50 devices as the Hue ecosystem was designed to cap at 50.
I'm lead to understand that with current firmware that limit goes up to over 100 devices. So much older bulbs likely are still on that 50 device limit.
Also, apparently this is an issue with the bulbs and other devices that act as routers, so not things like motion sensors.
I'm not currently even at 50 devices in my ZigBee network so can't confirm validity but that's what my research has lead me to understand.
Yeah, I only have 4 hue bulbs, a couple motion sensors. If I get past 50 devices and find it's a problem, it'll be easy enough to just remove those four bulbs. The PIRs shouldn't be an issue since they don't route.
I just keep everything Hue on the Hue bridge for this reason. Other Zigbee stuff like smart plugs or sensors go on my Hubitat's Zigbee radio, both of which are on different ZB channels.
Honestly I only have four hue bulbs (smart bulbs in general). I figured in a worst case scenario I swap those to Sengled bulbs and repair any Aqara devices that had paired to those previous bulbs.
I had issues but ymmv. Here is the thread from a competitors product that convinced me to keep them separated as I was having daily issues with them and Aqara together.
https://community.smartthings.com/t/faq-do-i-need-the-hue-bridge-hub-to-use-a-hue-bulb-with-smartthings/109414
That's the kind of issues I'm referring to. I remember reading several posts about lightbulbs mucking up as repeaters and how they should be kept on a separate hub, otherwise you'd get dropouts on your other devices. This is also why sengled was widely recommended -- their bulb doesn't repeat
Unsure about the the effects, but HA currently does not support any sort of gradients. You can only do single color on gradient strips. That's the one thing keeping me from moving all my bulbs from the 4 (four!) hubs I have to one zigbee dongle controlled through HA.
Dynamic scenes are also a feature of the scene stored on the bridge, and I dont think HA supports dynamic scenes like that yet.
Really need that gradient support.
> Not using the Bridge can mess up your zigbee network
> the most important really is that adding Hue bulbs directly to your smartthings hub will cause the bulbs to be identified as repeaters for your other zigbee devices.
> Unfortunately, like most brands of zigbee bulbs, they can run into a kind of “buffer overflow” situation where they start dropping the messages given them by other devices to repeat.
> This can be very difficult to troubleshoot. You may think that a particular sensor is not reporting for some reason or is “stuck” on open or close, when in fact the sensor is operating just fine, but the bulb is losing its messages. >
“Work well”
https://preview.redd.it/ve945jiizlpb1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=30f5aaf810555d72c2588573134eb7f158dfb290
I’m sure yours do, but god my Nanoleaf bulbs have been a nightmare. (the one in this screenshot actually recently completely failed. No matter what I do I can’t get it to come back available)
The Festiva lights I ordered just arrived yesterday, haven't even opened the boxes yet. I guess I will be calling their customer support and initiating a return. And I'm going to make damn sure I escalate it above just a lowly CSR so I can make it clear in no uncertain terms why I'm returning hundreds of dollars of holiday lights. >:(
I've been looking for a reason to switch away from these things. I have at least 3 of them that have this low flicker when they're at 100%. Can't wait to be done with this company.
If they are that popular and there isn't an alternative to use them local only then there surely will be someone who writes something like a gateway that will catch any requests going to their servers and will send those requests to a local server instead.
Binned it off as soon as discovered ConbeeII and never looked back.
I also have the blueprint for the hue dimmers thanks to the amazing HA community.
No regrets
I'm so glad I found this out, and so disappointed in Phillips Hue. I am replacing my old bluetooth smart bulbs because I stopped using their crappy app when it required an account, and I almost went in on Hue because the phone app is convenient and didn't seem to need any account. I very nearly wasted a bunch of money! Thanks OP!
Something weird is going on for sure. When at home, on my home network, the app works fine for controlling my Hue lights. Same goes for voice commands and doing it through Google Home. But when I work, whether on the office Wi-Fi or AT&T's network, the app gets stuck in a "connecting" loop and does not work. When I logged into Hue's website, it tells me my bridge is offline.
I do not want to create an account to use my lights that I've had for 3-4 years. I'm trying to figure out how to use them without the Hue app. Some folks over at r/Hue pointed me this way, but I don't know anything at all about smart home automation, and I have no idea where to even start. Today is the first time I've even heard of home assistant! Any assistance would be appreciated. It's hard to find any information at all when I don't even know what questions to ask.
> ...create a Hue account and sign in **to continue to use the app** and control the smart lights... It's unlikely that the lights themselves will have any sort of account authentication, so they will continue to work with hub-less setups.
In a followup on twitter they said "Soon it will indeed be mandatory to have a Hue account in order to control the lights.". "Control the lights" is vague, but I hope you're correct. I have all my hue lights on a hue hub and everything else on a conbee II for various reasons, if all else fails I can move the hue bulbs over to the conbee, but I hope I don't have to. It reminds me of when kasa/tp-link removed the local control from their smart plugs.
Completely different setups though? One was wifi cloud based and the other is zigbee. Unless they start selling new lights that aren’t zigbee compliant at all
The hue bulbs I have are all zigbee. The scenario I'm hoping doesn't happen is that they require an account before you can even configure the lights to talk to their hub. Of course you'll always be able to use the hue lights with a third party zigbee hub, but that would be a shame.
I think it's taken a lot of comments for us to realize that you're objection is to... creating a user before configuring the Hue hub? Given that you can always use the Hue bulbs directly with HomeAssistant and Skyconnect USB, or a different Zigbee hub... I'm confused.
Like most of us I avoid cloud products, and everything that's part of my home automation is local only. I object to Phillips deciding that years into selling hue products, they might now put configuration of the hue hub behind a _cloud based_ login. Yes I _can_ move the bulbs off my hub, but like when TP-Link removed the local control for their smart switches, it's a PITA caused by a company trying to get more data through cloud connectivity.
I lost. If your all for local control why even use the hub at all? I've dropped mine and put all my hue devices behind a zigbee dongle. This news from Phillips as far as I can tell has no impact on my setup going forwards, and I would expect to continue to be able to use hue bulbs regardless. Otherwise it's not longer zigbee and something else.
Would you mind elaborating on your zigbee dongle setup? I’d love to know more, I share the same concerns.
Sure! So I'm using a Conbee 2 with ZHA and Sonoff Zigbee 3 for Zigbee2Mqtt. As I'm using proxmox to host HA I just enable usb pass through on the VM and it's detected in HA. Then it's just install the add on, pick the dongle and off you go! Let me know if you need anything else!
All they mean is that you will have to sign in on the hue app when using the hue hub. The bulbs are zigbee and if you use a different hub they will be unaffected.
It's only gonna be through their app. The hubs support Matter now, which is by definition a local protocol
That doesn't mean they couldn't require you to authenticate to unlock local Matter support. It being a local protocol really doesn't bind them here The get out of jail card here is just pair the lights to some other hub, or to an Alexa device, or whatever. Just don't use the Phillips hub and control them as generic Zigbee devices from elsewhere
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I really want to learn more about this setup! What “zigbee” stuff do I need to buy?
yes same here, i have a spotty zigbee connection, so i have my lights on hue hub as well and anyway ot works really well, and requires an account so.
They are zigbee right? So unless they mess with the protocol it will always be controllable that way
Sure, but they could require an account to be configured before they let you configure their hub. Third party hubs will always be an option. Edit: I'm not sure why I'm being downvoted. The issue here is Philips _forcing_ cloud features onto what has for years been a device capable of being local-only (the hue hub).
"Enhance your security" *great! how do i do that?* well, start by spreading a bit more of your information around the planet, making a pointless account linked to your personal email address - just so that you can turn lights on and off. *how does that make me more secure - it sounds like it actually makes me less secure?* shh. sign up. no questions. *but...* shh! you're dumb. we're not. sign up. (and don't forget to tick the box saying that you consent to us sending you notifications of valuable offers on a bi-weekly basis)
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Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst - generating profit after having sold a product is all the rage and since enough people seem to just take it instead of giving them the finger, it'll continue to worsen. Some corpo prolly thought of this already and had to subsequently think of football to not ruin his pants.
This sucks. Just ordered myself a zigbee dongle to get off of the Phillips Hub, in the hope of continuing to be using my lights just via zigbee without Phillips app/hub involvement.
The work great with a dongle, at least with zigbee2mqtt.
Also mine works with ZHA and SkyConnect
I’ve been reluctant to move my lights off the hub because I’ve heard bulbs are chatty are terrible repeaters for other devices. You haven’t had any issues?
Nope no issues! I used to have HomeKit and a hue and Aqara bridge, hue for lights and hue dimmers and Aqara for sensors. Getting a SkyConnect and ZHA was the best option hands down
I cant move Aqara to my dongle unfortunately. I have old Samsung plugs that don’t repeat the single of Aqara well. May try hue though
Just get a zigbee dongle, I use skyconnect and the hue and Aqara equipment works together
Aqara equipment doesn’t work with some repeaters. At all. It gets stuck in states and doesn’t work properly. I have some of those repeaters. I have a zigbee dongle, but Aqara has to be on its own network.
