MiBoxer RGB Zigbee remote on Smartthings, touchlink integration

hi guys,

I hope you can help me out with this problem. I have integrated a lot of Zigbee bulbs, Z-wave smoke detectors and other devices with my HUB. Everything works great but my wife was missing a remote for quick use of the bulbs so I bought a Miboxer RGB remote.

https://miboxer.com/light/products/zigbee_remote.html

Works great with touchlink enabled but as acting like a bridge it puts all my bulbs on offline so I can not use it together. I also tried to pair the remote in ST but can not find anything. Today i’ve bought a Silvercrest (Lidl) Tuya based HUB for €10 at the local supermarket. And guess what, it works with the Miboxer remote!

Why in earth does a simple HUB from Tuya works with the remote and my advanced ST HUB does not? So my questions are :

  • Is there a RGB remote that will work with my ST HUB?
    or
  • Can I pair the remote in other way with my ST HUB?

Those are very nice remotes! What’s the specific model number?

  1. At the time of this writing, April 2022, The SmartThing hub does not support Touchlink commissioning. :disappointed_relieved:

  2. I don’t know about that particular device, but you can use some zigbee remotes with smartthings by first pairing the remote and each individual bulb to Smartthings. It’s OK if the remote just shows up as a “thing“, you just need it to be on the same network.

Then use touch link commissioning to pair the bulbs to the remote. Because they’re already on the same network, they should stay on that network. Hopefully. :crossed_fingers:t3:

I know people have been able to do that with the hue remotes and the Sunricher remotes, so hopefully it will work with the Miboxer. Worth a try.

When done this way, you cannot use the handheld remote for anything else, it just becomes a parallel means of control. So you can’t use it to control other smartthings control devices or trigger scenes or anything. But you may be able to use it to control a specific set of Zigbee bulbs.

  1. One other thing to note: the Zigbee standard allows for “manufacturer proprietary “ message structures, and Tuya-made devices often use these. This means they will work well with their own gateway, but not necessarily with any other brand. And they will typically require custom code if they do work with other brands. So it’s never surprising that a zigbee device that works with a tuya hub will not work with a smartthings hub straight out of the box: that usually just means it’s using the Tuya proprietary code. I don’t know if that’s what’s going on here, but it’s certainly a possibility.

  2. as far as alternatives, the only one I know that’s similar that does work with smartthings is the zigbee model from Sunricher which is also sold under the RGBgenie name. But I’ve only seen reports of people who have it working as a parallel means of control. And it doesn’t have as many zones as the MiBoxer. Nice device, though.

Here’s a discussion thread on adding that device to a smartthings network. That’s the same method I’m suggesting you try for the Miboxer, although I don’t know if it’s going to work.

(The topic title is a clickable link)

When you’re researching this or other models, note that there may be a very similar device, maybe even with an identical case, sold in a Z wave version. But the custom code to use that with smartthings and the methodology will be different than the Zigbee version. So just keep an eye out for that issue.

FUT089Z is the device number, but the thing I wonder why does the Miboxer match with a simple HUB and not with the ST? I won’t use the remote in ST but it must not intervene with my bulbs :wink:

1 Like

If the “simple hub” that it matches with is a tuya device, there are two possibilities:

  1. It’s using touchlink commissioning, which smartthings does not yet support

  2. it’s using tuya-specific code, which is true of quite a few Tuya-made devices.

The first one is a smartthings issue, the second one is a tuya issue, but either issue might produce the result you saw.

well, my wife loves the remote so much that she saying that I just get rid of my expensive ST HUB and use the Tuya/Lidl HUB :frowning:

The only thing I can try is the sunricher remote but it is not that good available here in the EU

First try adding the Miboxer to smartthings the way it is discussed in the other thread. It looks like it may work. Just follow the instructions for the rgbgenie in that thread.

hi,

Well that is the main thing. It won’t add in pair mode, that would solve my problem.
I can put it in pair mode when pressing on and off for 5 seconds, Tuya finds it but ST does not.