I just bought a Homey on Wednesday and have been playing around with it and configuring it for the past two days. Now I’ve had issues with two devices (new, never used before), the Aqara FP300 presence sensor and the IKEA SYMFONISK Remote Control (gen 1).
The FP300 (Zigbee) seems to lose connection pretty much immediately after successfully adding it to Homey, even though I place it (just for testing) less than 50 cm away from my Homey Pro. In Thread mode, it seems to work fine, but it is not useful for my use case, because I lose the two separate sensors (motion and presence).
The SYMFONISK remote (Zigbee) is added successfully to Homey. So I create a simple flow to test it: When pressed once, turn light X on. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. There is no way for me to check whether it is still connected to the Homey or it has lost connection.
Now I noticed the app telling me it would be advantageous to add a plugged-in Zigbee device to extend the network before adding battery-powered devices. So here are my two questions:
Is it just recommended or actually compulsory to have one plugged-in Zigbee device (in addition to the Homey Pro) in order to have battery-powered Zigbee devices working? Or are both of my battery-powered Zigbee devices just faulty?
My apartment is full of Hue bulbs, but, if I understand correctly, they are still running via my Hue hub because I just added them with the “Philips Hue” Homey app and didn’t remove them from my Hue hub before. That means the Hue bulbs form a Zigbee network which isn’t usable by Homey devices, correct? If so, would it make more sense to remove the Hue hub and add all bulbs to Homey to have a very well spread-out Zigbee network through my entire home (and, hopefully, being able to use my battery-powered Zigbee devices eventually)? Would I lose some functionality for the Hue bulbs?
Reliable Zigbee communication depends on a strong Zigbee network.
If you only have a limited number of battery powered Zigbee devices that are within direct reach (a few meters) of your Homey, then that should work.
If those devices are spread throughout your home and need to overcome greater distances or obstacles (like walls), then you would typically need to add mains powered devices (like a smart plug or smart bulb), that act as Zigbee routers. They extend the Zigbee network and allow other Zigbee devices to communicate to Homey through them.
If the bulbs are connected to the Hue hub, then that hub uses a separate Zigbee network that cannot be merged with Homey’s Zigbee network. Connecting those bulbs directly with Homey would indeed extend Homey’s Zigbee network (assuming those bulbs are router devices).
I am not a Hue user myself, so I don’t know if you would lose functionality. You would need to switch to the Hue community app: Philips Hue, without the bridge | Homey which would normally offer the most functionality compared to adding the bulbs as a generic Zigbee device (the other option)
Note that pair devices to Homey can only be done one at a time. You cannot add a whole group of bulbs in one go.
There are separate topics on this forum for Aqara devices as well as for the FP300 sensor. You might want to check those out.
Yes, a lot actually. If your lights and dimmers are all Hue (or generic Zigbee connected via the Hue bridge), then it’s so much easier to set up things like dimming/switching a zone from a Hue dimmer, Hue sensors are easier to configure in the Hue app, the Hue app loads faster and they have more advanced scenes/effects. It saves hours of time compared to having to re-build it in Flows (which also don’t work well for dynamic effects for example).
Yes aim absolut agree with the statement from @smarthomesven …for a few month where i change from HA to Homey i stand for the same decicion, Hue devices directly teach in to Homey or integrate the bridge…the guys here in the forum recommend to go the way over the bridge because there are so many advantages…and they had absolut right! I use over 80 Hue devices and it works great in relation with homey for me, but i must be honest i dont use any other zigbee devices over homey so its no matter for me regarding the different zigbee networks, my all other devices are Matter over Thread.
