I’m planning to put HA on a pi, with a usb antenna
I can’t decide which bulbs to use, Philips hue looks great but it’s pricey and I’m pretty sure it’s got too much “phone home” crap. I don’t want anything to leave my network. If I can use Hue bulbs without the hub, or block the hub from phoning home I would consider it?
I found some Sengled bulbs that look fine, but I don’t know if they are any good.
Can someone recommend some decent bulbs? Colour ones preferably, but white is OK too.
Any other advice? Got a home server, so can host just about anything to get this working together.
Hey there, I’ve got the same Zigbee dongle in HA through Zigbee2mqtt and it runs flawlessly.
Zigbee by design is fully local and can’t phone home, and everything that uses Zigbee will be able to pair directly with your dongle without using the Hue hub. Check Zigbee2mqtt docs to ensure compatibility of the items you’re planning to buy, but almost all of them should work.
I’ve got Hue and Ikea bulbs along with other Zigbee switches working perfectly. If Hue is too pricey, check Ikea Tradfri or any other recommended by Zigbee2mqtt docs.
Thanks for the advice, I’ll look at the docs.
How’s your RAM usage for HA? The pi I have is only 2gb, already runs pihole but I can buy another/run HA on my server, but if I don’t need to, then I won’t.
I ran HA on a pi 3 and then upgraded to a NUC with a Celeron using 4gb of RAM mostly because I used Plex at that time and needed better transcoding.
You can try running HAOS supervised on your Pi. Running supervised will let you run addons within HA such as pihole, Zigbee2mqtt, Mosquitto, Node-RED and others. After that, you can verify if you actually need to upgrade your hardware. You’ll probably be fine with that amount of RAM.
When you switched from pi3 to NUC , did you notice any performance improvements? I’m asking because I run my setup on a rpi3 and it mostly works ok, but the latency is sometimes high, so I’m wondering if upgrading the host will improve things.
For me i did. It was buggy on a rasp all the time. Plus from time to time memory would clog up and the instance would stop functioning. Haven’t had any issues since upgrading to the nuc. It just works and I migrated all devices to USB radios. So Bluetooth, Zigbee, zwave, serial power meter, serial heat meter, serial ups, everything just connects without hubs or anything.
Would definitely recommend! Just get a cheap second hand one on eBay or so.
I didn’t, but because the pi already worked fine and didn’t have many addons running. I have since introduced tailscale, diyhue, frigate without a tpu, etc and the nuc has been rock solid (even with 4gb of RAM and a Celeron J3455).
I think it comes down to what addons you run and what type of storage you use (if you’re using an SD card on your pi, you might want to boot from an SSD instead). Also if your zigbee dongle is old like the Nortek one, you might see improvements in responsiveness when upgrading to a zigbee 3.0 stick.
I have a newer ZigBee 3.0 dongle and run a few add-ons, but nothing big - z2m, nodered, mosquito is all I use. I will upgrade anyway, but I’m not in a hurry, it works fine, apart from an occasional delay in switching, which might be network related.
Just wondering how you set up the Hue bulbs, did you need any workarounds or the bridge? Do they just link up to the dongle?
I have about two dozen Hue bulbs paired to my Sonoff Zigbee stick using Zigbee2MQTT. No workarounds or Hue hub necessary.
Any ZigBee device should just be able to pair with the dongle directly and no other settings or hardware is necessary. Check out the https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/ , find the particular device/bulb/switch and read the setup steps. If it has any quirks, it will be listed there. If not, you can be sure it will work without issues. I have a lot of Ikea tradfri bulbs, switches and also cheap Chinese devices such as tuya, they all work without issues.
I don’t see any B22/Bayonet Hue colour bulbs that are supported, but other kinds like E27 are there. Is there something about B22 bulbs that’s different? All but 1 of my bulb sockets are B22
Wouldn’t know, I only have Ikea bulbs. Those all work. But I think hue is better, since Ikea ones don’t dim very low, whereas I’ve heard Hue ones dim very low. Maybe give the b22 ones a Google search?
I’ve asked in the discord, if I can’t use hue b22 bulbs it’s not an issue, but I would prefer them due to their quality, even though they are more expensive.
I have a combination of Lidl and ikea bulbs. The Lidl have lasted a couple of years, and are a bit ropey, plus you can’t get them when you want them (in the UK at least).
The ikea bulbs have been better, so far, and you can get hold of them a lot easier.
Both are connnected via a sonoff usb dongle and zha.
