Hi Guys,
thank’s for support!!!
i’m a new homey users and i would like add Philips HUE system to homey, but question is:
better to add HUE philips bridge so i can control light etc from this integration…
or…
connect HUE philips lump directly ?
differents?
interoperability with flow?
thanks and sorry for my english…
Marco
It is personal. I use the bridge. Apparently it has a better range than Homey. Also, firmware updates happen with Hue (not so much with Innr for example). Homey cannot install these updates. I like to connect my switches to lights in Hue instead of Homey. It would mean a lot of flows if I move everything to Homey.
A reason to connect to Homey directly is if you want a single mesh network for all your Zigbee devices (Hue and others). Another reason might be if you dont want to share/send data to Philips, you don have to use the bridge. Last but not least: Homey can function without internet, whereas the Hue app requires your bridge to be connected tot the internet.
Homey z-wave/zigbee wireless performance is not very good at best - which is why there is a gigantic “modify your homey antenna” thread…
I tried Hue first through Homey - nothing but trouble.
I then bought the Hue Bridge - and it just works. Never miss a beat.
I sold the bridge…and I had to buy it back for different reasons (compatibility of the Outdoor Motion Sensor, scene management, update of Hue devices, etc.). Homey’s goal is clearly not to use bridges, but for Philips Hue I strongly recommend the bridge. I speak after several months of experience.
Thanks to all, i just integrate HUE Bridge into Homey , and all works fine without any issue…
Marco
Hi @MarcoZ and others,
I’m curious if everything is still working good? I ask this because I’m willing to think to put the Philips Hue bridge in my storage and use Homey. Only I don’t know if I got still use the app of Philips with the scene ect.
What is your experience with the direct connection with Homey so far and can you still use the Philips app or do you need to do everything now by the Homey app or in combination with flows?
The reason why I maybe want to put it in storage is that there are to many hubs that are needed to connect to internet with or without cable for smart home stuff to work, like Tado.
Tado also needs a hub to connect with Homey and there are more devices like this. I want to put all devices that can talk directly with Homey away from there hubs to connect them directly with Homey instead of a hub from that brand.
The only down side I still think there is that the big integration that Homey wants to be has failed in my opinion because of terms from different brands and the different hubs that are still necessary before the product will work.
You’ll need to do everything in Homey then.
I’m about to move stuff back to the bridge(s) and simply use flows to make different stuff talk to eachother, like a nice z-wave switch to actuate something that turns off all lights from different systems on different bridges.
Not being an experienced homey user myself, it just feels like making hundres of flows to barely be able to do what a Hue bridge does out of the box seems a wee bit redundant just to avoid running a few extra hubs. But maybe that’s just me.
I have recently set up Homey and am using both methods for Hue devices. One thing I have noticed is that the latency for triggering flows from a Hue motion sensor is a few seconds more when using the Hue bridge compared with using Homey’s own Zigbee network. I have found a few references to this, e.g. here: Hue bridge delay .
The implication seems to be that the Hue bridge API does not support callbacks (e.g. webhooks) when events occur such as motion sensing to send a notification of the event to an API client. So instead the Homey Hue app has to poll the Hue bridge every couple of seconds to check the current status of each Hue device. This is both slower and wasteful of Homey resources (I expect the app uses a lot of processing resources to keep polling and processing the responses).
For a motion sensor in a room with no windows that is used to activate the light, it’s important that it activates very quickly, otherwise the person will be in the dark. It seems to take about 4 - 5 seconds on the Hue bridge which is too much. When I moved it to the Homey directly, it takes maybe 1 - 2 seconds which is OK.
Can anyone confirm this is expected behaviour? If so it’s something to bear in mind when choosing between the two.
I’ve also read that it’s about the polling, with no callback system on the Hue bridge that’s what you’re left with unfortunately.
I was planning to do some tests with having mainly switches and motion sensors etc directly on the homey (albeit with a few needed routers involved so it has any chance of actually working)…
My issue with switches, and especially so dimmers, being to the homey is that it’s very painful, if at all possible, to do stuff like hold-to-dim/brighten which’ll just work out of the box using a Hue hub or Ikea hub for those lights. And I kind of like to be able to do that easily.
I have not seen delays when both the switch (Hue) and lamp are managed by the Hue hub.
I have seen a 2 seconds max delay when the switch (Xiaomi) is managed by Homey, and the lamp by Hue. I suppose the speed/quality of your WIFI and Zigbee networks have a lot of impact on the delay.
If you switch on a light through the official Hue app (in other words, not through Homey), how long (on average) before Homey will show the updated state?
“0” to 3 seconds here. Of course not 0, but most of the time it’s very quick.
I have not seen delays when both the switch (Hue) and lamp are managed by the Hue hub.
Yes that is to be expected, because the logic within the Hue Bridge is fully event-driven, so when the motion sensor signal is received by the Bridge, it immediately triggers the relevant action (turning on a lamp). The problem is that it does not offer this “trigger” to external clients such as a Homey app, so the Homey app must poll instead.
I have seen a 2 seconds max delay when the switch (Xiaomi) is managed by Homey, and the lamp by Hue.
Again that’s a different situation, because Homey is managing the switch and initiating the trigger so no polling required.
I suppose the speed/quality of your WIFI and Zigbee networks have a lot of impact on the delay.
It could do, but I think it should only be noticeable if the network is sufficiently bad to often require multiple retries to send a signal and receive the ack. In this case you would expect the trigger to sometimes be missed altogether, so sometimes it’s slow, sometimes it doesn’t work at all.
