IKEA Trådfri Gateway

Binding installed fine, entered token -> Online. Nice.
Unpacked my Floalt ceiling lamp and discovered there was actually a Remote control included :slight_smile:

Now, I still wonder if I have to use it. Will check if binding inclusion will detect the lamp without the Remote control.

Since the Android App require the Remote control in order to finish setup, I might as well include it in the end.

:slight_smile:

Turned out both the mobile App and the Remote Control were needed to set this up, but after the pairing of the Remote to the Gateway (using the mobile App wizard) and the pairing of the Floalt panel to the Remote, the remote is no longer needed.
(I removed the battery from the Remote and the OH2 binding and the mobile App can both still control the panel.)
The moment the panel was paired to the Remote, in appeared in Paper UI Inbox.

By the way, the Remote control of the light panel was lightning fast.
Having worked with Z-wave Remotes through OH2 this was really fast.
(Maybe Z-wave direct association is fast as well, haven’t tried it yet.)

Thanks @funberg for this great binding!

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Good Work, Just works fine.
What about an enhancement… The PIR and may be the Buttons are things that can be used as Things to trigger other actions.
Yes you can do it indirectly through the bulbs but it would be much better directly.
Thanks

@funberg, I just tried to add a second Floalt panel, Using the same Remote control as the one that is working paired it into the same Trådfri group, but it did not show up in Paper UI Inbox.

I then removed it from the group, and added a second Remote control to the Gateway and paired the second Floalt panel to that.
Still nothing in the Inbox when scanning the Gateway.

Any tips?
Should both approaches work?

Both works fine in the Trådfri mobile App.

Edit: restarted OH2 and all 3 newly added panels popped up in Inbox :slight_smile:
Edit2: observation: when power cycling the Trådfri Gateway, connection to OH2 is lost. Must restart OH2 in order to reconnect.
Edit3: side note: My Floalt 30x90 panel made a high-pitched humming noise on all dim levels & color temperature different from 0 or 100. Anyone else have this issue? 30x30 panels are dead silent.

@funberg, great that you are developing a binding for the IKEA tradfri hub.
I got a couple of Philips Hue color bulbs.
Will these bulbs work with your binding? Meaning changing of color and hue.
I want to keep the number of bridges/hubs powered on, to a minimum :slight_smile:
Sadly the IKEA bulbs don’t connect to the Philips hue bridge.

Br
Raymond

They did with an earlier firmware: https://developers.meethue.com/comment/2328#comment-2328

Installed the binding, auto discovery work fine. I had installed the starter set with controller and white-tuning bulb.
Unfortunately there were 2 things created for the same device

Another question I have: Is it possible some day to have the remote control thing too, or is it only communication to the devices directly and not to the gateway at all.

Hey @funberg, you have fallen pretty silent for the last two weeks, I hope this is just because some vacation and you will be back with us soon :slight_smile:
I had meanwhile created a PR with some changes against your branch, so I hope this will make it in soon.

Cheers,
Kai

2 Likes

@funberg There is a huge interest in this binding and I am getting a bit nervous that we are not hearing anything back from you. Would be good to know if you are still pursuing it or if somebody else should take the lead on it.

5 Likes

Great work! Any hints how to configure the items? I tried by channeling, but it doesnt seem to work. Creating items in paperUI does though.

As @funberg seems to be busy, I have just done a couple of bug fixes and improvements, so that I was now also able to setup and use the gateway with a bulb. I especially like the instant state updates, if the bulbs are controlled by dimmer or IKEA app - these changes are immediately reflected in openHAB, really cool (and much better then Philips hue)!

Unfortunately, I won’t find much time to do much more work on that - so I would be very grateful if some other people could further improve and test the binding.

You can download the latest binary on Artifactory.

3 Likes

Wonderful, thanks to everyone who has contributed to this!

I have just installed openHAB 2 today, have it working with my tiny setup (literally just a wemo plug controlling a window air conditioner unit) and was watching this thread to decide if IKEA bulbs were a viable route for my budget setup. I think this answers my question :slight_smile:

Yes, and it goes for the other direction too. When my Z-Wave wall remote sends an update, Ikea turns on immediately. Z-wave devices in the same group follow 2-3 seconds later.

By the way, this bulb http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20318267/ worked just fine with the old binding, but very nice that you updated it for other bulbs. Too bad @funberg ‘disappeared’ :slight_smile:

I’m very happy with the binding as it is. Only snag is that the hub sometimes, after a OH2 restart, fails to come OnLine.
A second restart always fix this.

Thanks for your feedback, glad that it is already working reasonably well! I think we should go through code review and merge it soon - further improvements can be done any time. Definitely want to include it in an upcoming 2.1 release!

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I’m now up and running with a Tradfri gateway and four bulbs in openHAB. Fantastic stuff.

I don’t get the bulbs to work by creating text items and channel-configuration. I have to create items in PaperUI first. Not sure if this is binding-correlated.
Obiously it’s a big problem the Gateway itself crashes at least once per day, which is a common problem.

Why would you create text items and assign the channel-configuration to that?
Since most people here seem to have few to zero issues, i would suggest that something on your end is not working correctly.

If you share your configuration, maybe people might help you.

This binding is a great start! The Ikea bulbs have a very high light quality for the cost. For me the individual control of the brightness and colorTemperature both work very well, but I have a frustrating issue.

Here is the issue. When I put in the control of both brightness and colorTemperature of the same bulb in the same Rule then the brightness control always fails. If I remove the colorTemperature line from the rule, then the brightness works again.

rule "DAYLIGHT"
when
    Item DAYLIGHT changed to 1
then
	sendCommand(ikeatradfri_whitespectrum_bulb_gwb072bfb31b8f_65540_brightness, 100)	
    sendCommand(ikeatradfri_whitespectrum_bulb_gwb072bfb31b8f_65540_colorTemperature, 100)	
end

Can anyone spot what I’m doing wrong or is there a bug in the binding?

A wild guess: try a Thread::sleep(1000) between the two sendCommands().
If that works, se how low you can go. Value in ms.

Regarding the Tradfri Hub, I also do see stability issues after a week or so.
Response becomes sluggish, up to 10s for on/off to respond, both from OH and the Ikea App.

It is not a one off as I did see the same at a second location and that was just after a few minutes with no OH involved at all.

After a Hub power cycle things are back to normal, but the problem with OH and the binding is that it stops working.

Hub and all bulbs and panels are marked as Online in HABmin, but commands do not work.
Restarting the bundle from Karaf does not help: openhab> bundle:restart "IkeaTradfri Binding"
The only remedy to regain control is $ sudo systemctl restart openhab2.service

Having played some more with Tradfri I have found these two shortcomings: (not OH related)

  1. The phone app can only connect to 1 Hub at a time. If you need to switch Hub, the QR code needs to be scanned and the one you are leaving is forgotten.

  2. Bulbs and panels can only have 1 remote in a group, so no ‘stairway’ function with 2 Ikea remotes is possible. Trying to pair a second remote makes it forget the first one. Using the app+Hub it is possible to move lights between groups, but not remotes. Luckily OH can fix this, using any remote :slight_smile: