ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
It's been known for a long time that many 3rd party lights that use zigbee can be used with the Philips Hue bridge, but I thought it's worth mentioning that I've discovered that the Ikea smart lights can be used with Hue.
I was at Ikea today shopping for an under-counter light for my kitchen. Confused by what parts I needed in the lighting section (I'm sure many others have encountered this confusion at Ikea!), I asked a sales person for help. She pointed out that the difference between two transformers was that one of them could be used with the smart lighting. She then remarked that someone had told her that the Ikea smart lights could be used with the Hue bridge instead of their own bridge.
I took the transformer and cabinet light home to try it. The transformer was very easy to pair with the Hue bridge. I was then able to add the transformer as a resource in my BLGW. It works perfectly. All lights connected to the transformer can now be controlled with my BLGW and used in macros.
I was still able to pair the Ikea remote control with the transformer and use it. However, I've read that you can also pair the Ikea remote with the Hue bridge instead.
The reason that I thought this worth mentioned is that there are so many useful applications for the Ikea lighting options -- such as in-cabinet or under-cabinet LED strips or hockey-puck spotlights as well as in-drawer lighting. Also, the price is so very low.
What is the name of this IKEA smart Light with remote?
Is it only available in USA ?
wilfried
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/customer-service/smart-lighting-support/faq-smart-lighting/compatibility-protocols/
matador43: TRÅDFRI
That's correct.
I do have a correction to my original post. Pairing the Ikea remote to the light removed the light from being paired with the Hue. I had to re-pair the light with the Hue bridge. I've read that the Ikea remote would need to have a factory reset and then be paired with the Hue bridge before I can be used with the Ikea lights that have been paired with Hue. I doubt I would use the remote, though. With the BLGW I was able to incorporate the lights into macros and trigger them using Lutron RadioRa2 wall keypads. It's a shame that we can't add Hue accessories to use as macro triggers with the BLGW.
With the slim form of the hockey puck lights and the low cost (just about 9 USD) I might want to re-do some of my kitchen lighting.
Great tip! A year or so ago I renewed my kitchen lighting with Ikea low voltage LED fixtures. I have never been happy with their simplistic proprietary remote control. Looks like I only need to replace the LED drivers to upgrade to this newer smart system.
--mika
tournedos: Great tip! A year or so ago I renewed my kitchen lighting with Ikea low voltage LED fixtures. I have never been happy with their simplistic proprietary remote control. Looks like I only need to replace the LED drivers to upgrade to this newer smart system.
That should be a simple upgrade for you to make. The drivers just control whatever lights are attached to it. However, all of those attached lights are treated as one light on the BLGW (and on the Hue app). Therefore, you can't control each of those lights independently of the others. That's not really an issue for me for the under-cabinet lights that I don't really need to control separately.
Yeah, I have light strips under the cabinets and spotlights on the top, on two separate transformers and that is enough segmentation for me. I don't actually have any Hue devices nor a BLGW - now I'm trying to decide whether to get the Hue gateway, or trust Ikea to build similar functionality to their own gateway later on.
tournedos: Yeah, I have light strips under the cabinets and spotlights on the top, on two separate transformers and that is enough segmentation for me. I don't actually have any Hue devices nor a BLGW - now I'm trying to decide whether to get the Hue gateway, or trust Ikea to build similar functionality to their own gateway later on.
I'm not sure that you would benefit much in adding a Hue hub without a BLGW. It the Ikea lights are paired with the Ikea bridge, you can control them with Alexa/Google/Homekit. However, if you pair them with the Hue bridge, they don't show up on Alexa/Google/Homekit. However, they do show up on the BLGW. The Ikea remote is pretty functional and can be mounted on the wall. It has a magnet that can be attached via adhesive so that you can also remove the remote from the wall. Rather clever.
Ahh, thanks. Ikea gateway it is then as the price is ridiculously low anyway. My ultimate goal is to write my own software interfacing and at least they promise to open it up someday.
matador43:TRÅDFRI
Many Thanks, TRÄDFI is also available in Germany!
