Lots of great info in the community and have been reading a lot of the posts. Appreciate everybody who contributes. Have a couple questions that seem to find different info. Would be great to get some ideas (or don’t do this it doesn’t work) on the following topics:
Set-up:
Currently there are about 65 hue bulbs split across 2 hue hubs. Currently on brilliant and looking to move away from their platform. Have a Hubitat installed. Will add a homebridge to support things like Big Ass Fans.
The current thought is to replace all the Brilliant switches and panels to Inovelli Smart switch’s, the smart button and presence (when they become available)
And now for the questions:
The pro’s/cons of staying on the hue hubs or direct binding, happy to try each config and see if the latency is noticeable. Wondering if in grouped configurations if it really matters? Understand that direct has the least risk of failure as it’s not reliant on anything else. Also looks like via the Inovelli programming in Hubitat the colors can be controlled/changed if desired. (In reality we find we don’t end up changing the colors much)
Several instances of 3-Way control of a group of smart bulbs. Based on the existing system the wiring isn’t an issue, its already in a mode with a single switch on the load, the travelers are out of the circuit and the other switches are synced. Haven’t been able to find a solid answer to having multiple smart switches controlling a group of smart bulbs and having them all stay in sync with each other. Having them be able to Dim. Saw that if they are directly bound that all seems to work, but haven’t found how you bind them and connect to multiple switches. Saw that you can make a group in Hubitat (already done) and then connect the switches to the group. Do they automagically stay in sync and the LED bar shows the correct level?
We have become accustomed to having an app on our iPhone to be able to get to all the lights and turn things on/off if desired. Everything is going to be in Hubitat from a lighting standpoint. Homebridge appears to be a good solution to bring other things into Hubitat or HomeKit for control. The dashboards in Hubitat seem functional but not overwhelmingly amazing. Apple Home may be a good solution and bring everything to that as a user interface. Any thoughts/suggestions?
Appreciate any thoughts/suggestions. Also tried this and it didn’t work that way so i don’t go down a path somebody already spent time on.
I have a Hue bridge integrated through Hubitat and am using Inovelli switches/dimmers (of various models, not all Zigbee) controlling Hue bulbs through Hubitat, and I don’t notice much latency or mind what little there is at all. Most of that really comes from waiting for the switch to realize I’m not doing a multi-tap, which is going to be the case no matter how you have them set up. But others have different opinions. These aren’t the only devices I have controlling Hue lights from Hubitat; most of the time, my lighting is automated with motion, so I don’t even use these as much as some others might; and I also have other devices like Lutron Pico remotes integrated from RA2 into Hubitat and then to Hue (so from the Pico over ClearConnect to the RA2 Main Repeater, from there over my LAN to Hubitat, from there over my LAN to Hue, and from there over Zigbee to the bulbs), and even then it’s hard for me to image it being much faster.
The biggest concern here for some may be that if your hub goes down, you lose this control. That isn’t a big deal for me, as I find the hub reliable, plus there are other ways to control Hue lights — the Hue mobile app or Hue accessories I have like the Tap or Dimmer.
You can control the LED bar on the switch/dimmer, assuming that’s what you mean with “color,” no matter how you have the above set up, however. In your case, it seems like the only way you could add the device is via Hubitat (they cannot pair directly to a Hue Bridge network), so the question from there is whether you integrate the Hue Bridge into Hubitat and control things that way (like me) or pair the Hue bulbs as Zigbee devices directly to Hubitat (necessary for binding if you want that — they have to be on the same network).
Someone else would probably be better suited to answer the questions about binding since I don’t use it.
Homebrige cannot bring things into Hubitat (at least not without other workarounds, like virtual devices on the hub and automations in HomeKit to gain at least some functionality). It’s one way to get Hubitat devices out and exposed to Apple Home, though it may not be necessary since there is a built-in HomeKit integration on Hubitat that can handle most devices. But if you have devices that work with Homebridge and devices from Hubitat exposed to HomeKit and you want them all to be controlled via the Apple Home app (or Siri, etc.), that would certainly be one way to make that all happen. Then no one besides maybe you needs to use the Hubitat app or any dashboard from Hubitat. But there are a lot of ways you can do something like this!
There are a couple ways you can do this, and I suspect I do the less common approach. I don’t care to see the light levels reflected in the LED bar — I figure I can see that perfectly fine myself by observing the lights themselves. I use the LED bar exclusively as a status for things in my home, such as mode (normally) or open doors/locks (if that is the case).
But if you want the LED bar to reflect status, you have to enable smart bulb mode on the Inovelli switch and then either use the switch/dimmer itself to send level events out to your Hue bulbs (and control the Inovelli switch dimmer, either directly from the wall or via commands from your hub, instead of the Hue bulbs directly — if you want to keep this in sync) or send setLevel() to the Inovelli switch after something representative of your Hue bulbs (e.g., a group or maybe an individual bulb level) changes if you want to mirror things the other way.
In my case, I just use the button events on the Inovelli devices to send commands to the Hue bulbs (on with a tap up, off with a tap down, start level change up/down with a hold up/down, stop level change with release – plus activating scenes with multitaps and my fan with the config button). I wonder if me using these events instead of waiting for switch or level state to get reported back to the Inovelli switch/dimmer from physical changes and then automating based on that is saving me from the “delays” other people notice. In my case, I could still mirror the level back to the switch based on an automation from a Hue bulb (when that changes, likely with a tiny bit of delay since that information would have to come in first and get parsed), but again, this isn’t something I do.
As for how to control multiple Hue bulbs, you can pretty much do whatever you want, all depending on how you have the automation on Hubitat (or binding) set up. I’d prefer Hue groups over Hubitat groups for this (fewer commands all around), but unless you’re trying to do a lot at once, either way should work (Hue groups are better if you are).
To create automations like me, you’d probably use Button Controller. I wrote a custom app called Dimmer Button Controller that I use instead, which I think makes this kind of setup easier, but there’s no reason you need it (especially for devices that natively support mulit-taps). To create automations like others might, the Mirror app might be the most helpful, though pretty much any rule-type app could also do something similar.
I don’t use Button Controller (I wrote a custom app for this purpose instead), so I can’t do that, but the basic idea would be something like button 1 pushed (a tap up) turns on the lights, button 1 held (a tap down) turns them off, and so on. Inovelli’s button/event mapping in their driver is a bit weird, so watch logs or the device detail page to see what is happening as you perform real-world actions if that or the driver docs are confusing.
A Hue group is likely to work better here, at least if you have more than a few lights you’re trying to control at the same time – fewer commands from the hub to the Hue Bridge and from the Bridge to your actual Hue Zigbee network.
I use the LED bar exclusively as a status for things in my home, such as mode (normally) or open doors/locks (if that is the case).