I have 4 of the Sengled multicolored LED bulbs, 2 inside and 2 outside. They’re pretty decent and interface directly with HA through to ZHA Add-on. The lights are toggle-able through dumb switches and restore their last state after a power interrupt, so you could even use them in place of dumb bulbs too.
The color spectrum is a little “green” for my liking, and while the light output is adequate, I think Philips is brighter but not enough so to justify the added cost. I like dimmer lighting anyway.
The indoor bulbs are in table lamps that we just leave on. Sometimes the wife or kid space out and turn the lamp off by its switch, but they’re getting better about using the app once I published a simple control panel-like dashboard for them.
The outdoor lights are in coach lamp fixtures fro t and back, fed by dumb switches. I just taped those switches off with white vinyl tape as a reminder not to toggle them, but in a punch, we can control them like normal bulbs.
I like the smart-bulb-dumb-switch paradigm because my strategy for home automation is to never give up local, manual control over the fixtures. I also have dumb bulbs on smart switches, but the smart switches still work as regular switches without the HA controller. I specifically design around those “server is hard down” failure modes, and won’t use ANTTHING that needs a cloud connection. I view Home Auto as an augmentation for my experience at home, more a convenience thing than a necessity. It all has to fail usable, or it doesn’t pass muster.
tl;dr: Sengled bulbs and ZHA have been solid performers for me for a good price and adequate functionality & reliability.
Welcome to Home Assistant. If you are starting out it’s best to start small, pick a particular room or two you think would benefit from smart features and go from there.
I have tried a few of the IKEA bulbs and they have worked OK. For lighting however I much prefer to to use smart relays or smart switches. The problem with smart bulbs is they don’t play nicely with dumb switches, and they depend too much on a working HA instance.
If a smart bulb is turned off by a dumb light switch, it can’t be turned back on via Zigbee - because dumb switch cuts all power to the bulb including the Zigbee chip. Likewise, if you turn a smart bulb off via HA and then HA breaks, it’s going to be difficult to turn the smart bulb back on until HA is back up and running.
Smart relays and smart switches avoid both these problems. They still function normally as physical switches, and will function independently even when HA is down. The main downside is these require minor electrical wiring work to fit, so consult and electrician if you are comfortable with that.
My current favourites are the SONOFF ZBMINI smart relay and Samotech SM232 smart dimmer switch. The latter is one of the few UK style smart dimmer switches available (I am assuming you are in the UK as you linked to Amazon UK and mention bayonet fitting bulbs). I prefer to only use smart bulbs in lamps etc for secondary or accent lighting.
Another option for lamps is to use smart plugs, IKEA, SONOFF and Smarthings Uk smart plugs have all worked well for me.
I think long term using relays and switches is what I want to do, but I live in a rented house so I can’t go changing the electricals in the wall.
I’ll buy a few and practice wiring them up though.
Ah sorry, I didn’t think that you might be renting.
A few people I know have also recommended Aurora AOne range for smart lights. They have a mixture of Zigbee and Bluetooth bulbs and other smart devices. Bluetooth is another good option for local control - especially if paired it ESPHome Bluetooth Proxies to extend range. I don’t have any Aurora lights personally but I have recently purchased some of their smart sockets and they have been great quality devices so far.
I use the Hue Bulbs you can block all outside network traffic in your router and the hue bridge will continue to work. I have see that the bulbs will work without the hub too but I have not tried that.
I’ve switched from LIFX to IKEA bulbs, I’ve found them to be cheaper and more reliable.
Did the LIFX globes cause you problems? I’ve heard quite a few people talk about issues with them, but I seem to have no, or very few problems with them.
Five of them failed and I had to throw them out. I’ve still got some that are working fine but I’m not buying any more.
I’ve actually replaced most of them with Shelly 1L smart relays so I can control the lights regardless of the switch status. This way it doesn’t matter whether I use smart globes or not I can still turn the lights on/off from my Home Assistant dashboard.
fwiw the hue hub is reliable and has some nice features. it’s also not too chatty online and you can block it from the internet and everything still works great.
i use a zigbee dongle and a hue hub
You could migrate the hue hubs to the Zigbee USB. I managed to get some of the oldest to connect after a struggle. But it works like a charm.
You could migrate the hue hubs to the Zigbee USB. I managed to get some of the oldest to connect after a struggle. But it works like a charm.
yeah i have some bulbs through the hubs and some on the zigbee stick. for awhile actually had all of them on the zigbee stick but things were slowing down, so moved back. Been using HA for a long time now and IMO there’s no bad option from a setup perspective with hue.
