Hue Dimming Kit

Just announced

2 Likes

The bulb is interesting too, it’s labeled “hue white” and it’s not a Lux.

Not encouraging review on Fortune: “Hue dimmer kit contains a white Lux light, which normally sells for $19.95 and the dimmer kit, which could be used as a remote control or installed as a switch on the wall. The remote is rather bulky and battery-powered. When installed on the wall it wobbles, which makes it feel somewhat cheap. The design and printing on the remote look like a prototype, rather than a finished product, especially when compared with the Lutron gear, which it clearly mimics”

I tried the new Lutron 4-button after the Hue update this morning but no dice. I knew it was highly improbable, but I had to try.

The remote looks interesting to me - I assume it will be able to control SmartThings?

1 Like

I want that remote to work with ST!!!

Make no assumptions with regards to smartthings and handheld remotes. You will only have your heart broken. :disappointed_relieved:

My own assumption would be that it will work like the Hue tap switch: The remote will be able to control the bulbs, but smartthings will be clueless as to what state changes were made, and the device will not be able to control anything else in the smartthings system.

However, I may be wrong, and it may turn out to be more functional. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Cnet’s write up on this was a little more in depth than Engadget. This tidbit is promising concerning the remote:

The same goes for the switch. Pair it with a bridge, and you’ll be able
to customize which lights it turns on and off from within the app, or
put existing Philips Hue products under its control.

That doesn’t mean the ST hub will be able to see the button presses for multiple protocol control, but it will connect to a hub for configuration. Sounds a lot like the Lutron Connected Bulb Remote, and I expect the fingerprint will be almost identical.

2 Likes

I certainly avoid high expectations and assumptions…

But the Specs for the Hue Dimmer Switch say that it, specifically, is ZLL, not some sort of internal proprietary protocol.

What exactly are the interchangeability specifications from the ZigBee Alliance regarding ZigBee HA (SmartThings) and Zigbee Light Link (ZLL) controllers?

I guess we’ve talked a bit about ZLL vs ZHA in several contexts, but this new product is a good reason to revitalize the conversation…

Just as an example, Hue Tap is not proprietary, but is incompatible with SmartThings.

It’s pretty clear this new device uses direct “Zigbee binding” between the remote and the bulbs that it controls. That’s why it doesn’t need a bridge. We just don’t know yet exactly what information it would send something besides a bulb.

When somebody actually has the device, they can play around with it and see what they can get it to do. :sunglasses:

edited because it needed to be. :wink:

1 Like

Has anyone dug into “why not”?

Isn’t ZLL a subset of ZHA… Or, well, there is supposed to be some consolidation of the ZigBee standards as of the next version (?). This is opposed to ZigBee Pro (and a few others), which I think is orthogonal and incompatible with ZigBee HA…

Put another way: It’s hard to understand how SmartThings can directly control a ZLL compatible bulb (GE Link, Hue, Cree (is Cree ZLL?)), but not be able to write a Device Handler for a ZLL based button controller.

@Tyler or @juano2310 may be able to contribute to this conversation?

Ouch! …

:grimacing:

[quote=“tgauchat, post:11, topic:21087, full:true”]

Isn’t ZLL a subset of ZHA… [/quote]

No. You’re probably thinking of communication channels. ZLLuses a subset of the total zigbee channels. ZHA uses more. But the command clusters are different.

[quote=“tgauchat, post:11, topic:21087, full:true”]

Or, well, there is supposed to be some consolidation of the ZigBee standards as of the next version (?). [/quote]

Zigbee 3.0. All profiles in one. But not backwards-compatible.

[quote=“tgauchat, post:11, topic:21087, full:true”]
Put another way: It’s hard to understand how SmartThings can directly control a ZLL compatible bulb (GE Link, Hue, Cree (is Cree ZLL?)), but not be able to write a Device Handler for a ZLL based button controller.[/quote]

Not really. Because it’s not a “button controller” as you know them. It’s a zigbee device which is bound to another device.

