Blue Series Smart Bulb Mode Syncing

Switches General Discussion
1

I have a blue series 2-1 dimmer. I have it in smart bulb mode and I did a direct binding with 6 hue downlights.

The direct binding works great when controlling from the switch: on/off and dimming control works great from the switch. I have two problems though:

  1. I have the default_level_local setting set to 254, which makes it so the switch goes directly to 100% when turned on, regardless of what the dim level was when the switch was turned off. However, when the bulbs were dimmed when the switch was turned off, they stay at that level when the switch is turned back on. The light bar on the switch shows 100%, but it seems like it’s not sending a 100% dim level to the bulbs. Is there any way to fix that? It seems like a firmware bug maybe? I’m on 0x01020212.

  2. The next problem I’m guessing is a limitation on direct binding, but I’m curious if anyone has a solution. In Home Assistant, I have the 6 bulbs grouped together into a Group, which lets me control the color, on/off, and dim level as a group. I noticed however that the switch’s on/off indicator and light bar don’t change when I change the bulbs directly. I had (maybe wrongly?) assumed that the direct binding would make it so the bulbs send a message back to the switch when they change state. I’m not sure what the switch would/should do if some of the bulbs were on while others were off or if the dim levels didn’t match, but I was hoping with the common case of them all matching, that the switch would update its indicator to match the bulbs. If that’s not possible with direct binding, I guess I could set up a home assistant automation to sync them up, but wanted to check if there’s anything I might be missing first.

Thanks for any help!

2

Instead of using a Home Assistant group, use a Zigbee group and then bind the switch to the Zigbee group instead. To get the light bar to sync, include endpoint 1 from the switch in the Zigbee group. You’ll then want to only give commands to the Zigbee group from Home Assistant (it’ll show up as another light).

3

Thank you for the tip! That did solve problem #2 for me. Problem #1 remains though: if the bulbs were dimmed prior to turning off, the light bar shows 100% when turned back on, but the bulbs stay dimmed. Does default_level_local just not work when the switch is in smart mode?

4

Ah, I found Blue Series bound to Hue defaultLevel ignored - by changing binding_off_to_on_sync_level from its default (false) to true, it fixed problem #1 as well. Thanks for the help!

5

Yep, that’s the solution. Completely skipped over that problem when reading your original post.

6

Ah, actually, I still have a problem. I’m using GitHub - Hypfer/hass-scene_presets: Hue-like scene presets for lights in home assistant to set scenes on my hue bulbs. If I point that at the group device (light.silicon_labs_ezsp_porch_hue in my case), it sets all of the bulbs to the same color. For the scenes to work, it sets each bulb to a different color, which only works if I give it the individual bulb entities or the home assistant helper group entity.

Is there any way I can individually address each bulb while still having the light bar match?

7

Not that I know of. Since the bulbs don’t bind back to the switch (or the group) and are set to different brightnesses.