Philips hue

Reemster

Sorry for my stupid question.. But do I need the Philips hue bridge for using hue, with homey?.. 

Stefan

In the beginning you will, as we use Philip's API. We are looking to replace this implementation later on with a direct one via Zigbee, but this is more complicated and will take some time, so for starters we use the hub.

KyrosNL

Yes, you do.

Reemster

Ok, thanks for the info! 

tunf

Stefan said:

In the beginning you will, as we use Philip's API. We are looking to replace this implementation later on with a direct one via Zigbee, but this is more complicated and will take some time, so for starters we use the hub.

@Stefan this is new info, i'm glad i found out now as i almost selled my hub! Any timeline that direct zigbee will be working? The Homey is the hub replacer although thats how it is sold or am i mistaken. No problem if this is temporarly but please confirm it is going to work without the hue hub. Thanks!

KyrosNL

tunf said:

Stefan said:

In the beginning you will, as we use Philip's API. We are looking to replace this implementation later on with a direct one via Zigbee, but this is more complicated and will take some time, so for starters we use the hub.

@Stefan this is new info, i'm glad i found out now as i almost selled my hub! Any timeline that direct zigbee will be working? The Homey is the hub replacer although thats how it is sold or am i mistaken. No problem if this is temporarly but please confirm it is going to work without the hue hub. Thanks!

Post from last year
https://forum.athom.com/discussion/comment/1624/#Comment_1624

compadre

Wasn't there other threads where it was said no hub needed as status quo? I just ordered all the stuff without bridge and now that message...... a time line would be essentially needed pls thanks

D

compadre said:

Wasn't there other threads where it was said no hub needed as status quo? I just ordered all the stuff without bridge and now that message...... a time line would be essentially needed pls thanks

No, it was the other way around. You need a bridge, at least at first. This has always been communicated.

You most probably won't get a timeline, because I guess this functionality is not very high on the list. It works with the bridge, so there's no priority to it.

MarcoF

From start there's communicated that you need a bridge.
There are a lot of pros and cons for using the bridge and i'm glad the support HUE  

Pros for bridge;

• firmware update of the bulbs (don't know if Athom can do that)
• third party apps (although these apps can be "rebuild" on Homey's platform)
• for now scene's etc. can and keep work
• Hue switches (Tap/Dimmer switch) keep working
• Apple 

Cons for bridge;

• Slow(Emile mentioned this in several posts and presentations)
• Extra (weak?) link between homey and lights
• Keep track of lights status/color
• more energy use with bridge
• Two point of input (homey and Hue App) which need synchronization

Personally i want to ditch the bridge because of the cons and i don't use switches/Apple stuff/thirdparty apps.

Would be great if Athom could connect Homey directly to the lights over Zigbee Light Link  

compadre

Hm still do not see why priority should not be available. One reason is to avoid all this bridges and hubs because of having homey at least for me and how homey was also advertised ... Anyhow, let's wait and see. Suggest to make that also clear at the apps page that hue is only limited supported, that means if having the bridge (current status) 

MarcoF

I agree with you that this need some more attention and (maybe even) more priority. 

But its not fair to say that it wasn't communicated.

As far as communicated, the are working on Zigbee(Light Link) support. Lets hope the soon release a (beta) for Light Link  

One of my biggest irritations on Hue is controlling the standalone (Blooms) with Living Color remotes.
We have one Bloom in our bedroom and we use a LC remote for that. When using a remote, its not possible to connect is with the bridge and controlling the light with the App. 
For now it looks like i can use a Simple 433 remote to switch this bloom to preset color. But it would be great if homey can combine the use of LC remotes/blooms/"normal bulbs"/etc 

Fire69

Depends on what generation you have, but Blooms can be perfectly controlled both by remote and bridge together. 

MarcoF

@Fire69;
I tried several things, used several howto's (www.beaumotica.nl) and nothing worked....

We have 3 bulbs and 1 Bloom in the livingroom and 1 Bloom upstairs in the bedroom.

The blooms +remotes are less then a year old.

We want to control the Bloom upstairs with the App and Remote.
The Hue's downstairs should only listen to the app.

I you have some advice; let me know  

extranion

Stefan said:

In the beginning you will, as we use Philip's API. We are looking to replace this implementation later on with a direct one via Zigbee, but this is more complicated and will take some time, so for starters we use the hub.

Is it possible that the community starts at building that implementation? Make something like a driver for it.

Athomey

No. Drivers and API's can only be made by Athom. Apps which use the API's can be build by community.

bvdbos

We can write our own drivers if we want to:
https://developers.athom.com/library/drivers
for instance in:
https://github.com/athombv/nl.action/blob/master/drivers/eurodomest.js
the 433-signal is decoded for eurodomest...

Athomey

Normally a driver talks to the hardware and handles the i/o,  abstraction, concurrency, isolation, HAL, etc.. That's the level of the transmitter and such.

If the prior is not yet exposed by Athom for zigbee you cannot write a HAL driver for it.

However, if prior is done and an API is provided, then you can write specific code for e.g. Hue's directly, through those API's.

Normally it's designed like these layers. The driver you mention, I assume, only decodes data/frames it gets from the API of the 433 real HAL driver. You don't talk to the chip yourself.

