The Problem That Finally Broke Me

Every morning, same thing. Wake-up automation fires at 6:30. The Hue bulbs fade up nicely to 70%. The IKEA bulbs? Sitting there at 4%. Barely glowing.

I kept thinking I’d configured something wrong. Checked the automation. Checked the bulb settings. Tried different transition times. Nothing helped.

Turns out it’s not me. Hue bridges just don’t handle third-party Zigbee bulbs properly. The IKEA Trådfri bulbs receive the final brightness value but ignore the fade duration entirely. They jump straight to whatever you set. Known issue, apparently. Forums full of people with the same complaint.

After enough mornings squinting at dim bedroom lights while the living room was fully lit, I decided I was done messing with it.

The Fix: Rip Out the Middleman

The Hue Bridge is the problem. It’s sitting between my bulbs and Home Assistant, translating Zigbee commands, and doing it badly for anything that isn’t a Philips product.

So I’m removing it. Going direct: Home Assistant talking native Zigbee through a Sonoff Dongle Plus MG24. No translation layer. No Philips cloud. One fewer device.

I made a GitHub issue (#9) to track everything. Wrote out what “done” actually means:

  • All 11 lights respond via ZHA
  • All 4 buttons paired and configured
  • All 6 automations working
  • Voice control via Google Home working
  • Hue bridge decommissioned
  • No Hue entities remain in HA

That list matters. Without it, I’d get the lights working and call it “basically done” and never finish the voice control part. The checkboxes keep me honest.

What I’m Moving

11 lights:

  • Living room has three—a lamp, a color blob thing, and a Bloom
  • Bedroom has three IKEA bedside lights (the ones causing all the problems)
  • Office has the desk lamp and floor lamp
  • Dining room, one ambiance bulb
  • Porch, two more IKEA bulbs

3 buttons (new, not just replacing old functionality):

  • SOMRIG for the bedroom
  • STYRBAR for the living room
  • A shortcut button I haven’t figured out yet

The buttons are actually an upgrade. Physical controls instead of always saying “Hey Google” or pulling out my phone. Press a button, lights dim. Simple.

8 automations to recreate:

  • Morning wake-up fades for bedroom and the rest of the house
  • Evening lights that come on before sunset
  • Wind-down sequence at night
  • Porch lights on their own schedule

First Couple Sessions

Hardware pairing went fine. Some things I learned:

The newer Hue bulbs (2023 and later) are easy. Delete them from the Hue app, and ZHA picks them up immediately. No factory reset needed.

IKEA bulbs are more annoying. You have to delete them from Hue, then do this thing where you power cycle them six times quickly—on, off, on, off—to factory reset them. Then ZHA can see them.

The SOMRIG button took some debugging. It has two buttons on it, and I assumed the automation would get different event arguments for each one. Nope. It uses something called endpoint_id—button 1 is endpoint 1, button 2 is endpoint 2. Took me a while to figure that out.

But after two sessions: all 11 lights paired, all 3 buttons working. Hue Bridge unplugged.

Where Things Stand

About 85% done:

  • ✅ Lights all working on ZHA
  • ✅ Buttons paired with basic automations
  • ✅ Dashboard works
  • ✅ Hue Bridge is off
  • ⏳ Scenes and dashboard polish
  • ⏳ Voice control

Voice control is last because it’s the annoying part. Setting up a Google Cloud project, OAuth, HomeGraph API, consent screens. I’m saving that headache for when everything else is solid.

The question I haven’t answered: do I set all that up myself (free but tedious), or pay $6.50/month for Nabu Casa and skip the hassle?

I’ll figure that out in Part 2.

Part 2 covers finishing the migration, the Nabu Casa decision, and what kept the project on track.

Written with Claude.