#Raspberry Pi: Controlling Philips HUE Lights (ZigBee & CC2531)

This article extends the tutorial about Hass.io and the Xiaomi Aqara Sensors that I've published months ago. That tutorial is part of the series of articles about Zigbee and the Rasbperry Pi using the CC2531 USB dongle. Here are the links:

• Zigbee: Xiaomi Sensors using Raspberry Pi (without Gateway!)
• Zigbee: Flashing a CC2531 dongle using a Raspberry Pi
• Raspberry Pi: Xiaomi Sensors & Home Assistant (Hass.io)
• Zigbee: Reading Xiaomi Sensors with a Raspberry Pi (no Xiaomi gateway needed!)

Fig. 1: Hass.io: Philips HUE Lightstrip.

In Zigbee: Xiaomi Sensors using Raspberry Pi (...), I didn't mention that same "hacking" can be used to control Philips HUE lights. This means, you don't need to buy the Philips Hue Bridge (€45) to control the HUE lights and you can replace it with a Raspberry Pi, a CC2531 USB dongle and Hass.io.

This article summarizes the above mentioned tutorials. Thus, if you need detailed information about the steps, please refer to those links.

Hardware and Software

The following hardware and software will be used in this tutorial:

DIY

The DIY tutorial is divided in two main parts. The first part is related with the configuration of the needed hardware, and the second part describes the software needed on Raspbian.

Hardware

To get started, you need to flash a new firmware to the ZigBee CC2351 USB dongle. To do that, you can choose between two options:

• Buy a SmartRF04EB to program the CC2351 USB dongle:
  • ZigBee: Xiaomi Sensors using Raspberry Pi (without Gateway!)
• Use the Raspberry Pi to program the CC2351 USB dongle:
  • ZigBee: Flashing a CC2531 dongle using a Raspberry Pi

The first option is the easiest, but you need to spend some more money (about +$10). The second option requires some electronic skills (soldering and cabling). Both options work on the hardware listed above.

Docker and Hass.io

You need to install Docker to start with this part of the tutorial. Therefore, log in to your Raspberry PI (remotely or locally) and type the following into a terminal:

curl -sSL https://get.docker.com | sh
sudo usermod -aG docker pi

The following terminal lines deploy a dockerized running version of Home Assistant. Actually, it creates a service that deploys the hassio-supervisor container, which then pulls and runs the raspberrypi3-homeassistant container. This means that you can still use Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi and install add-ons using the Hass.io add-ons section.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y apparmor-utils apt-transport-https avahi-daemon ca-certificates curl dbus jq network-manager socat software-properties-common

wget "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/home-assistant/hassio-installer/master/hassio_install.sh"
chmod +x hassio_install.sh
sudo ./hassio_install.sh -m raspberrypi4

If you are using using another SoC like e.g. Orange Pi, check the home assistant registry images and replace the argument raspberrypi4 (in my case Raspberry Pi 4B+) with the corresponding, e.g.: orangepi-prime for the Orange-Pi Prime.

sudo systemctl stop hassio-supervisor.service

sudo systemctl start hassio-supervisor.service

sudo docker pull homeassistant/raspberrypi3-homeassistant:latest
sudo systemctl stop hassio-supervisor.service
sudo systemctl start hassio-supervisor.service
sudo reboot

Installing Zigbee2mqtt

After installing Hass.io, you can access Home Assistant pointing to http://<ip-address>:8123. Home Assistant will ask you to set up a username and password.

Then, follow these steps to pair the Philips HUE lights:

1. Go to Hass.io (on the left menu) and add the https://github.com/danielwelch/hassio-zigbee2mqtt as repository (see Fig. 2).
2. Look for the Mosquitto broker add-on and install it.
3. Set the configuration to the following (I added login credentials to the MQTT broker. Alternative, you can set anonymous to true) and start the add-on:

   {
   "logins": [
     { 
        "username":"yourusername",
        "password":"yourpassword"
     }
   ],
   "anonymous": false,
   "customize": {
   "active": false,
   "folder": "mosquitto"
   },
   "certfile": "fullchain.pem",
   "keyfile": "privkey.pem",
   "require_certificate": false
   }

4. Then, look for the zigbee2mqtt add-on and install it.
5. Set the configuration (add the login credentials - more options are available here) to the following and start the add-on (the default options have an error, the password key should be password and not pass!):

   {
   "data_path": "/share/zigbee2mqtt",
   "devices": "devices.yaml",
   "groups": "groups.yaml",
   "homeassistant": true,
   "permit_join": false,
   "mqtt": {
   "base_topic": "zigbee2mqtt",
   "server": "mqtt://<ip-address>:1883",
   "user": "yourusername",
   "password": "yourpassword"
   },
   [...]

   You need to have the USB-ZigBee dongle connected before you start the add-on. The permit_join option should be set to true to pair the ZigBee lights. Once you joined all devices, set permit_join to false for security reasons. Every time you change a setting, you need to restart the add-on.

6. Go to Configuration->Integrations, and configure the MQTT add-on selecting the Enable discovery option (see Fig. 3).
7. Connect the Philips HUE light to the power outlet and wait.
8. Go to Hass.io click on the zigbee2mqtt extension and scroll down to the Log. You should see something like Fig 4.
9. The light should be available on the Overview page as in Fig. 5. The result of that configuration is shown in Fig. 1.
10. Once you joined all lights and devices (you can also add [Aqara sensors]https://lemariva.com/blog/2019/07/zigbee-xiaomi-sensors-and-raspberry-pi)), do not forget to set the permit_join variable to false! and restart the add-on.

root@orangepizero:~# docker container ls
CONTAINER ID        IMAGE                                              [...]
21462b915728        dwelch2101/zigbee2mqtt-armhf:1.8.0                 [...]

root@orangepizero:~# docker exec -it 21462b915728 /bin/bash
bash-5.0# cat /share/zigbee2mqtt/database.db
{"id":1,"type":"Coordinator","ieeeAddr": [...]
{"id":5,"type":"Router",[...] "manufacturerName":"Philips","powerSource" [...]}
}

Fig. 2: Hass.io running on Raspbian.

Fig. 3: MQTT configuration: Enable discovery mode option.

Fig. 4: zigbee2mqtt log: Philips HUE Lightstrip found and added.

Fig. 5: Hass.io: Philips HUE Lightstrip control panel.

Conclusion

This article extends the tutorials about the Zigbee Gateways replacements using a Raspberry Pi. In this case, the Philips HUE Bridge is replaced with a Raspberry Pi and a CC2531 USB dongle. Hass.io and the Zigbee2mqtt add-ons enable the Raspberry Pi to connect to the HUE lights and control them. HUE lights can be combined with Aqara sensors and using Hass.io rules, it is possible to switch them on using the signal of a PIR sensor, or change their colors according to the ambient temperature.