Homey Community Forum

Multiple Ikea TRÅDFRI drivers (transformer) and two square dimmers

Questions & Help
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#1

I’m trying to configure the following scenario (with homey v5):

  • Room1= two TRÅDFRI drivers (alias nr 1.1 and nr 1.2) with LED-spots connected to them and controlled by square dimmer (alias nr 1) AND of course also through homey.

  • Room2= one TRÅDFRI driver (alias nr 2.1) with LED-spots connected to them and controlled by square dimmer (alias number 2) AND of course also through homey.

I’ve tried many different setup procedures but can’t get it to work.

First setup procedure one room at a time: pairing dimmer with homey, then driver with homey and lastly dimmer with driver

But this setup procedure leaves both dimmers controlling all three drivers simultaneously.

Second procedure. Reset drivers and dimmers. Then pair drivers with homey (all drivers work ok and are independently controllable from homey) but when I then pair the dimmers with respective drivers room 1 works flawlessly (with homey and controller) but room two doesn’t want to work at all. When I pair the dimmer 2 with driver 2.1 either the pairing doesn’t work and I need to reset the entire room OR the dimmer 2 controls driver 2.1, but homey looses the ability to control driver2.1.

Any suggestions? What can I be doing wrong?

IKEA Dimmer problem
#2

You are not using a IKEA Tradfri hub?
If not then there is a small change it works with Homey and the remotes together.
If you use a hub it works.
I have here 3 led bulbs, E14, E27 and E14 RGB and 3 remotes. 1 remote for each lightbulb en i can use them with remote and with Homey.

#3

Thanks Mike1233

I’m not using a Trådfri hub and my hope is that I can avoid using hubs all together (ikea, hue, telldus).
I just can’t understand why it works with one room, but not with the other.

#4

Normally a Zigbee device can only talk to 1 device. Or with Homey or with a remote control. Or something else.
Some people have succeeded, but they are lucky. And it no longer works with a 2nd or 3rd device. Or sometimes it does.
Is very different.

#5

Thanks!
But I wonder how the Trådfri hub can manage that scenario if a zigbee device only can talk to one 1 device? I have a friend that has a similar setup but with a trådfri hub and without a Homey. The remote dimmers signal do not go through the hub, since it works when he unplugs the hub.

#6

It talks straight to the remote I think. When you use a Homey and pair the bulb to the Homey it loses connexion with the remote.
That is how I think it works what I have read here on the forum.
If it is not like this, excuse me.

#7

That’s called “binding”, where two devices are bound together so (for instance) a remote can directly communicate with a (for instance) LED driver. They are still part of the same Zigbee network so both devices can also be managed by other devices in the same network.

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#8

Thanks for the info robertklep!
so is there a possibility to have one set of drivers “bound” to one dimmer and then another set of drivers “bound” to another dimmer but all managed by Homey?

#9

I don’t understand why binding one driver with one remote would cause the remote to also bind to the other drivers, so perhaps there’s a mystery to be solved first. Were the other drivers powered when you tried to bind the remote to a specific driver? If so, unpower them before binding the remote.

#10

@robertklep

Yes it’s a mystery! :frowning:
Because it only happens when I have the remote in Homey. When I then remove the remote from homey they still control each other. But if i reset and choose not to add the remote to homey, they only control the driver i explicitly bind with. but the problem is that I for some reason homey looses the ability to control one room, as soon as I bind that rooms remote with the that rooms driver.

And to answer your question: yes, the first time they were powered on and I suspected that that was the problem. So I reset the drivers and only powered on the driver I was binding and the others were unpowered, but it didn’t help

#11

That’s to be expected, because when you remove the remote from an existing network (Homey’s), it will set up its own network that the driver will subsequently connect to (that’s something different than “binding” in the context of Zigbee, though). And because a device can only be connected to one network, the driver will drop out of Homey’s network as well.

Possibly the only way to get this working properly with Homey (because AFAIK, there is no explicit binding UI where you can bind devices to each other from Homey) is to not pair the remote with the drivers at all (pair the remotes and the drivers only with Homey) and use flows to connect each remote to each driver separately. Not ideal, because when Homey is unavailable you lose the ability to control the drivers from the remote :frowning:

#12

@robertklep
Is networks the same thing as zones in the homey app? AKA groups/rooms in trådfri hub app?

I was initially trying to configure the following room setup and it doesn’t work (specially considering your last comment about the network) :image

But the following setup should work right? because it definitely works with the Trådfri hub:

image
image959×498 20.7 KB

#13

Groups are a Zigbee thing. IKEA translates “groups” to “rooms”, so all devices in the same “room” become part of the same Zigbee group.

Zones in Homey are unrelated to hardware, they group (Homey) devices together. Similar to rooms, but purely in software.

And the last setup would work if Homey would support Zigbee grouping, which I don’t think it does. At least not in the way the IKEA gateway does (but the IKEA gateway only has to deal with Zigbee devices, as opposed to Homey which also needs to handle Z-Wave/WiFi/virtual/etc, so you can’t really make a direct comparison).

#14

So this means that I will never be able to have more than one zigbee remote connected directly to a zigbee device and have the remote and device connected to homey? Sounds like a BIG limitation! :frowning:

#15

I really think I must be missing something here! Can it really be that nobody else finds this to be odd?
Nobody else has two or more zigbee remotes that they want to directly control two or more devices with independently as well as being able to manage the devices directly from Homey? Does everyone end up with the all the remotes controlling all the devices simultaneously?
I just can’t wrap my head around this.

#16

I’ve a few remotes connected to homey. Homey controls the lights. It would be nice if I could connect the remote directly to de lights just because of the instability of homey (sometimes). I’ve already rest my case that this isn’t possible. Not perse a homey limitation but a zigbee limitation I guess.

#17

Well it is possible to control both with the remote and with homey. https://support.athom.com/hc/en-us/articles/360015669840-How-do-I-directly-control-a-Zigbee-device-with-a-Zigbee-remote-

Whats not possible is to connect different devices with different ikea trådfri square dimmer remotes and have them all connected to homey.

I keep hearing people say “it’s a homey limitation”, but I can’t agree with that since that scenario is perfectly possible when using the Ikea Trådfi gateway and app instead of homey. (As long as you group all remotes and the devices they are controlling in separate “rooms”.)
I’ve also heard other people say that this problem only happens with the square dimmer remotes from ikea and not with the 5-button dimmer remote.

#18

You guess wrong, with deCONZ I can set up binding between remotes and (groups of) bulbs so the remote can control those bulbs directly.

#19

Nice! Good to know it should be possible! :smiley:

#20

I have seen the same issue on my Homey, the second Dimmer Switch switches both lights while only one Dimmer is Bind to one light (in my case two Leptiter Recessed Spotlight)

Also seen with the 5btn dimmer remote,
but I have two Groups now, one light with a Dimmer Switch another Light with a 5btn Remote.

Also reported this Issue to Athom Support. now on Homey stable v5.0.0 / IKEA v1.8.4

I expect this is the same @Thomas_Buran reported.

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