Dimming with Blue Series 2-1 / Philips Hue on Hub / Home Assistant

Lighting General Discussion
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I’ve installed a few Blues on smart bulb mode controlling some Philips Hue bulbs. I have some Hue bulbs that are bound directly to the switch, and some that are controlled instead using automations in Home Assistant (Blue > ZHA > Philips Hue Integration (for bulbs on Hue hub) > Bulb). I can’t make up my mind which way to go here, because there’s some key functionality that seems to be missing under each approach:

Bound directly to switch:

  • Pro: Seamless on/off/dimming
  • Con: No ability to control Hue-defined scenes. Since the bulbs are no longer bound to the Hue hub, I can’t apply scenes defined from Hue. The problem here is that I really like to use the Hue dynamic scenes, which allows the lights to cycle through various predefined colors. Automating this in Home Assistant looks like a very intensive process as opposed to the “click play” option in Hue.

Managed through home assistant automations:

  • Pro: Easy enough to automate on/off behavior between switch/Hue so each control each other
  • Pro: Easy to apply Hue-defined scenes
  • Con: No way that I can figure out to dim the lights using the switch using the standard hold to dim process and have the dim LED bar match the light dimness.

I know this may be a bit of a unique situation, but anyone else experience this? Any recommended approaches? I can’t make up my mind which functionality to sacrifice, so hoping I can find a way to have it all!

1 Like
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In a very similar situation trying to get dimming working through HA rather than via direct binding.

The other benefit of direct binding is supposed to be speed and reliability (no wifi still works). Are you finding a difference on these at all?

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I’m not sure exactly how the hue dynamic scenes work, but when you say it cycles through various predefined colors there’s a blueprint in HA for doing exactly that.

This allows you to define 12 colors, how fast they change and the transition time to switch. It gets setup as a script, and then you simply call the script from an automation. For example you could setup a doubletap up event on your blue series to activate the script and a doubletap down to stop it.

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I use my Blue switches through HA (instead of direct bonding) and can’t figure out how to get Dimming to work either. If anyone figures this out please post the solution to this thread or link to the solution.

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Did you figure this out? I’m curious about going this route instead of direct binding.

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Has anyone tried using light templates? Template Light - Home Assistant

I actually have something like this now for a switch that cuts power to the hue bulbs (that go through the hue bridge), and do some complicated stuff to only dim 50% power (but multiple that by 2x when sent through the hub integration). This way while dimming the bulb doesn’t lose so much power it turns off and you can’t control it. When the switch turns off then the bulb loses power so it isn’t great. I am planning on replacing it with a Blue Series 2-1 in smart bulb mode and will update the template. I think this should work with dimming but can you confirm that the dim setting of the light switch is visible in Home Assistant?

Here is another example (all the way at the end) that shows how to use light template. Smart bulb with Smart Relay - #14 by sonusss - Configuration - Home Assistant Community

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I’m interested in this as well and the light template approach seems like a natural solution to the problem. Would love to hear whether it actually works well and supports dimming by holding down the paddle switch, before I spend a bunch of money! :slight_smile: