I’m relatively new to home automation, and still new to Home Assistant and smart lighting. I’m not new to computers, but I’ve started to fall into the smart lighting and automation scene pretty quickly!
I’m ready to expand our Hue lighting (I do have a Hue bridge as well) in the house and wanted to take that opportunity to replace switches with ones that can turn the lights on/off but keep them available for app control, etc. This isn’t an unusual use case, I realize.
In doing some searching, I found the thread below:
If I’m reading this correctly, then I can use Home Assistant along with my Inovelli dimmer switch to talk to my Hue lights, correct? However, I’ll need a z-wave receiver/stick, or something on my HA host for this to work, right?
Red series switch (LZW30-SN) or Red series dimmer ( (LZW31-SN)?
You need a zwave stick and install the zwaveJS integration and add-on. How you do that depends on how you run HA. Once it is installed, you add the dimmer and then you can access it in HA. You need to set it to smart bulb mode so that it keeps the load turned on all the time. For basic operation, you can look when the level of the switch changes and match the bulbs to it. Something like this post.
ok - awesome. that was my understanding - just wanted to make sure i wasn’t overcomplicating things or missing something!
so, i would have to move off of my hyper-v implementation (given its issues with usb pass through) or run some sort of workaround or something if i wanted to stay on hyper-v.
would anything change if using the red series dimmer instead of the switch? or, would it just be different config/alias/entities, etc?
yes, i picked up on that in the blue series thread but, it wasn’t clear to me if that was a feature (ability to control hue bulbs ‘natively’) that has made it into the initial release product or not. i certainly hope it did or will!
I’m not sure if the switch will pair directly to hue unless you are NOT using the hue bridge. It still will work locally but might have to go through the Hue hub to work. Not sure how this will all work since hue has their own proprietary hub… If it can be eliminated and the hue bulbs connected directly to the zigbee stick then it will associate (or group, not sure what zigbee is either).
my use case is pretty simple for the switch - it would be a secondary or quick way to control the lights.
now, having said that, i think nearly everyone starts out with a “i just want it to do x” mindset and then it grows from there! which is exactly why i’m planning for the new switches. i know i want it to do something basic today, but, i’m well aware that will likely expand as i do more with home automation down the road…
folks are, at the moment, using a stick and then HA to use existing switches to control Hue lights so i know that’s at least an option.