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Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2020 8:03 am
by siclark
Indigo can now control zigbee bulbs!!

Wait, I thought it could already? Yes, but only with an expensive Hue hub, that was not compatible with the cheap zigbee sensors and switches.
This way you can use Hue bulbs as the extenders for zigbee network to reach the battery sensors, or save the money on the Hue hub and spend it on devices, which if you use Ikea bulbs or sockets or Aqara sensors, could go a long way..


If you already have a working Hue setup then the Hue plugin is great for that, but it does need a £50 hub and the hub doesnt support many of the various zigbee sensors that are available for a lot less money than the zwave equivalent.

If you dont have the hub and want to try zigbee bulbs or sockets, or the new sensors you can do for the cost of a <$10 USB stick. (the range on the cheap USB stick is pretty poor, you will need some bulbs or sockets to use as routers/extenders but these can be had for <£10 at Ikea .

I am happy with how these are working now so have unplugged my Hue hub and am calling these in production. I have also added the Indigo devices for my zigbee bulbs to Homekit and it actually sets the right colour, which I didnt get via the Hue plugin, so thank to Joe for spending the time ensuring the colour works correctly.

Its not quite plug and play, but nothing particularly complicated once you understand the concept of the MQTT Shims plugin.

Thanks again Joe.

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2020 9:00 am
by FlyingDiver
Please generate templates for the various devices you have working so I can include them in them in the Shims plugin.

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Thu Jul 09, 2020 9:11 am
by siclark
Thanks Joe, have done.. and I had forgotten about templates. So yes, it is fairly plug and play by using the device templates in the Shims plugin.

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 10:59 am
by ppespepe
I use something entirely different... it is not plug and play but not hard either.

I love Hue and I think as a system it is the most reliable, I have ConbeeII with the Deconz software which I don't like, the support for non very European devices is extremely poor and when you sum the cost of the RPI plus the dongle, Hue starts to look cheap and In my particular case, Zigbee to MQTT because of the hardware involved, the experience has not been very reliable... anyways, it is not my intention to get into a Ford vs Chevy discussion...

In case somebody Is looking for another alternative and while it is not expensive, it is not the cheapest either, I suggest using Habitat Elevation Hub...It is going to be very reliable, it supports an insane amount of Zigbees out of the box and it keeps updating adding more and better device support. I'm not an expert in Python or Json by any means or stretch of imagination which makes me believe the procedure is going to be suitable for all kind of users in case somebody likes the idea.

First install a no cost app called MakerAPI inside the Hubitat hub, then:

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And as a plus, you will have an alternative touch interface to control your zigbees in case your Indigo Macs gets unavailable for whatever reason.

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Hope this helps... It is just and idea that might work for some. :)

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 11:04 am
by ppespepe
Sorry I forgot....

You use the variables ID on the JSON like this:

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Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Sun Aug 02, 2020 5:09 am
by DaveL17
Super nice tutorial. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Wed Aug 19, 2020 1:11 pm
by rehafer
Any recommendations on Zigbee sticks if I wanted to experiment?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Wed Aug 19, 2020 1:24 pm
by siclark
CC2351 is cheapest for experimenting. With antenna probably better. It’s got poor range but cheaper to put an cheap Ikea zigbee plug socket nearby as booster than use a more powerful one.
It has some limitations if you are planning on building a 50+ zigbee device network but given most of us have zwave , Insteon etc that’s prob not a big concern here.

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Wed Aug 19, 2020 5:01 pm
by mundmc
This seems line lower hanging fruit than the raspi-nodered-mqtt route.

How is it stability-wise? I use zwave sensors extensively but i feel like i’m always running into problems.

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Thu Aug 20, 2020 2:50 am
by siclark
mundmc wrote:
This seems line lower hanging fruit than the raspi-nodered-mqtt route.


Not sure I follow?

mundmc wrote:
How is it stability-wise? I use zwave sensors extensively but i feel like i’m always running into problems.


This solution still uses mqtt to communicate to the zigbee stick, but takes out the nodered element and essentially makes it part of a plugin so one less external dependency. I would say its as reliable as zwave once you have a decent network.

The zigbee devices do respond back on their status so the setting only updates in indigo if the device has changed as per request. I am still playing iwth QOS settings though as I do find sometimes the device doesnt respond, and not sure if changing QOS would help there, or maybe getting the action to send the command twice.

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Thu Aug 20, 2020 2:14 pm
by mundmc
siclark wrote:
mundmc wrote:
This seems line lower hanging fruit than the raspi-nodered-mqtt route.


Not sure I follow?

mundmc wrote:
How is it stability-wise? I use zwave sensors extensively but i feel like i’m always running into problems.


This solution still uses mqtt to communicate to the zigbee stick, but takes out the nodered element and essentially makes it part of a plugin so one less external dependency. I would say its as reliable as zwave once you have a decent network.

The zigbee devices do respond back on their status so the setting only updates in indigo if the device has changed as per request. I am still playing iwth QOS settings though as I do find sometimes the device doesnt respond, and not sure if changing QOS would help there, or maybe getting the action to send the command twice.
Oh, I thought it was purely a plug-in that communicated with the hub without MQTT. I have only partially experimented with MQTT, largely with homegrown solutions that I am trying to integrate, so my difficulties are largely user error.

Nonetheless, skipping nodeRed is one less new skill I would have to learn to implement this, so I should probably get back to messing around with MQTT.

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Thu Aug 20, 2020 2:33 pm
by siclark
mundmc wrote:
siclark wrote:
mundmc wrote:
This seems line lower hanging fruit than the raspi-nodered-mqtt route.


Not sure I follow?

mundmc wrote:
How is it stability-wise? I use zwave sensors extensively but i feel like i’m always running into problems.


This solution still uses mqtt to communicate to the zigbee stick, but takes out the nodered element and essentially makes it part of a plugin so one less external dependency. I would say its as reliable as zwave once you have a decent network.

The zigbee devices do respond back on their status so the setting only updates in indigo if the device has changed as per request. I am still playing iwth QOS settings though as I do find sometimes the device doesnt respond, and not sure if changing QOS would help there, or maybe getting the action to send the command twice.
Oh, I thought it was purely a plug-in that communicated with the hub without MQTT. I have only partially experimented with MQTT, largely with homegrown solutions that I am trying to integrate, so my difficulties are largely user error.

Nonetheless, skipping nodeRed is one less new skill I would have to learn to implement this, so I should probably get back to messing around with MQTT.


The plugin communicates using MQTT but you dont need to understand it to use the zigbee devices. The beauty of this setup is that the devices just operate as normal indigo light bulbs / switches etc.

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 7:43 am
by Different Computers
Do I understand correctly from the post above that I don't have to set up an MQTT server in order to use it?

MQTT makes my brain hurt.

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 7:47 am
by siclark
You do need an MQTT server / broker for this to work but not node-red (but that helps). Its somewhat easy to do on a NAS say... I mean I did it without too much trouble so I am more than confident you can!

Re: Indigo and Zigbee

PostPosted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 7:49 am
by Different Computers
I mean to say I've gotten an MQTT server running and responding to test commands already, but there seems to be this gigantic hole in online documentation between "Get the server running" and "you now have all your stuff configured and talking and listening to the server."

Once I got it set up, I was like "what now?" and could not find the answer.