Can the Phillips Hue (zigbee) bulbs be paired and controlled with the VeraPlus without having the Hue’s Hub?
I don’t believe it would work. The philips hue uses a proprietary zigbee stack which the vera does not support. This is the fundamental problem with the early days of zigbee where every vendor was creating its own stack causing divergence and lack on inter compatibility. The stack is a translation layer between the RF signal and the endpoint (a variable you can see from an API).
This got better only after the release of the HA1.2 stack (which vera supports). The bulb may work for on/off but not for color control for example.
Thank you for that information.
I ordered a couple hue bulbs and will see if it works without the hub.
If I don’t at least get the on/off functionality, then I will get the Hue’s hub.
Excellent. Please post your findings then please.
proprietary zigbee stack - not a problem for Philips and Ikea interoperation, but a problem for Ezlo/Vera.
Hi,
As of last year the Hue hub supports ZigBee 3.0 that brings the Light Link and Home Automation versions together. That is why the Hub can have motion sensors and all that now. Not sure the bulbs are ZigBee 3.0 already, not easy to find info on that.
But, I doubt Vera does ZigBee 3.0. I think they are stuck on the HA 1.2 spec and that does not do lights. (looking at the Vera Specs on the site)
So, no. Vera cannot substitute for a Hue Hub.
Cheers Rene
This is only because ikea decided to use another proprietary protocol which is compatible with the Philips one (aka Zigbee Light Link). It reinforces the incompatibility issues between Zigbee protocols… This is why also ikea is selling their own hubs.
Zigbee LL/ZigBee HA.
Implementation of small set of ZigBeeLL profiles, is not a rocket sciense.
Everyone is not keeping up, only Vera is marching correctly.
If devices sold by Ikea, Philips, Osram, Xiaomi etc - it’s a REAL standart.
For 5 years ago, “Ikea not compatible with Vera”, for now - “Vera - incompatible with:
Ikea
Xiaomi
Philips
Osram
Salus
Legrand (ok, Legrand real problem)
Innr
Samsung (not sure)
Paul Neuhaus
Trust
Zemismart
Calex
and many, many, many”
So am I understanding correctly that, armed with an ezlo Plus or Atom, there is nothing I can do to control a Phillips Hue bulb unless I have the Phillips Hue hub as a go-between?
I have not tried Hue bulbs but Ezlo Plus works with Ikea and Innr without any extra hubs so I can’t see why it shouldn’t work with Hue as well.
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It should work, but you’ll loose the ability to update fw.
This thing that fw is updatable only with the hubs is one of things that sucks in the Zwave and zigbee world.
So I just add them as a generic Zigbee device?
Yes, the interviewing process takes care of the rest.