Having now installed the under-cabinet lighting, I'm remembering my animus toward all things Ikea. My fingers are sore, I broke a drill bit, and I've had to resort to some very expensive scotch. I tried calling Ikea support (as it so kindly suggests in the instructions) and certainly was connected to a third-world country call center. I asked if the instructions were written in Dothraki. He didn't get it. My final word to the Ikea support: "Drakarys!" At any rate, my lights are all now nicely installed.
On the way is a $200 Lutron RadioRa2 wall keypad with engravable backlit buttons so that I can control my $9 Ikea lights. Thank the gods (both old and new) for BLGW to connect it all.
Yesterday I went to Ikea to pick up the gateway and a couple of remotes and transformers because it was the last day they were on sale, yay! They were easy enough to pair and set up in the app (as long as you have physical access to the boxes...).
Basically they work well, but the system has some idiosyncracies and design brain farts. The remotes are paired directly with the lamps/transformers and not via the gateway. This is sensible in a way because they will still work if the gateway goes down. But there's no way to control scenes with the remotes - the promising sideways arrow buttons only control the colour / colour temp of lights that support that.
Also, if you have a scene where some of the lights are completely off, the on/off button of the remote toggles ALL lights! You cannot switch them all off with the remote (except with a long press to syncronize the lights first). I was surprised that none of the reviews I read mentioned this.
Then to the good part - even though the Ikea system doesn't have an official open API, it uses open standardized protocols. it's supported by Home Assistant, which is an open source home automation platform, optimized to run on an Raspberry PI. Home Assistant in turn can interface with just about anything and can be customized endlessly. You can even get iOS push notifications from it. I won't give up before I can control my Ikea lights with a Beo 4 (will create a new thread when/if I get there).
I do like how the transformers can be daisy-chained to all just use one power outlet. You can connect 3 lights (up to 10W) to the $25 transformer and up to 9 lights (up to 30W) to the $35 transformer. All lights connected to one transformer are seen as one light to be controlled on the BLGW. However, at the reasonable prices, it's easy enough to get multiple transformers if needed.
A week ago, all of my Ikea lights lost their pairing with the Hue bridge, and I haven't been able to reconnect them. Has anyone else who paired their Ikea lights with Hue encountered this? I'm wondering if a recent Hue update caused this.
Today, I added a Tradfri bridge to manage the Ikea lights and control them through its app, HomeKit, and Alexa. I also found that they have some interesting remotes for control. There are several different styles of remotes and they can all be connected to the wall via magnet. However, there is a limit to 2 remotes that can control a room and all lights in a room are grouped for control. You can't have independent control of lights if you have them treated as in the same room -- they become grouped for remote control.
I'm hoping that Khimo will add a driver for the Ikea Tradfri so that we can have more control via BLGW. With macros, I could decide which lights I want to respond to a specific BLGW trigger.
beojeff:Today, I added a Tradfri bridge to manage the Ikea lights and control them through its app, HomeKit, and Alexa. I also found that they have some interesting remotes for control. There are several different styles of remotes and they can all be connected to the wall via magnet. However, there is a limit to 2 remotes that can control a room and all lights in a room are grouped for control. You can't have independent control of lights if you have them treated as in the same room -- they become grouped for remote control.
It isn't actually literally that bad - you can still control every light source independently via the Ikea app (or Apple/Google/Amazon integrations). But you're right, any given physical remote will control all lights in a logical "room". I ended up just splitting the rooms, I now have rooms like "Kitchen ceiling" and "Kitchen desktop".
Since this thread was last alive, I have managed to get Home Assistant running and that works basically very well. I also have an old iPad set up as Homekit hub, that alone gives some very nice automation possibilities, like presence detection based on the location of your phone ("turn on this and that light 15 minutes before sunset if I'm home").
