Hue Control Devices like the motion sensor--do these work with ST?

If I buy Friends of Hue stuff, like the motion sensor, and connect it to the Hue Bridge, can ST access those?

I know from reading these forums that the Hue ecosystem is not directly compatible as it uses ZLL and ST uses ZHA (but bulbs directly connected to ST can revert to ZHA with some quirks), but ST can also access the ZLL mesh over the Hue Bridge with a LAN protocol.

I just wonder how this applies to non-bulbs, ie. I can’t imagine that a motion sensor would use the ZLL profile, even when connected to the Hue Bridge. But the bridge is supposedly ZLL only. One of these sentences are probably false.

1 Like

ZLL is supposed to fall back to ZHA when connected to a certified ZHA coordinator, which the SmartThings hub is.

That doesn’t always mean things will work smoothly, though.

There is a community created device type handler for the Phillips hue motion sensor, and it’s working well for some people, but other people are finding that the when used in this way, the hue motion sensor keeps falling off of the network every few days. :disappointed_relieved:

So it’s not guaranteed to work with smart things, and it’s not officially supported by either Hue or SmartThings when used in this manner, but you can give it a try if you want.

Another option is just to use it as a parallel means of control. You join the Hue motion sensor to the hue bridge like normal. You set it up to turn on your Hue lights through that bridge. Smartthings gets the hue bridge heartbeat about every five seconds, so it will know shortly when a Hue light came on. And you could use that light coming on to trigger other smart things events if you want, but with that potential delay.

We have this set up at my house with HomeKit. What happens when you go into a room is that the table lamps come on first (hue bulbs) and then the overhead lights come on a few seconds later. It works fine for us, but I know there are other people who wouldn’t like the zone separation effect.

So really, just depends on exactly how you want to use it. And whether you want to try the beta device type handler or not.

So does this mean that the Philips motion sensor is actually ZLL? I thought that’s reserved for light bulbs only.

Both the Phillips hue dimmer switch and the Phillips hue motion sensor are ZLL devices. :sunglasses: The profile is not restricted just to bulbs, there are some control devices as well. They have to be able to operate without a coordinator and use touch link commissioning.

https://www.nxp.com/documents/user_manual/JN-UG-3091.pdf

AlSo, just for clarity, we should note that the Phillips hue motion sensor and the Phillips hue dimmer switch are not considered “friends of hue” devices. That’s actually a completely separate category, for devices which are certified to work with the hue bridge. Smartthings is a “friend of Hue,” as are Amazon echo and google home.

The Phillips hue dimmer switch and the Phillips hue motion sensor are ZLL devices that are “hue controls.” :sunglasses::bulb:

Ah, sorry, I messed up the terminology, I’ll try to rename the topic. Thanks for your answer!

1 Like

No problem, the terminology changes frequently anyway. :wink:

Hi joco

Thank you for creating and publishing this device manager. I have managed to install it, but I cannot add a device. Whenever I attempt to save a new device, I receive the following error
Oh No! Something Went Wrong!

Error 500: Internal Server Error
URI /device/save
Reference Id e33e384d-6621-403c-9fa6-3a4d21f61ab8
Date Wed Jun 14 19:07:40 UTC 2017

Do you have any idea what might be wrong?

Michael

Update: I have solved the problem in my previous message. I now need to know what to enter for the various values so that I can add the Hue Multi-Sensors into the monitored devices.

Properties are:

Name: I assume this can be anything I wish.
Label: I assume this can be anything I wish.
Zigbee Id: Is this required and if so, how do I figure out what it is?
Device Network Id: I think that this is the device MAC address and sub-address. The multi-sensors have a base MAC address and then each have a sub address which is appended. So one of my devices has an address like this: 00:17:88:01:02:02:38:2f-02-0402 where -02-0402 represents the sub-address for the motion sensor component. So my guess is that I need to use the MAC address component only. Or do I use the sub-addresses and then, do I have to add temperature and Lux components individually?
Type:Drop down - Select Hue Motion Sensor
Version: Drop Down - Self published results in a 500 error. Is this expected?
Hub: Drop Down - Select my hub
Group: Drop Down. I do not have any groups set up, so I leave this empty

Setting things up as I have outlined above allow me to Add and Save a device, which I think is a good thing. The problem is that I do not see any events showing up. What else do I need to do to have the devices monitored?

Any help with this will be greatly appreciated.

Michael