Do BTF COB Zigbee LED controllers work with SmartThings? (Might be Tuya)

Devices & Integrations Connected Things
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I purchased COB strip lights with ww, cw, and pos leads on Amazon from a company called BTF. I also bought a controller from the same company:

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I have a SmartThings Hub 3.0, which I cannot get to recognize this controller. The manufacturer suggests a Tuya bluetooth/wifi dual mode gateway, and compatibility with a lot of other things like Echo Plus, Philips HUE and Home Kit.
I am not finding any information on this site for BTF products. I have searched in vain for a controller that specifically works with SmartThings, so I’m not sure whether to stick with what I have, in which case I will need to get some kind of Zigbee hub or gateway that will connect to this controller and figure out an alternative app to use for color tuning and dimming, or to start over with a different controller. Functionality via SmartThings would be ideal, but I’ll settle for anything that works.

2

Can you clarify:

  • can you pair it to your hub but it does not work?
  • or you can’t get it to pair to your hub?
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The lights work, but they blink when powered on. The blinking stops when I push the SET button 4 times as directed to get to pair. In the SmartThings app, I navigate to the add device page and scan for nearby devices (the device does not have a QR code to scan), nothing is detected. For it to work, I will have to add some other kind of hub from the list provided by the manufacturer. I have no idea which of these Zigbee-friendly hubs are most likely to work–now or in the future–with SmartThings.

4

Tuya is a huge device manufacturer, which makes devices which are then rebranded and sold by other companies. There are literally dozens of companies selling tuya made devices, and BTF is just one of those. Sometimes the devices have slightly different firmware, and they typically have a different “fingerprint“ which can make it tricky to get them to work with SmartThings if it’s a fingerprint that has never been added to the existing edge drivers.

How can you tell if it’s a tuya-made device? Usually the product description will mention either a Tuya gateway or the “smartlife“ app. If the device works with either of those, it started life in a Tuya factory.

So
 can you get a Tuya-made Zigbee device to work with SmartThings? Maybe. Tuya uses a lot of proprietary code which then has to be translated into something that SmartThings can understand. The official edge drivers written by Samsung don’t do those translations. But there are some community created edge drivers that can do it for some models (but not all).

And then smartthings has its own layer of proprietary code, which are the edge drivers, so you have to find the right one. And if it doesn’t include the fingerprint of your specific device, you’ll have to get the edge driver author to add it.

Process:

  1. add the device to SmartThings. If it doesn’t add as at least a “Zigbee thing,” there’s a problem with the device itself. It might just need to be reset. But it might be defective: it happens. :man_shrugging:t2:

  2. once you have it added, you need to get the fingerprint (The combination of manufacturer code and model number.) The following FAQ shows you where those fields are. If they happen to be blank or all zeros, the pairing failed, and you will need to pair it again until you see actual numbers/letters in those fields.

FAQ: Manufacturer/Model Shows All Zeroes

  1. now there’s a step specific to Tuya devices. You need to download a community diagnostic tool, the “zigbee thing mc”edge driver.

Follow this link to subscribe to Mariano‘s channel (the “MC“ you will see on a lot of custom drivers are his initials).

https://api.smartthings.com/invitation-web/accept?id=6b68563b-1905-4654-8d2b-e677a2997424

Enroll your hub and then select the “Zigbee thing MC“ edge driver to download it.

  1. switch your device from the standard “Zigbee thing” edge driver to Mariano’s.

FAQ: How to change to a different edge driver

  1. now you will be able to see the “clusters“ that this device supports. If you see EF00 , then it’s using proprietary Tuya clusters. Those are a pain. :disappointed_relieved: You might be able to get it work with the following edge driver, but no guarantees. Read the first post carefully, it has a lot of information you will need.

[ST Edge] Personal Tuya Devices - Generic EF00 Device

Ask any further questions about that edge driver in that author thread.

  1. if you don’t see EF00, Then it might work with a more standard edge driver, but one created by a community member.

So put a request post in the following thread. Read the first post in that thread carefully. Your request needs to include the fingerprint and the list of clusters.

If someone knows of an edge driver that will work with it, or if it just needs to have its fingerprint added to an existing edge driver, a community developer will respond there.

Then you’ll be able to follow the link to that channel and subscribe to that edge driver and hopefully everything will work.

Post Requests for Zigbee Edge Drivers Here (community-created)

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If all of that just seems like too much work (and by the way, one of the issues with the model you have is that it doesn’t have any independent safety certifications, which personally always makes me nervous for something wired into the mains, but some people don’t care), you could just return the one you have, and try an option which does work with SmartThings. Gledopto pro is usually a good choice. But there are some others listed as well in the reviews thread where you originally posted.

ST-compatible RGBW LED Strip Controller Reviews (2023)

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None of them. Smartthings is itself a certified Zigbee hub, and you are only allowed to have one hub per Zigbee network. So if you use the lights with a different Zigbee hub, then you can’t use them with SmartThings, at least not directly.

What you can do is find another Zigbee hub which already has a bridge integration to SmartThings, like the Phillips hue Bridge.

Or find another hub which is also a “matter bridge.” Then bring them in through matter. Aqara has one, Tuya has one (Again, sold under many different brand names, but you can recognize it as Tuya-made because it will be listed as working with the “smart life” app), there are a few others. In most cases, the matter bridges only work with devices of their own brand. So you can’t use an aqara matter bridge to bring in a Tuya light strip controller. Or vice versa.

And note that, as always, the first rule of Home Automation applies: the model number matters. It’s not just any Tuya hub. Only ones which also say they are “matter bridges” (not “matter controllers” – – that’s a different device class).

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6

Have you tried this right next to your hub?

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I actually ordered two of these, so I connected the second one and similarly did not succeed in being recognized by my SmartThings hub. I looked a little more closely at the Gledopto controllers and discovered that this one will work with my CCT light strips despite the ports being marked for multicolored lights, AND they mention ST in the description. Why reinvent the wheel?
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Thanks everybody. I appreciate learning from you guys!

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