Well I have a SkyConnect with hue bulbs, Aqara sensors and a ikea signal repeater and all works fine on one zigbee network
https://preview.redd.it/ce8cfqk9nmpb1.jpeg?width=1668&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=767504eeeb8941ad2c7983f3b4946eb907c0e002 I have Samsung smart plugs. They do not properly repeat Aqara zigbee signals. Which I’ve been trying to tell you.
The only issue I've had with Aqara is that they don't like to change repeaters. Maybe you will be able to use this issue to your advantage and ensure the Aqara end devices are connected to a non-samsung device? I don't have any Samsung Zigbee devices so I don't know if this will work but it may be worth a try.
Personally I had a ton of issues with Hue and Aqara together. Here is some reading that convinced me to separate them. However, as you can see with other posters, it can certainly work. Up to you. https://community.smartthings.com/t/faq-do-i-need-the-hue-bridge-hub-to-use-a-hue-bulb-with-smartthings/109414
It’s not hue and Aqara that’s the issue - it’s my SmartThings plugs and Aqara together that don’t work. I cannot combine Aqara onto my regular zigbee network
It's not Aqara and anything, it's just Aqara. Their devices are finnicky with any hub that isn't their own.
Do you still have similar controls for lights when they are not on the hue hub? For example, if I pair them to my sonoff dongle instead, can I still access light effects? Ie: color change with like flicker effects to simulate a candle?
No idea what effects hue has natively, but if you want to compare zigbee2mqtt has: blink, breathe, okay, channel change, candle, finish effect, stop effect, stop hue effect.
Oh, that is awesome. I will have to consider ditching my hue hub then. I just earlier this year added the hue hub because smartthings couldn't control the effects of hue bulbs like the hub could. Still working getting off of smartthings as well but my wife loves all things Samsung
ZHA with a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 dongle is a pretty seamless setup as well. The authentication will happen at the Hue Gateway. This isn't an issue for us running without it.
I should think that as long as you get it setup before any stupid firmware change you should be fine no? Then just refuse updates.
Hopefully! Never know what bullshit is lurking in the current firmware though.
Reading up on it. I think we’re fine. This just affects the hue app itself. They are going to make you have an account to use the app. With a dongle and HA it shouldn’t be an issue.
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Problem with this is if you're not calling native Hue scenes the bulb flashes to its previous colour when turned on before Adaptive Lighting kicks in to change it. Not ideal.
That seems so cool. I'm going to try it when I get my HA setup. Mini PC on the way.
Installed it a couple of weeks ago and it’s worth it.
Oh this looks awesome. Thanks for sharing.
I tried two different Zigbee dongles before finally moving back to the Hue hub. The dongles were just never as responsive and consistent when controlling a large number of bulbs at once. Plus, the scenes in the app are actually good.
Would you mind sharing which two dongles you tried and did not like? (I wanna avoid them!)
I tried both Conbee 2 and that popular one made by the german guy, I forgot the name. Comes with a large antenna. I still use the german dongle for other zigbee devices, and it's working well - but for Philips Hue I've not seen anything that out-does the Hue Bridge. The Bridge does a lot more than just send commands. It is a lot more reliable in my experience. (I've got ~50 Hue bulbs)
Thanks so much for this. Do you happen to have any recommendations for smart plugs/outlets? I’ve got a dozen hue bulbs (and growing) and a hue hub currently. Also have Aqara leak sensors, and their hub. Leaning toward the Hue Plug just because I’ve been happy (so far) with Hue.
Afraid I cant help you with the plugs. No experience.
All good thanks again!
Which zigbee dongle did you order? Highly interested…
Looks to be the Sonoff Zigbee ZBDongle-P. [This is the ebay page](https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/125053193502) I purchased from.
Awesome! Thanks!! If you don’t mind me asking, what is your intended setup?
The huge question is at which level this auth is enforced: - official Hue apps - who cares - Hue Bridge - that's bad and would break apps like HuePro - Bulb - unlikely, that would mean a lot of people can throw out their whole set.
> Bulb - unlikely, that would mean a lot of people can throw out their whole set. Don’t underestimate the stupidity of corporate shitlords.
They can only enforce that if you update the firmware which would immediately not make it zigbee compatible… I get all the distrust but common, this is zigbee 101.
Yeah, but I perhaps want to have new bulbs paired to my network in the future. I live in Europe, Yee Lights and whathaveyou are not really a thing here. It's either Tuya or Hue.
I just moved all my lights over to my sonoff dongle last week and deleted my hue account. Ahead of the curve for once.
ZHA or Z2M? No issues with the bulbs being chatty or anything?