If I use a z wave association to associate a motion sensor with a light switch, I can have that light switch turn on anytime there is motion on the motion sensor without having to go to the hub first.

And the hub can turn on the light switch by itself.

But I can’t make the hub trigger the motion sensor and have that turn on the light switch. The hardware just isn’t designed that way.

The open question with this new device is whether instead of having the button causing the event occur on the lightbulb, can I have the hub detect that the button was pressed and then do something?

And the answer is, we just don’t know yet. We have to look at what clusters are supported. It may be possible, it may not.

But it is certainly possible to imagine a controller situation just like the motion sensor and the light switch, where the hub cannot trigger the controller device even though it could cause the same event to occur on the end device.

I’m going to leave it up to others to discuss more details. I’m tired today. :sleeping:v

That’s all you needed to say, JD.

1 Like

Not to disregard @JDRoberts’ reply, but at least in theory, any ZLL device shoul be able to join Zigbee HA network.

The main difference between ZLL and ZHA is that ZLL was designed to operate without Zigbee Coordinator and to enable that, a new network commissioning protocol, called Touchlink, was defined, along with new security mechanism.

However, ZLL spec mandates that all ZLL devices be compatible with HA profile, i.e. they should be able to join network created by Zigbee HA Coordinator. This is why all ZLL lamps should be “compatible” with SmartThings hub. Same should be true for other ZLL devices, including remotes. The question is how to initiate HA network association for a particular device, since there’s no standard way of doing that.

2 Likes

I do think it likely it can join, and be recognized as a Zigbee device. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to notify the controller about its button presses. That’s One question.

The second technical question is what happens if you do have a hue bridge that those bulbs are attached to?

We know that this new dimmer control can be associated to a hue bridge: the update for the official Hue app just came out for that today. And it seems likely that the bridge does receive information on the button presses.

But now we have a new problem. Is the dimmer control going to consider the Hue bridge its controller, and therefore will not talk to the smartthings hub directly?

I don’t know, but it seems like one possibility.

So there’s just a lot of different ways technically this could be set up, and some would work better with smartthings than others.

Maybe this device will be able to be used as a button controller, but only if you don’t directly bind it to any bulbs, and maybe only if you don’t connect it to the Hue bridge.

So it would be pretty much the same as using the Minimote. All communication going to the hub.

That would be OK for a lot of things, maybe for everything. But it’s just not necessarily as simple as saying the device can talk to the hub.

We’ll see.

Obviously, a Zigbee device cannot be included in two different networks at the same time. It will either join HA coordinator (e.g. SmartThings hub) or associate with ZLL controller, or it may try to create a new network (if it’s a controller). Once it joined the network (be it HA or ZLL) it will remain on that network unless reset to factory defaults.

We know that this new dimmer control can be associated to a hue bridge: the update for the official Hue app just came out for that today. And it seems likely that the bridge does receive information on the button presses.

For sure, the dimmer remote should be able to control the lights that have already been attached to the Hue bridge. Thus, it will need to perform the Touchlink dance to get the network key generated by the bridge. But it does not need the bridge to control the lights. I believe it work independently, pretty much like a secondary Z-Wave controller can control Z-Wave lights independently from the hub.

Maybe this device will be able to be used as a button controller, but only if you don’t directly bind it to any bulbs, and maybe only if you don’t connect it to the Hue bridge.

Yes, it someone finds the way to make it join HA coordinator, this is how it would work, I guess.

We’ll see… :smile:

2 Likes

I don’t know how likely it will be that the bridge receives information about button presses. The impression I get by the press release and the available clusters for the Lutron Remote is that they’re intended to directly control bulbs only, and that the Hue hub can be used for easier setup to adjust the bindings, so the user won’t have to carry the remote around to each individual bulb.

So in theory the new Lutron connected bulb remote should work with Hue bulbs even though they’re not listed as compatible. Unfortunately, I can’t get them to pair.

I’m using it quite successfully with a Hue and GE bulbs. Obviously no color control, but on/off and dimming works fine. Not sure what the problem is with pairing. Have you tried resetting the remote and bulb to factory defaults and trying again?