I have inherited one of these Drivers for wireless control and the lights. I cannot get smartthings to add this. I am very new to these Trådfri range. Is there a button on the Driver I need to press to get it to peer. I have not inherited the button so it may previously been peered. I cannot find any info on how to to this on IKEA’s web site. I do not have an IKEA branded controller, just a smartthings V2 hub
Product details seem to be
Any help most appreciated.
best
Robert
In partial answer to my own question there is a reset button on the “top” surface of the unit (bottom if mounted as expected). This video shows how. However, this is with Phillips Hue, I have not yet got this working with Smartthings.
Do you have a LED bulb/strip attached to the driver during pairing. If so, it will give you an indication of status during the pairing process.
Also, I have had better pairing results by pairing in very close proximity to my hub (inches). You can move the device to its Intended location after pairing.
I also use a V2 SmartThings hub. Hope this helps.
Thanks for this. Yes I have lights attached. And they do not indicate anything which makes me thing I am doing something wrong. Somewhere I read they should flash, is that what you mean. I am holding the reset in for a lot longer than the 15sec shown in the video I found.
RB
I’ve not used the Tradfri Driver device but based on other Tradfri devices of that era I’d expect five seconds of pressing the reset button to be plenty. Generally Tradfri devices were factory reset with a three to five second hold and release (something somewhere would usually start to flash or pulse when you hit the sweet spot).
A factory reset was what you wanted for pairing with SmartThings but the documentation didn’t mention that because the Tradfri platform was all about direct pairing of steering devices (e.g. buttons, motion sensors) to lights or plugs, with the Tradfri Gateway hub in combination with an app self-documenting that alternative way of using the devices.
Steering devices used a long hold on their reset button to initiate their direct pairing with lights, plugs or Tradfri Gateway hubs. You didn’t need that with SmartThings, despite what some of the onboarding instructions used to say. Indeed it was really bad as the buttons could end up bound to nearby devices by mistake.
Tradfri devices always put up a bit of a fight. I found that putting the hub into discovery mode first and then factory resetting the Tradfri devices could be beneficial. However you could probably find users who will say the opposite.
Do you know what ZigBee channel your SmartThings hub is on? Back in time channels 11, 15, 20 or 25 were considered a good match for Tradfri devices, with 24 considered to be particularly problematic. Clearly your WI-Fi channel affects the best choice of Zigbee channel so you may have limited flexibility, but avoiding 24 was certainly a big deal at the time.
Thanks, how do I find out the channel used for zigbee?
Ok seems you cannot change the channel with recent smart things apps.
I was trying this procedure:
From IKEA Trådfri LED Driver 30W will not connect to Smartthings - #6 by GSzabados
When Alexia paired with it. So it is a half job. Is there anyway other than deparing from alexia turning all alexia off and then trying again to get it attached to the smartthings hub. Of course I can now control via the alexia connection but that is not what I want…
I almost always use ‘Scan nearby’ when pairing devices.
Pressing a straightened paperclip in the reset hole in the Tradfri driver for 10+ seconds, and releasing it should cause the attached LED to dim and brighten one or more times to indicate that the driver has been reset (I think, have not done recently)
Put the driver almost touching your SmartThings hub. You may have to do ‘Scan nearby’ more than once.
The LEDs will dim and brighten to indicate successful pairing (pretty sure about this) and the driver will appear on the SmartThings app.
Hope this works. If it doesn’t, ping me, I have a spare 10w LED driver that I will video being paired tomorrow.
Thanks for the tips. Pressing the reset for 10+ seconds on mine definitely does not flash the lights. Due to network issues I can either have the driver next to smartthings or have it attached to the lights but not both. Do you also have other smarthome devices such as Alexia as That has complicated my situation. I disconnected the lights and moved the driver near the hub then did the reset listed a few posts back. This resulted in Alexa picking it up. I am still not sure which is master for this device now. All the alexias were further away from the driver than the hum. Only thing is the hub is in a metal cage, which could act as a faraday cage, but its never presented problems before. Would be interesting to see what you manage
Thanks
RB
When you say Alexa is picking up your Tradfri LED driver I gather that you have an Alexa model with a built in Zigbee hub.
Is this the case? Can you control the Tradfri LED driver directly from Alexa?
I have an Alexa with a built in Zigbee hub, but I have disabled this feature, instead using the Alexa SmartThings plugin to integrate Alexa with my SmartThings hub.
I will dig out my spare 10w Tradfri LED driver, connect a spare bulb and video the pairing process. As I am using my phone to video, I will not be able to include the SmartThings app in the video, but will include a few screenshots with the video.
Hi, here are the screenshots of the pairing process.
I am unable to attach the video here (mp4). I will try to DM you with a cut down .mov file
It took several attempts to pair the driver, which was within 18" of my hub.
The reset press only took a few seconds (not the 10s mentioned elsewhere).
After several reset presses, they stopped working, and I had to power cycle the driver before reset presses worked again.
Cheers, Aidan
Thanks for the video. I have simply 3 echo dot version 2 devices and a google home hub. Both integrated with smartthings. So it is possible some how smartthings picked up the driver and passed it on to alexia. I do not think the one google home hub has any connection with any of this. Is there a way to check which of the devices in Smartthings came via other home networks. The driver shows up in smartthings, but, the add device never completed! Boy am I confused.
Yes this is a very similar experience for me. But as below in the other reply the scans apparently did not work. It was when I gave up and went to sit down and do something else with the phone that a notification from Alexia poped up saying the driver had been added, and it was in Smartthings. So perhaps it did work but the smart things app gave me no notification! Not the most user friendly experience.
So to wrap this up I have not realised if you click on a device in the smart things app (one tap not on the on-off bit) you go into the properties and there is a pane with “connection path”. Hence I can confirm that Alexia had no connection and the hub added or detected the driver, without informing me when adding it in the app. Alexia being linked to my smart things account then realised a new device and informed me. All a bit confusing, but all working as wanted now.
Thanks to all that helped.