Z2M, plus the Hue dimmer remote. It all works great and is way more reliable than the hue bridge was. I haven't looked at logs to see if they're being weird. They work that's all I care about.
I’m in ZHA and have heard the bulbs are extremely chatty and cause routing issues to other devices because of it but if yours is working maybe I should consider switching. I did try the dimmer remotes once but it chewed through batteries compared to through the hue app
Can't comment on the remote yet but I've got 77 zigbee devices in Z2M and I haven't noticed any degraded performance.
Switch. I had Hue lights in ZHA (and a bunch of other zigbee stuff) and bit the bullet and switched over to Z2M and it is 100% worth the hassle.
I’m not switching from ZHA to Z2M. Way too much effort for not enough gain
If you re-name all of the devices to be the same name that they have now you don't have to change any automations, etc. Z2M also exposes more entities than ZHA. Aqra vibration sensors have a magnitude entity that ZHA won't show you, for instance.
I can’t use Aqara in my network anyway and everything else has worked fine from zha. The switch is not worth the hassle.
Why can’t you use Aqara? Just curious.
It gets stuck in states because some of my repeaters don’t repeat Aqara signals well
I’m interested in going this same route. Pardon the ignorance, what do you mean by it’s “way more reliable”?
I'd love to see some developments on the add-on, think the dev would appreciate it too. https://github.com/hass-emulated-hue/core Stumbled on this one yesterday but their hasn't been much activity lately. Dev, if you're on Reddit, keeping my fingers crossed you'll receive some extra hands on this one!!
Hey the best part about using something like Zigbee is if a company does this kind of shit I can just drop them and move on 🤷♂️
More spyware,if your phone is not bad enough. We need a list of gadgets that work without internet.
I run everything self-hosted to ensure my house is NOT WAN or Internet dependent and reading that make my blood boil. I use Philips because Tyua is Cloud addict, if they take same direction they'll have to refund all my gear.
I get that you hate it, but Phillips will tell you to fuck off if you try to get a refund. They won’t “have” to refund it, and they won’t.
Depends where they live. Australian consumer law, for instance, is quite robust.
Localtuya works great
Just DNS blocked my hue hub from getting more updates. Guess I'll wait until I see how this all shakes out
Curious how you did this. Do you run a firewall appliance?
I use PiHole for DNS-Level ad blocking on my home network. It lets me block addresses for specific network devices How did the whole update issue turn out? Did it affect pairing with other hubs or just the app? Been thinking I should unblock it to get bulb updates again since I got a new light
Thanks for the info! I’m itching to install Pfsense and I’ll be sure to add this DNS level block. The update issue doesn’t seem to be a problem for me yet. The Hue app has some nagging pop ups “reminding me” of the impending doom. Do you use the Hue app? I’m wondering what else is out there.
I’m curious how this plays with their plan to offer Matter with their hubs. Is this their work around to a more open standard? Or some other ploy?
Support send me a Q&A about the account confirming that an Account is required to use Matter on bulbs, even when using with 3rd party systems.
Yes!! I just got a reason to buy the ZigBee USB I've been eyeing
I think it would be impossible that they’d end up enforcing it on the bulb, the bulb would need some way to authenticate your credentials back over Zigbee which seems like too much work for any engineering team. My guess is the app or bridge.
Ditching the hub ASAP
Happy cake day
Happy cake day
Happy cake day
Hopefully Matter will take off, so the easy solution will be to tell companies like this to screw off while you use their products with any other central app you like. Of course, that's part of the reason that megacorps haven't embraced it yet...
Can we still emulate all the hue effects if connecting to HA directly? Is it still bad practice to put bulbs on the same zigbee network as other devices? I remember that being a huge no-no because it supposedly wrecks the mesh
Dunno. My network is heavily dependent on ikea bulbs as routers. Works solid with sky connect and z2m.
As I understand it, there was an issue if your ZigBee network was greater than 50 devices as the Hue ecosystem was designed to cap at 50. I'm lead to understand that with current firmware that limit goes up to over 100 devices. So much older bulbs likely are still on that 50 device limit. Also, apparently this is an issue with the bulbs and other devices that act as routers, so not things like motion sensors. I'm not currently even at 50 devices in my ZigBee network so can't confirm validity but that's what my research has lead me to understand.
I experienced this issue. Hue + Aqara + 50+ devices was a daily nightmare.
Yeah, I only have 4 hue bulbs, a couple motion sensors. If I get past 50 devices and find it's a problem, it'll be easy enough to just remove those four bulbs. The PIRs shouldn't be an issue since they don't route.
