Trying to make the Kudled ZigBee remote work with the SmartThings Hub

It’s out of sync, although I am able to use the app to adjust them, something I wasn’t able to do when I paired the remote directly to the bulbs.

I have no clue how the Iris Button handler is allowing the commands to turn on and of, change color or brightness without a smart app in the middle, but that’s the status of things at the moment.

EDIT: So I used the Device Handler for the Lightify Button Dimming Switch as well as the Handler for the Swann Key fob, and with all three handlers the commands to turn on and off all bulbs as well as change color and brightness pass through the Hub, the other buttons on the bottom of the remote don’t do anything either physycally or through the logs in the IDE.

There is likely a smart app in the middle for the iris button. That button itself is not in any way controlling the other devices. All it is doing is telling the hub that its button was pressed.

Then something has been set up to subscribe to that button press event, and that something is sending a command to the bulb to change its state.

It could be a routine, it could be smart lighting, it could be rule machine, it could be custom code.

There’s also a small possibility that there has been a direct binding between the iris button and another zigbee device. That works like direct association in zwave. If two devices of the same protocol belong to the same network, and they are within one hop of each other, They can be set up to talk to each other directly without going through the hub. But we don’t usually do that in a SmartThings set up because it has a lot of limitations and the app will be out of sync

Right now the Smart App I have installed are the following:

  • Button Controller using the Iris Smart Button to send a push message to the SmartThings app that someone is at the door.
  • IFTTT has all my devices associated to it other than the Kudled Remote, I mainly use IFTTT to store temperature values of my various temperature sensors in Google Drive.
  • An app that supposedly tracks sensors and switches logging everything on Google Analytics. I couldn’t get this to work.
  • Notify Me When, for the Iris Smart Button with the same function of notifying me of button presses as a doorbell.
  • Perch, the app is installed but not being used as I don’t have other devices to use it on.
  • Rule Machine, with no rules created
  • ThingSpeak tracking, which I haven’t gotten to work for logging temperature mostly.

Aside from those apps, I have nothing that would link or bind the remote to the lights.

Didn’t you say you used the same device Handler as iris button for the remote? Unless you renamed it, it’s inheriting the button controller app you already had.

But it’s more likely that you did physically bind the bulbs to the remote at some point and they are still bound. Did you test the bulbs with the remote before you connected the bulbs to smart things?

I am using the same Device Handler, although I tried using 2 other unique handlers and the remote controlled the lights all the same.

Then the Bulbs are likely bound to The remote. Try turning off the hub (take it off power and take out the batteries). If the remote can still control the bulbs, then they are independently bound and the remote is not actually being used as a SmartThings button controller.

I don’t think you’ll be able to use the following device handler, but if you read through the thread, I think you’ll see that they are having the same issues with that device that you are having with yours, and it might give you some ideas.

Thanks I’ll check it out.

Weird thing is I did bind each of my 4 bulbs to one of the on and of sets on the bottom of the remote, they paired and the bulbs were no longer available on my ST hub, I reset the bulbs and unpaired the remote with each bulb, then repaired them with the ST hub and all was working well, with the added bonus of partial control while the remote is paired to the hub.

Now that I think about it, I’ll unpair from the hub and see if the lights still obey the remote.

If I can get my hands on one it could be a fun project. The shipping times from AliExpress are a little up there :scream:, so I don’t know if it’ll be something I can get around to soon.

Looking at the logs, it looks like all of the messages are caught by the hub; I’m seeing on/off, level, and color control.

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Most sellers throw in free express shipping with the purchase of US$100 or more. Not a very appealing idea if all you want is a remote to play with.

But if you want to give it a shot I can work as your proxy.

If you could post the fingerprint/raw description from the IDE and some logs with notes as to which catchall messages correspond to the various actions… I might be able to take a stab at it before I get mine.

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Just to be sure I post the correct information, the fingerprint/raw description is the one that appears under the Live Logs? Or do I have to dig into the Device Events?

Also, which handler should I use, The image on the OP with the log was taken with the Iris Smart Button handler, other handlers display differently on the log.

The raw description should be listed in the Devices entry for that device. Otherwise you can dig through the location events to find the initial join event which should also list it. It will look something like this in that case:


The one(s) that start with “desc:” are the ones I’m looking for.

As far as the logs, whatever handler you were using in the screenshot in your earlier post should do just fine.

OK, so far this is what I’ve gotten from the remote:

Since the raw description isn’t showing in the Device entry, you’ll need to find it in the Location event list. Head to the Location link in the top nav bar, then click on “events” next to your location. You’ll probably need to change the filter to “all”.

This should be enough for a start at least. It won’t fingerprint correctly, but changing the device type manually should still work.

Do the lower, numbered buttons produce any output?

The lower, numbered buttons produce no output at all.

Ok. So what we should be able to do with this remote is this:

You should be able to pair the bottom buttons to the bulbs after pairing the remote and bulbs to the hub, similar to the way the Lutron remote works as a parallel controller. These are likely using the group/scene commands and aren’t supported by the ST hub, so we can’t use them as generic buttons.

The top on/off button could be used as two discrete buttons. This could be built as either a generic button controller, or we could set this up to look like a no-load light switch which could then be mirrored by one of the various smart apps, similar to some of the z-wave companion switches. (This might already work if you try the Zigbee Dimmer DTH)

The color (temp?) control and dimming control in the center could probably be used as a control for color/dimmable lights in a similar fashion by setting this up as a virtual Zigbee RGBW bulb which could then be mirrored using other smart apps.

Any ideas as to which way would be best here?

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I’m not sure if I’m way out of base here, but I think the remote might be useful for things other than just lights, even if the lower buttons don’t communicate to the hub, a 6 button remote for US$12 seems like a steal, I do agree that its original intended use of controlling lights seems obvious, but who’s to say this remote can’t be used for other purposes.

In any case, I believe the first step is having a basic handler, and working up from there, correct?

EDIT: So I have both the remote and the bulbs paired with the hub, and tried pairing the lower buttons with individual bulbs. So far 2 buttons turn individual bulbs and 2 turn all the bulbs on, this is kind of weird.

This is true. As a generic button controller you could control pretty much anything. It would be less intuitive to use the 4-way for buttons, but it would be doable. The problem is in the way the remote handles those presses.

The color control (left/right) sends a hue and saturation along a sliding scale from 0x0000 to 0xFFFF (or whatever the sane limits are). So we’d have to determine which direction the remote is moving and determine which button is being pressed from that. This would rely on a reliable “last state” value, which has proven to be a very unreliable thing to get from the platform lately. This could result in unexpected behavior.

The level control (up/down) sends repeated move level commands while held and a stop move command when released. The stop move command is probably what we’d want to trigger the action on (just using the move command would likely result in a lot of repeated button presses and would require some debouncing) Again, this depends on reliable “last state” and reliable message sequencing to know what button was just released and could be… unreliable.

So this is not really the ideal remote to use as a button controller, but it is doable. I’d be willing to help either way, just wanted to put that out there for the community in case anyone else had some input.

I’m now leaning toward the virtual dimmer/hue concept for my own uses. Would be good for the non-techies in the family to control Hues/Gardenspots/Lightstrips :slight_smile:

So I gather you’re seeing more potential with this remote than at first?

Oh it has the potential to be useful, I just see it being problematic as a generic controller. Likely to be a bit finicky. I’ll see if I can bang out a DTH for it. Hope the simulator is behaving this week…

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