I’ve got an IKEA Tradfri LED driver and a Rodret dimmer. When I first installed them I thought it would be good to also control some non-IKEA pendant lights with the same dimmer, in sync with the cabinet lights connected to the Tradfri - so, I created automations in Home Assistant corresponding to each of the actions the dimmer can perform and this is working fine. However, we’ve decided not to control the pendant lights in sync with the cabinet lights so it’s now unnecessarily complicated. I plan to remove the automations and link the Rodret direct to the Tradfri again.
I understand that I can do this by following the IKEA procedure to pair the devices. But I’m also curious about the option in Home Assistant to bind devices.
Finally to my question - are these two methods to achieve the same result, or is IKEA pairing somehow different than Zigbee binding?
IKEA pairing somehow different than Zigbee binding?
Ikea pairing is Zigbee standard group binding via touchlink initiation. What is different is Home assistant, which doesnt really handle Zigbee groups.
But I’m also curious about the option in Home Assistant to bind devices.
If you mean zigbee group binding, in my experience Home Assistant doesnt handle Zigbee groups well. There is technical capacity and group manager, but to me it seems it doesnt correctly bind all of the action clusters and so on. Plus most finally the UI is very confusing etc. (That or I’m dumb and can’t get it working right)
Home assistant handles grouped devices primarily inside its own logic and talks to them as individual devices. Which leads for example to stuff like non synchronous action. I don’t think Zigbee groups either guarantee synchronicity, but it is pretty instant since it is single mesh wide broadcast of “whole group this, do this”. Where as Home assistant send say ten different messages to ten different Zigbee devices. Thus there is delay and difference, when each device receives their individual command.
Most dedicated Zigbee hubs like trådfri and hue use actual Zigbee groups. When moving devices between “rooms” or whatever each call it, it sends actual configuration message of “change your internal registered group identity” to the lamps, remote controls and so on.
Yes, they are different. I thing your “IKEA pairing” would be touchlink paring. I would say connecting the device through the controller offers the most flexibility. When you use Zigbee2MQTT, you can take a look at https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/supported-devices/ what your device exposes. Sometimes you could loose a feature. For example the “VINDSTYRKA air quality and humidity sensor” can be connected directly to the STARKVIND air purifier, so it uses its value for the air quality. I never tried if I could connect it both ways.
On the other hand there is my Paulmann RGB remote control. I could connect the remote directly to lamps. I decided to do the automatons via HA and it has 116 different actions. Obviously its quite the task to do the automations, especially how I need to access the values.
But to not frighten you, its not always complicated. I have a few buttons and they aren’t complicated. Connect through Z2M, press every button in each variation (single, double click, hold), add the automation and then what happens.
You can make it more complicated (and fun). My hue dimmer switch could have 5 scenes via the hue hub but not via HA and Z2M. With Node-Red I programmed a small logic, that just counts how often I pressed the on button, within a certain time limit. It then cycles through my selected scenes. I can add as little and as much as I like. Oh and to clarify: Node-Red can be added as Addon to HA. It allows node bases programming. I find it easier then HA Automation, because it looks visually clearer. Also its way cooler, because it has more options.
Zigbee devices have their pairing process defined on the device. It’s just a method of generating a trust with a Zigbee network, so whatever method will end up with the same result.
Those IKEA devices have issues being part of multiple networks in my experience. Some are not even capable, so if that’s your plan, expect problems.