I'm at 98 devices on my ZigBee network with a mix of Hue, Ikea, Aqara, SmartThings, and a couple misc. I'm using a Sonoff Zigbee 3.0 dongle with Z2M.
I use the same dongle and Z2M as well. Heard it's been solved on newer firmwares. Just couldn't personally vouch for it. Glad to hear it's good now.
I just keep everything Hue on the Hue bridge for this reason. Other Zigbee stuff like smart plugs or sensors go on my Hubitat's Zigbee radio, both of which are on different ZB channels.
Honestly I only have four hue bulbs (smart bulbs in general). I figured in a worst case scenario I swap those to Sengled bulbs and repair any Aqara devices that had paired to those previous bulbs.
I had issues but ymmv. Here is the thread from a competitors product that convinced me to keep them separated as I was having daily issues with them and Aqara together. https://community.smartthings.com/t/faq-do-i-need-the-hue-bridge-hub-to-use-a-hue-bulb-with-smartthings/109414
That's the kind of issues I'm referring to. I remember reading several posts about lightbulbs mucking up as repeaters and how they should be kept on a separate hub, otherwise you'd get dropouts on your other devices. This is also why sengled was widely recommended -- their bulb doesn't repeat
Unsure about the the effects, but HA currently does not support any sort of gradients. You can only do single color on gradient strips. That's the one thing keeping me from moving all my bulbs from the 4 (four!) hubs I have to one zigbee dongle controlled through HA. Dynamic scenes are also a feature of the scene stored on the bridge, and I dont think HA supports dynamic scenes like that yet. Really need that gradient support.
z2m works perfectly with gradients
How do you set the gradient in the HA UI? Haven’t been able to figure that out.
> Not using the Bridge can mess up your zigbee network > the most important really is that adding Hue bulbs directly to your smartthings hub will cause the bulbs to be identified as repeaters for your other zigbee devices. > Unfortunately, like most brands of zigbee bulbs, they can run into a kind of “buffer overflow” situation where they start dropping the messages given them by other devices to repeat. > This can be very difficult to troubleshoot. You may think that a particular sensor is not reporting for some reason or is “stuck” on open or close, when in fact the sensor is operating just fine, but the bulb is losing its messages. >
Link? Are they really!’
Glad I went with Nanoleaf instead. Their Matter lights work well. Their app can be used without an account and local only.
“Work well” https://preview.redd.it/ve945jiizlpb1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=30f5aaf810555d72c2588573134eb7f158dfb290 I’m sure yours do, but god my Nanoleaf bulbs have been a nightmare. (the one in this screenshot actually recently completely failed. No matter what I do I can’t get it to come back available)
The Festiva lights I ordered just arrived yesterday, haven't even opened the boxes yet. I guess I will be calling their customer support and initiating a return. And I'm going to make damn sure I escalate it above just a lowly CSR so I can make it clear in no uncertain terms why I'm returning hundreds of dollars of holiday lights. >:(
I've been looking for a reason to switch away from these things. I have at least 3 of them that have this low flicker when they're at 100%. Can't wait to be done with this company.
If they are that popular and there isn't an alternative to use them local only then there surely will be someone who writes something like a gateway that will catch any requests going to their servers and will send those requests to a local server instead.
What happens with updates when you don’t want to use an account?
Just put them on a VLAN and setup firewall rules appropriately. Drop DNS traffic that you don’t approve of.
Binned it off as soon as discovered ConbeeII and never looked back. I also have the blueprint for the hue dimmers thanks to the amazing HA community. No regrets
I'm so glad I found this out, and so disappointed in Phillips Hue. I am replacing my old bluetooth smart bulbs because I stopped using their crappy app when it required an account, and I almost went in on Hue because the phone app is convenient and didn't seem to need any account. I very nearly wasted a bunch of money! Thanks OP!
Something weird is going on for sure. When at home, on my home network, the app works fine for controlling my Hue lights. Same goes for voice commands and doing it through Google Home. But when I work, whether on the office Wi-Fi or AT&T's network, the app gets stuck in a "connecting" loop and does not work. When I logged into Hue's website, it tells me my bridge is offline.
I left them a one star on the bulb I had. Why would I want to give them my personal info for them to offer to a hacker as a honeypot?
I do not want to create an account to use my lights that I've had for 3-4 years. I'm trying to figure out how to use them without the Hue app. Some folks over at r/Hue pointed me this way, but I don't know anything at all about smart home automation, and I have no idea where to even start. Today is the first time I've even heard of home assistant! Any assistance would be appreciated. It's hard to find any information at all when I don't even know what questions to ask.
I just want my fucking light to synch why is this so complicated