So if API to the HAL driver for Zigbee are finished and exposed by Athom, then you can write the rest yourself. Otherwise not. I don't know which of both is the current situation, and I'm speculating a bit.  

extranion

I was afraid that would be the case.  There is no documentation on zigbee in the api reference. 

HarmLutjeboer

so...

Is er iemand die weet hoe lang het nog duurt voordat de zigbee chip wordt geactiveerd? Ik heb (zoals in andere topics al te lezen is) een aantal problemen met mn hue. (te veel dimmers/taps/motion sensors) Dit zou in principe opgelost kunnen worden als de Homey mijn dimmers en taps zou kunnen ontvangen. Nu heb ik ook iets gelezen over Zigbee GreenPower (dit wordt gebruikt door de TAP) Is dit een compleet andere vorm van zigbee? Zou het dan uberhaupt hardware matig mogelijk zijn om de TAP en de homey te verbinden als de zigbee chip eenmaal werkt?

[Deleted User]

Athom is not yet able to share a roadmap, plotting technologies on a phased timeline. Knowing this, we have no idea when or not even what their prio is. Looking back, I think the ad hoc IT roadmap is: 1| Stabilise Homey, and setup a decent support (community platform, faq's, grow in AD & AM processes) 2| Stabilise dev environment for apps dev (homegrown & community apps) 3a| Build B2B integration opportunities (Sonos, Spotify, Hue, Echo, Siri, and much more .....) 3b|  Enable new technologies such as Zigbee, IR, BT, ....

So no we have no idea when Zigbee will be available (natively), but agree with you potentially Homey can do a better job then the Hue bridge

Vince75

Waarschijnlijk zoek ik op de verkeerde plek (nieuw), maar ik kan weinig vinden over een richtdatum wanneer de Hue bridge vervangen kan worden door Athom. Heeft iemand een idee?

bvdbos

There's no native zigbee HUE-app yet. Zigbee has been activated and works for ikea and Osram so it won't take long before Hue will work too I guess.

Amelsfort

Does that also mean we don't need the bridge anymore? I'm looking into the Hue GU10 Color spots and I don't want to have to add another extra device like a bridge. Will Homey be able to find and install the spots? And how about firmware upgrades?

bvdbos

Just read it's really hard (or actually impossible till now) to reset / un-pair HUE-bulbs in Homey so direct Zigbee with HUE has an issue which hasn't been solved yet. As for FW-upgrades, I don't expect these will be possible for quite some time (if ever, like with zwave).

Amelsfort

Ok, so I should better get the starterpack including the bridge. And then start with the bridge connected and disconnect it afterwards and just reconnect it once in a while for the updates?

kasteleman

No, if you have them paired with zigbee, the bridge doesn't do anything. You can not connect the bulbs with both (read bridge and Homey) at the same time! Once connected to Homey, the bridge can't access them because they aren't paired with the bridge but with Homey.

DaneeDeKruyff

Amelsfort said:

....and just reconnect it once in a while for the updates?

Yes, for this purpose it's handy to buy a starterpack including the bridge. There is a way to reset bulbs, there was a discussion about it on slack. If I remember correctly @swttt posted about a way to reconnect bulbs to a bridge, maybe he can post here if he gets away from his Marvel flics

swttt

@DaneeDeKruyff
haha its not that i found a solution or something! Just asked Jeroen if it couldnt work with the serialnumber (force pair) like someone on the smartthings forum did.

DaneeDeKruyff

@swttt as a solution for not being able to connect if a lamp is connected to a no longer available homey right?
If you have an original hue bridge you can use that method to pair them with that bridge even though they are paired with a different controller? Only thing to figure out is how to obtain the serial numbers when the controller they are connected to is unavailable...

swttt

@DaneeDeKruyff
I am not sure, just was trying to look into it (somehow interested or something). But i don't own any Hue bulbs myself, i am glad i bought lightify bulbs with a seperate hue bridge

But the problem is indeed it needs the Hue bridge to reset the bulb. So when you RMA your Homey for example and want to pair al your bulbs again you need to reset them from a hue bridge. (at least how i understanded it)

caseda

Correct, the pairing isn't the hardest, it is the reset. 

Phillips hue works best on the Light Link part of zigbee which is a different part then homey uses (Home Automation).
Difference is like the different channels wifi has, so a slight difference in frequency so that it won't interfere.
Both work on a different channel range.

There is a Light Link Reset command which is needed to reset a hue bulb (that includes for the serial reset).
It works like, without serial it will just reset the bulb that is nearest. With serial it can focus on that information on the device itself (looks through all light link devices it can reach for this proprietary tag)

There is also a "steal from other controller" command but that is also light link proprietary.
The Philips hue's dimmer switch does this for example.

as homey doesn't work on light link it can't send the reset command on the correct frequentie range. 

The hue bridge only works on light link, so can send the reset command.
But that also makes it so it can't control many other devices like power plugs (most devices work on home automation).

This might change in the future to change the frequentie channel shortly just for the reset, but that's very hard to implement. 

And having to let the user buy the bridge just to reset... Not something athom wants to force on to people.