Currently I'm trying to get reliable 433 MHz control interfacing for the RPi that runs Home Assistant. Then I could use my old Nexa RF wall switch transmitters (the only ones that look like regular wall switches anybody can understand) to control Trådfri lighting as well, and also control Nexa outlets for those light fixtures that cannot be upgraded to Trådfri bulbs.
Edit: there's a very helpful Trådfri area on Reddit.
tournedos: beojeff:Today, I added a Tradfri bridge to manage the Ikea lights and control them through its app, HomeKit, and Alexa. I also found that they have some interesting remotes for control. There are several different styles of remotes and they can all be connected to the wall via magnet. However, there is a limit to 2 remotes that can control a room and all lights in a room are grouped for control. You can't have independent control of lights if you have them treated as in the same room -- they become grouped for remote control. It isn't actually literally that bad - you can still control every light source independently via the Ikea app (or Apple/Google/Amazon integrations). But you're right, any given physical remote will control all lights in a logical "room". I ended up just splitting the rooms, I now have rooms like "Kitchen ceiling" and "Kitchen desktop". Since this thread was last alive, I have managed to get Home Assistant running and that works basically very well. I also have an old iPad set up as Homekit hub, that alone gives some very nice automation possibilities, like presence detection based on the location of your phone ("turn on this and that light 15 minutes before sunset if I'm home"). Currently I'm trying to get reliable 433 MHz control interfacing for the RPi that runs Home Assistant. Then I could use my old Nexa RF wall switch transmitters (the only ones that look like regular wall switches anybody can understand) to control Trådfri lighting as well, and also control Nexa outlets for those light fixtures that cannot be upgraded to Trådfri bulbs. Edit: there's a very helpful Trådfri area on Reddit.
When I was able to control Tradfri with BLGW via Hue, I was able to do some amazing things. I had Lutron RR2 keypads in the kitchen to control the undercounter and sink lighting. I had buttons of the Lutron keypad set as BLGW macro triggers to set the lights to selected intensities. Now that Tradfri isn't working with Hue, I just need for there to be a driver for BLGW to control Tradfri directly without Hue.
Hi Jeff,
Did you resolve the issue? Did the Tradfri bulbs stop working with the Hue-app too? I have a mixed Hue/Tradfri setup too, and will receive my second life BLGW soon.. So trying to figure out whether I should switch my Tradfri bulbs to Hue...
1990: Hi Jeff, Did you resolve the issue? Did the Tradfri bulbs stop working with the Hue-app too? I have a mixed Hue/Tradfri setup too, and will receive my second life BLGW soon.. So trying to figure out whether I should switch my Tradfri bulbs to Hue...
Unfortunately, I could not get them to work with the Hue bridge anymore. I had to get a Tradri bridge and have been controlling them via Alexa.This is pretty inconvenient, though. I really miss the total integration with BLGW. I'm hoping that Khimo will come up with a driver soon!
Especially now they also have electronic blinds controlled by the Tradfri bridge!
Finally got my BLGW. I could add the Tradfri-bulbs to my Hue-bridge through the Hue Essentials-app. So I have BLGW-control! One big downside: my colour bulbs can’t change colour through BLGW. Will change the colour bulbs I really need to Hue lamps I guess.
Would still much prefer a native driver for Tradfri/Ikea Smart Home. Soon they’ll be the most ubiquitous smart lamps in the Western world I guess!
beojeff: Unfortunately, I could not get them to work with the Hue bridge anymore. I had to get a Tradri bridge and have been controlling them via Alexa.This is pretty inconvenient, though. I really miss the total integration with BLGW. I'm hoping that Khimo will come up with a driver soon!
My Tradfri-bulbs are still working. All paired to the Hue-bridge via the 'Touchlink' procedure. Still puzzled why your bulbs won't come on the Hue-bridge. Maybe a US-only update?
Finally figured out how to set colour on the coloured Tradfri bulbs, you have to use CIE xy numbers (use "_SET COORDINATES"). So no colour picker, but macro fun :)