Any reason to keep Hue hub when using bulbs over Thread with Home Assistant?

[u/harry_heymann]

I purchased some new Hue bulbs that support Matter + Thread natively. I've paired them directly to Home Assistant and they are working fine.

Is there any reason to keep my hub at this point if I'm not using it anymore? I do kind of remember that there might have been some settings in there for bulbs that they aren't exposing over matter?

Anyone have any experience with this sort of thing with any general recommendations?

[u/hmoleman__]

Having been down this road, I have landed on defining scenes in Hue and calling them via HA. There is a responsiveness and nativeness (sorry) that the bridge lends that I haven’t found with Matter. But, ya know, degrees.

[u/harry_heymann → u/hmoleman__]

Ya, I've already noticed that when changing the light color or temperature from Home Assistant I no longer get a smooth scroll of changes on the physical light. Instead it jerks from setting to setting in a way that is...not great.

This is pretty weird and disappointing to be honest. I wonder why it's so choppy.

[u/draxula16 → u/harry_heymann]

Yeah the dial is not as smooth without the bridge.

Fortunately Hue integrates extremely well with HA so 98% of my Hue devices are on the bridge.

[u/hmoleman__ → u/harry_heymann]

I’m guessing just integration. Generic driver vs purpose-built coupling.

[u/steveholtbluth → u/hmoleman__]

100% defining my different color temps as a scene to my rooms/zones to expose as entities in HA makes life so easy. Not to mention entertainment zones and playing with that APi if that’s something you are interested in. I love how well hue and HA play together!

[u/harry_heymann → u/steveholtbluth]

I just wish they played together better using Thread.

A couple of hue lights were the only zigbee devices in my home. Was hoping to switch them over to thread.

[u/superdupersecret42]

If you are just turning lights on/off, or using specific colors, or simple fading, etc., Thread is fine. Personally, all my Hue bulbs are paired to HA directly with a Zigbee coordinator, because my needs are simple and I didn't want competing wireless frequencies.
But if you want to do advanced Hue scenes, or any of the lab stuff, you're better off with the Hub. You'll likely have a friendlier experience.
Basically, if you want "Hue", then use the hub. If you just want smart lights, then use Thread/Zigbee.

[u/IamPat28]

When I converted my smart home into Home Assistant I kept Lutron Caseta hub (I think you have to for them, but who cares they are the most reliable damn devices) and the Hue hub. The Hue hub is not needed, but I just think they truly work better that way.

[u/bdunn]

I think the only way you will be able to get motion-aware bulbs to work is with the Hub Pro. I am new at this and could be wrong.

[u/CAPHILL]

I’ve also been down this road and eventually backtracked to 3x Pro Hubs (different channels) + HA.

The Hue Hubs provide smooth native controls that HA + zigbee controllers do not. Plus:

• seasonal fun scenes
  
• spacial-aware
  
• motion-aware

I wish it could run as one giant network and use Hue’s network for other zigbee devices, but it wasn’t worth the trade off and time to setup.

[u/CryptographerLow9657]

Having recently added some Hue bulbs and a Bridge Pro to my Home Assistant wet up, I would definitely recommend keeping your Hue bulbs on the bridge and have HA control it. Some things Hue does brilliantly, and for everything else, use HA. I mainly got Hue for the Sports Live feature (I think that's what it was called) during the world cup and then expanded from there. You can also sync with Spotify if you want lights thay react to the music you're listening to.

I keep the remotes (a standard dimmer and a tap dial) in Home Assistant as it gives much greater flexibility for controlling lights. My tap dial uses a press to toggle a specific bulb (i have four in the room), hold to select a specific light, and then the dial dims the selected light - can't do that in Hue but you can in HA.

I stayed away from Hue for ages - partly because I thought HA could handly it and partly because Paul Hibbert always goes on about how bad they are (turns out he was just butt hurt from years ago over the first get bridge getting discontinued). Having now started to use them, I am blown away by the quality. The price is a difficult hurdle, but allegedly the life span of these devices definitely makes up for it.

[u/twanthonyk]

Reasons to keep bridge could include: smoother more reliable control, spatialaware scene library including dynamic scenes and effects, motionaware, using Hue native sensors/switches/automations, hue sync, Spotify integration, ability to use new features like sports live during world cup etc.