Brand new to Smartthings, actually havent even purchased a hub yet as I want to be sure what I’m trying to do will actually work.
Right now I live in an apartment and use Hue bulbs exclusively in all my lamps. I have “Movie Start- Pause - Stop” scenes that I use to turn off/on all my room lights and turn on/off a TV bias light. Works well. Its even integrated into my media playback software (Emby) so these scenes are triggered by the media playback state.
I will be moving to a house soon and will have a combination my Hue bulb lamps but also some recessed lights that I will be controlling with some sort of Z-Wave physical switch.
What I would like to achieve is when I activate my Hue scene, the Z-Wave switch will follow along and turn on/off as well.
Is this easily doable?
Thanks for any tips. Looking forward to getting started with all of this!
I don’t this will work (but I’m happy to be corrected) ST can control Hue but not the other way around, which is what you are requiring.
But instead of a z-wave switch, a zigbee switch might be discoverable by the Hue hub and you don’t need ST.
Another option is a Smartthing scene which a) controls the Hue scene (Sorry, I don’t know if that’s possible - I’ve not tried) and then b) also controls the Zwave devices. But it might be hard to get Emby to control that.
Unfortunately this is not possible, because hue scenes can only include devices connected to the hue bridge. SmartThings, which is what would operate your Z wave switches, does not have any idea that a hue scene has been activated.
There are two possible workarounds depending on the exact details of what you are trying to accomplish each time.
instead of using a Hue scene, build a scene in smartthings. While smartthings is not aware of hue scenes, it is aware of hue bulbs That are connected to the Hue bridge, so you can build a SmartThings scene that includes both hue bulbs and Zwave switches that way.
Because the hue bulbs are visible to smartthings, You can have the switch follow a particular bulb rather than the scene. So bulb turns on, switch turns on; bulb turns off switch turns off. Or you could do only on or on the off. That doesn’t usually fit as many use cases, but some people do find it useful for some situations. I used this method myself A couple of years ago so that when the nightstand light was turned off (a Hue Bulb) After 11 PM, the overhead light (not a Hue device) would also turn off. It happened to fit that particular situation.
So one of those two methods might work for you. But the Hue scenes themselves will not.
Scenario #1 wouldn’t work only because that would break the playback integration I have going with Emby. Right now, Emby monitors playback state and triggers a Hue scene depending on the state of playback. I know there are ways to do this via other software hooks that might better integrate with Smartthings but this current setup is simple and works well so I would be reluctant to give that up and start messing around with alternative ways that has never fully worked for me before.
Scenario #2 might just work as I have the TV bias light that is only used for movie watching so it could be used as the master that the physical switch follows. One question though? I would need it to do the following. Could you tell me if this would/would not work?:
Movie starts - Bias light turns on via Hue Scene. Physical switch TURNS OFF.
Movie pauses - Bias light turns off via Hue Scene. Physical switch STAYS OFF.
Movie stops - Bias light turns off via Hue Scene. Physical switch TRUNS ON.
This is how my Hue scene works now and would love to keep that going.
That setup wouldn’t work because you were trying to have two different things happening when the bias light turns off. That requires being aware of the scene as well, and, as discussed above, smartthings doesn’t know what hue scene is active.
There are a few that use zigbee 3.0 that work and are seen as an on/off switch by the hue bridge. Devices that use ZHA (Zigbee home automation profile) would work with smartthings, but not with the hue bridge.
Nue 3A, RGBgenie, Sunricher, and Gledopto each have some models that would work, but not all of their models.
Also you have to check the specs carefully as some of the micros are designed to operate low-voltage LED strips, not be wired in line to a regular fixture.
And some of the models are only intended to control smart bulbs and don’t actually provide a relay for control of the circuit branch even if they are hardwired. So again you have to read the specs carefully.
And finally, there is a rampant problem with counterfeits of these brands coming out of China so you have to be very careful on the sourcing to make sure you get one with the appropriate safety features.
(GE and Leviton zigbee switches Will work with smartthings, but will not work with the hue bridge.)
So there are a few, but you have to do a lot of homework to make sure you are getting the right one. And you should only buy from places with a good returns policy, as I have heard of multiple instances where someone bought one and the model that was in the box was not the same as the description on the box, it had clearly been switched.
FWIW - I have something vaguely similar, I have hue bulbs in my lounge, behind my TV etc and some ST controlled switches in the adjacent kitchen (kinda open plan) I have a ST scene called ‘TV time’ which turns off all the kitchen lights and makes some changes in the lounge. But I also have the Hue Kodi plugin which I can use the dim/brighten the lounge lights as the movie starts/pauses/stops
Again thanks for the quick responses and all the help guys!
@Tim_Jones, it sounds like we have almost the exact same setup or at least what I will eventually try to set up.
I actually started to write in one of the responses above that why dont I just run 2 activities at the same time but deleted it. Might be the way to go?
Let the Hue Scene activity control the Hue bulbs at movie start/pause/stop as it always has. Have a Smartthings scene handle turning off any of the recessed lights that are hard wired to a zwave switch.
I dont care that the recessed lights turn back on at movie stop. I can do that manually but I would like them to turn off automatically at movie start. Is there way to get that to happen? Couldnt I have this Smartthings scene watch for the one Hue bulb behind my tv to turn on? When TV bias light turns on, activate Smartthings “turn off recessed lights” scene?
I’m sorry, I’m tired right now and I’m not following the details of the last couple of posts. I’ll try to take a look at them later.
You have to check the specs before selecting a switch. In particular, what’s the total wattage of all the recessed lights that are controlled by a single switch?
Many switches can only handle up to 150W of LEDs, although there are some that can go up to 1000. Some of the cheap Chinese made ones can only handle 50.
Note also that the load maximum will be different for incandescent bulbs (“resistive” loads) and LEDs, with it being lower for LEDs, because of inrush surge with non-resistive loads. The physics are just different. So read the specs very carefully.
Both inovelli and zooz are excellent budget switches with good safety ratings from American companies (although manufactured in China). Both have employees Who are active in this community and can answer specific questions. so those two brands are very popular in this community.
