Hue Bridge: use it or connect directly to Homey?

Questions & Help
1

Hey all,

As of today I’ve moved into my new home. I’m still working on putting Hue and Tradfri lights everywhere and some dumb light bulbs will be controlled by a smart zigbee rotary dimmer.

I’m still not sure whether to connect my Hue and Tradfri lights to the Hue bridge or to connect them to Homey directly.
Im still in version 4.2.0 on Homey.

Ive searched the forums and found this post (it is in Dutch), but it’s a rather old post: HUE bridge of niet - #40 by sierk_van_der_veen

The benefits of connecting them to Homey are, in my opinion, providing a better zigbee mesh (I want to use some aqara sensor in the future so they need a good mesh) and having one app/controller for all your lighting.

The benefits of connecting them to the Hue Bridge are the ability to use the Hue scenes, easier setup of flows (I read you need less flows if you want to dim lights or change scenes).

What are your experiences? And what about people who use Homey V5, did it change your opinion on using the Homey zigbee mesh?

Hope you can help a Homey newbie out.

The Fops

3

I can only recommend connecting directly to Homey after upgrading to v5. The latest rc’s are superstable and Zigbee is a whole lot better than in v4.
Please make sure all your apps are v5 compatible before upgrading. If so, I can only recommend v5.

If you connect them now to the Hue bridge, you would have to redesign all those flow when you are upgrading to v5 in the future. And there can be a lot by then.

Also; Athom has said here the final version of v5 is coming soon.
(I know, we heard that before from them, but it really seems the case now).
Meanwhile, rc50 is a very well working version!

@RoyWissenburg:
You might wanna consider translating your reply to English. The topic is in the English section (although the title is in Dutch. Perhaps @TheFops might want to change that too, before the mods are awake on sunday) . :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

@RoyWissenburg thanks for your reply. Another big benefit I thought of is to be able to update the firmware of the bulbs with the Hue Bridge. I think I cannot do that if I use Homey zigbee?

@Henk_Renting I’m leaning towards using Homeys zigbee. How do you use scenes in Homey?
And thanks for the heads up on the title. I started this thread in Dutch but then I thought if I start it in English, more people can read and learn from it. :grinning:

Edit: how can I see that there’s a V5 version of an app? I thought if I put ‘/test’ behind the URL of the app I could see it, but if I look at the Tado app I don’t get a notification that it is in an experimental phase. Is the Tado app supported?

5

And then you went back to Dutch… :wink:

In Homey you don’t use “scenes”. They’re called “Flows” and can do quite the same. But have to be made in Homey.

Tado is supported in v5; use it myself too.
You might wanna check out this thread:

6

Unless you use Hue scenes from Homey, which is what @RoyWissenburg was referring to.

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7

@Henk_Renting It’s hard for me to switch from Dutch to English apparently :rofl:

I know that you use flows within Homey. But I want to know if I can store the settings of the lights and recall them using a flow.

8

Yes u can!

9

Ah, didn’t know about that app. I think I’m gonna give V5 a try and start connecting my bulbs directly through homey.

Is there any way I can update the firmware if I’m not using the Hue Bridge?

10

Nope.

11

Is there any privacy risk if I’m not updating the firmware?

12

I dunno about future privacy updates.