In the upcoming renovation I’m planning to install a number of Philips Hue recessed lights. My goal is to have them controlled by Inovelli switches. What would be the most reliable setup for such combination?
In one of the posts @Eric_Inovellimentioned that there is an integration coming between Inovelli switches and Philips Hue bridge. Is it available or should I wait for it?
Because Inovelli switches are Z-wave based and Philips lights are Zigbee, it seems like I may need a bridge that would receive Z-wave command and translate it into Zigbee. I already have a very basic setup of Home Assistant, so can potentially use that. But I was wondering if that’s the ideal setup.
Any thoughts / ideas and past / present experience are welcomed. Thanks in advance!
I have a Inovelli Dimmer switch along with 4 Hue Bulbs. They work as normal, but i have the Hue Bridge, connected to Smart things, and Alexa controls them by voice. I can manually turn them on and off through the switch, or i can tell Alexa to turn them on, off, or dim them. The only issue that i have is, when i tell alexa to DIM the lights, she also Dims the LED Bar on the switch. It doesnt bother me, but its because Alexa doesnt recognize the switch as an actual switch, it recognizes it as a bulb.
Quick FYI, if you are programming your room to be controlled by Alexa and the switch is part of that, make sure that you change the name to something that you will want to say. I had the HARDEST time, almost giving up on using the switch, because the lights would not DIM, or would not turn on and off. Its the way that Alexa sets it up, it is not the switch (Although, i still dont understand why Alexa thinks it is a bulb, and not a swtich)
Also, FYI…There is a slight buzz when the lights are not at 100%. It only comes from one light, and i dont understand why. The other 3 all function with no buzz when dimmed. That will be my next project.
Overall, i am OK with the setup. It works as it should. I havent spent anymore time trying to adjust the settings because after a month of my wife giving my grief about “the stupid light switches”, i am leaving it alone to function as i need it to right now.
My entire house is also Hue bulbs. I love them. They arent the color ones, but rather just the white spectrum ones. I also LOVE my inovelli switches. I love the LED bar and that i can see when i have a door opened, because the notification blinks red. Helpful when i am in bed and i dont want to get up and walk through the house to check all the doors. Definitely recommend both
This is because in order to allow color changes of the LED bar, they had to expose it as a light. That way you can say “Alexa, change the color of Dining Room Dimmer to yellow” and it would work.
I also have moved from ST to HA for my z-wave stuff due to ST reliability with 20+ z-wave devices. HA is MUCH more equipped to handle such a task with proper hardware (really anything with 2+ cores and 2+ GB RAM is going to be plenty.
I currently control my zigbee lights via ST though, as it still seems to work really reliably. So my current path is:
Z-Wave --> HA (server) --> ST --> Zigbee Lights.
Round trip takes about 750ms.
Caveat: If internet goes down ST will not work. I switch to manual operation of the switch (7 config clicks) if it’s out for a longer time. Usually we are 99.9% reliable though.