Recently I started to install smart lamps in my living room. I also would like some smart lamps in my hobby room. For those, I would like the possibility to control the hobby room smart lamps from a Arduino board, instead of a simple remote control or an app. I have not found a good option to do this with yet. Do you have any suggestions?
I would prefer to use an Arduino with the capability to act as a HID device. I am currently using an Arduino R4 WiFi to act as a keyboard, to control some things in the computer game SimRail. In the future, I would like to combine the smart lamps in my room and the cabin light in simRail trough sending a keystroke that works on the in game keystroke for controlling cabin lights. Just a example of something I am interested in doing for a project.
The smart lamps in my living room are Ikea TRÅDFRI ones, since those are on a affordable price point (especially compared to Phillips hue lamps for example). I don't have a any hub for smart devices. The hobby room lamps don't have to be the same or be able to connect to the other Tradfri lamps, but if its possible, it would be a bonus point.
Both the Arduino family and the Espressif family have boards that support Zigbee and Alexa. Use the Arduino.cc site and the espressif.com site to read the information as to what models have what, and then determine what functionality you desire and see if there is a fit. I just googled [is tradfi compatible with any other protocols like zigbee or alexa] and got the following result. So it appears either esp32 or arduino will work, just research what specific board works with what.
Thanks for your replay Sonofcy. I am looking for some kind of example or even better a tutorial to follow. Doing a lot of digging in how Zigbee works and then hope I get it to work someday is not for me at the moment. I was unable myself to find a solution for this.
You can find a lot of information from Home assistant / Esphome forum.
Smart bulb is rarely the best choice for custom light control. Smart switch aka smart relay would be much better choice. I can recommend Shelly devices.
I would like to have an option for dimming the bulbs for each light bulb individually, so a simple relay is not going to work out. A RGB bulb with control of the colours is my preference, although its a bit nonsensical to be honest.
I am considering home assistant now. I think its the best if I use DIRIGERA hub as a matter bridge for the TRÅDFRI light bulbs and run home assistant in a VM on my game PC. If its a huge success, I could get a Raspberry Pi 4 to run the home assistant on. If not, I can simple reuse the DIRIGERA hub with the Ikea app downstairs and have a bit more options then I have now with a collection of remotes. I am aware that buying a Dirgera hub and in the future a Pi 4 is not the cheapest option, but it is very flexible and keeps open a lot of options for the future.
My point was, where the smart element locates. You can have smart switch, smart dimmer, smart RGBW led driver etc.. In all of these cases the light source aka bulb is dumb.
The other option is smart bulb where all circuit is in the bulb. I personally don't like that route for many reasons. Both options are viable with or without Homeassistant.
