Indigo Domotics

Amazon (via a 3rd party seller) has a 4 pack of Osram tunable white zigbee bulbs for £35 which is barely more than their standard non smart bulbs. Build yourself an instant Zigbee mesh!

Not bad! I guess you use them via the hue hub?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Ha... no. I am using them with a zigbee USB stick and MQTT via node-red.

Means no proprietary hardware and also a more open zigbee mesh to also use the cheap zigbee sensors with it.

How good is Zigbee compared to Z-Wave? I got a Philips Hue Bridge but I guess I can't use that with other Zigbee hardware right?

You can use the Hue bridge with other non Hue bulbs, and Nathan has an amazing plugin for that, and I believe it supports some motion sensors too.

My issue was I wanted to use zigbee for some of the new Aqara sensors and remotes which dont work with the Hue hub. I could have run 2 zigbee networks, but other than signal clashes, I wanted a decent network for the sensors so seemed sensible to try and use my Hue bulbs for that. Also I wanted to see if I could make more use of some of the zigbee plugs as extenders which at £10 for Ikea ones are much cheaper than zwave ones (but dont report power obviously at that price)

Whilst I have the ability to send commands to the bulbs in an easy setup, I have not got the 2 - way synching setup yet. I am wondering if that can be achieved with MQQT Shims or whether a more complicated plugin would be needed.

The other option what I might go with is using the HAAS plugin that also uses MQTT, as that I think can take in the zigbee bulbs and manage the 2 way sync, then use the plugin to sync with Indigo. I wanted to keep as much in Indigo without going out to HAAS so will be investigating that route first.

Zwave, as its native to Indigo is much simpler, but also much more expensive.

There are some other differences, for instance this from the zigbee2mqtt guide.

The color/brightness of a Trådfri bulb can be changed while the state=off, it also reports back the change.

which is interesting behavkour, and not something that can be done on Hue bulbs, and I believe not on zwave bulbs (not that I have any)

It does appear that many zigbee bulbs dont report back their state if changed elsewhere so zwave definitely wins there, but perhaps less important for many situations.

siclark wrote:

It does appear that many zigbee bulbs dont report back their state if changed elsewhere so zwave definitely wins there, but perhaps less important for many situations.

Ah yes now I remember that when I last looked into zigbee.. automatic status updating is important for me as most of my “main” devices are controlled by switches on the wall and statuses are important for my plethora of triggers and scripts..

Shame, a fair few of my devices are in need of replacement. Cheap woulda been good.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Yeah.. I have zigbee bulbs in lamps where usual control is only ever when we are in the room, and want more easy control than using an often hidden lead so dont really need status reporting as we can use mk1 eyeball.

I cant see me changing ceiling lights for zigbee bulbs as potential for them to be turned off. They currently have zwave modules controlling them and do have triggers on those.

That is the problem that led me on my zigbee quest. Need big mesh for the sensors I want as they are cheap, but cant use too many bulbs as they dont do what I need for functionality or reporting.

Yeah, certainly there’s some use cases.. I suppose sensors makes more sense (pun intended).. something for me to look into in the future I guess.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Actually I was wrong. Zigbee bulbs including Hue do report back status and I’m working with Joe to get these reporting status using MQTT shims.
I now see the status of the bulb change in Indigo when the bulb is altered state by MQTT directly.
I’m going to test on an ikea bulb soon but this could be really great stuff.
I have seen a case where I lose a bulb off the mesh and there it can end up being in different state to what indigo believes but that’s possibly the case with a weak zwave mesh too. And certainly cheaper to build a zigbee one at £10 per device.

siclark wrote:

Actually I was wrong. Zigbee bulbs including Hue do report back status and I’m working with Joe to get these reporting status using MQTT shims.

Does that mean that Hue bulbs can be used as Zigbee repeaters and also controlled by MQTT ?

Yes. Any mains powered zigbee device is a zigbee router, ie repeater. They are if used with the Hue hub too.

Easiest way to use cheap zigbee bulbs is with a hue hub and Nathan’s plugin.

Cheapest way and way to get a zigbee mesh for cheap zigbee sensors is to use. $10 zigbee usb stick and bulbs and mains sockets as repeaters.

Interesting, well something to consider when some of the other devices go. Although that does involve yet another hub...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

durosity wrote:

Interesting, well something to consider when some of the other devices go. Although that does involve yet another hub...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Just a USB stick and one that’s less than a fiver as well!!
Cheapest bit of HA kit you will ever buy

siclark wrote:

durosity wrote:

Interesting, well something to consider when some of the other devices go. Although that does involve yet another hub...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Just a USB stick and one that’s less than a fiver as well!!
Cheapest bit of HA kit you will ever buy

Link?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro