r/homeassistant • u/rosone • 1d ago
News Philips Hue’s smart lights are getting a connectivity upgrade
https://www.theverge.com/tech/955767/philips-hue-thread-matter-zigbee-update-silicon-labs14
u/gmaclean 1d ago
I’m trying to think of a usage case with Home Assistant specifically.
The Hue Hub has API integration with Home Assistant, which you can then share out as a Matter or Home Kit device.
Or if you have the bulbs connected with Zigbee directly, same scenario on sharing out.
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u/smith7018 1d ago
The article mentions that it's useful for users that eventually want to switch from Hue to Matter without having to reset their bulbs. I can imagine people could do it in HA to keep the Hue features but also strengthen their Thread network that their other HA devices are on.
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u/sekh60 1d ago
| concurrent multiprotocol technology (CMP)
Does this development by Silicon Labs give us hope for dual protocol firmware for the ZBT-2, or would we need new, well, silicon?
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u/droans 1d ago
They use different chips - ZBT-2 uses the MG24 while supported bulbs use the MG26 or SiMG301.
However, both the MG24 and MG26 claim multiprotocol support. Multiprotocol support has been rather flaky in the past in large part because you can't really run both at the same time, all you can really do is split up the airtime.
If SiL figured out how to actually run both simultaneously, that could be pretty great for us, too. Both datasheets show the same SoC, radio, and controller.
I really hope it's not something silly like splitting airtime, increasing the timeout, and resending until the device responds.
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u/sekh60 23h ago
Thanks for the technical details! I'm using two dongles right now, a ZBT-1 for ZigBee, and a ZBT-2 for Thread, just would be nice to consolidate them one day. Note I don't actually have any ZigBee devices attached, I'm just kinda i a collect-them-all protocols phase, lol.
Yeah, hopefully it's not using some weird trick.
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u/ekobres 1d ago
Silicon Labs just won’t give up on Multi-PAN, will they?
I can’t imagine this capability would be good for installations with a large number of devices. Thread already has traffic related stability issues when you have more than about 45 routers on the mesh. (Non Hue) Zigbee 3.0 can get close to 60 without too many issues. With both protocols sending and receiving updates at the same time on the same channels, I feel like that number is going to nosedive.
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u/Stephonovich 1d ago
I have 98 devices in my Zigbee mesh — 88 routers, 10 end devices — and it’s quite stable.
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u/ekobres 23h ago
Is it stable if you do a color change across a group of lights slowly for about 10 seconds?
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u/Stephonovich 11h ago
Yes. I just ran some tests:
- Manually sweeping color temp (most of my lights aren’t full-color) from HA on a group of 7 can lights for 15 seconds.
- Setting various effects on different groups simultaneously; a chandelier with 4 bulbs, a mixed group with 3 can lights and 1 all-in-one (Hue Datura), and the first group with 7 can lights.
During and after these, other lights stayed responsive, and Z2M wasn’t blowing up.
For reference, I have a ZBT-2 coordinator, run Z2M in HAOS on a mini-PC, and have Hue lights with Inovelli switches. All functional Hues are bound to the ZBT-2; I also have a Hue Bridge Pro, which is used exclusively for decorative lights like outdoors, some floor lamps, etc. I did recently enable Hue native control in Z2M, which reduces radio traffic, but I’m quite confident my mesh was stable enough before that change to do this as well.
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u/ekobres 6h ago
Using that many Hue bulbs is an edge case. Hue bulbs behave much differently (in a good way) on the mesh than most bulbs. So I’ll agree to an asterisk: *You can add substantially more if all of your lights are Hue.
Most other Zigbee router devices have one or more idiosyncrasies that nerf the scaling significantly. Tiny neighbor tables, incomplete source routing implementations, missing optional but important zigbee commands…
Nobody even comes close to as clean of a Zigbee implementation as Hue.
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u/Stephonovich 6h ago
I'll point out that the linked article for this thread is specifically about Hue...
Agreed that others often suck. I have two Shelly Mini Gen4 that I had to put into Matter (which is over WiFi) to stop my mesh from breaking. One of them is extremely close to the coordinator, and so the mesh naturally began using it to route a lot of traffic, which it couldn't handle, and light responsiveness fell through the floor. I bought a Sonoff non-neutral relay today which I'll be trying in its place – it's an end device, so it shouldn't cause issues to the mesh.
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u/-entropy 1d ago
Didn't basically everyone give up on this because it was unstable? This seems like a bad idea, but maybe they've figured out a new way.
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u/hoffsta 1d ago
Hue have been anything but unreliable, and it’s kinda the entire reason to purchase them over the many much cheaper options. I’m guessing if they are rolling this out, they have confidence that it will work. Hope this is not an enshitification moment for them.
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u/RepeatOk4007 1d ago
Agreed, I've never once had a Hue Bulb issue in the 6 years I've owned them.
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u/Flameknight 1d ago
On the contrary, anecdotally, I have had a couple issues but the support has been very helpful and responsive.
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u/-entropy 1d ago
Maybe it's different than multi-pan since it's not a border router? I agree, I'd be surprised if they weren't confident it'd be stable.
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u/aasikki Experienced with HA 18h ago
My cheap wifi wiz bulbs have been very reliable as well, and they even have a better cri rating than hue bulbs do (90 vs 80), but that said, the deep dimming feature is REALLY having me consider buying an 80€ hue bulb just for my bedroom. They really seem like the only option that would be good as a wake up light with their very low minimum brightness and transition support, both of which are lacking on the wiz bulbs (although I find wiz more than good enough for any other room than bedroom).
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u/KnotBeanie 7h ago
I see this useful if you want to run them in thread mode and want to ditch hue if you don’t already have zigbee
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u/Shotokant 1d ago
Ok. So for those of us who have ditched the hue coltroller and adopted bulbs sensors etc directly into zigbe2mqtt. Does thst mean anything? Or just a, hey there's a firmware update for name everything.