In home automation there are many situations where some sort of remote control, like a push button, would be practical. For instance, to switch a lamp back on after it was switched off by the HA controller. Ikea has some nice remote switches in its Zigbee-based Trådfri product line that would be great for this kind of applications, but out-of-the-box they don't work with Home Assistant or other home automation systems, open-source or not.

Home Automation with ZigBee

Zigbee2MQTT offers a solution here. It is a Zigbee to MQTT software bridge that turns proprietary Zigbee bridges into universal Zigbee access points. By adding a Zigbee bridge or adapter (re)programmed with Zigbee2MQTT's Z-Stack, integrating Ikea Trådfri devices suddenly becomes possible. And not only these devices, also thousands of devices from other manufacturers. At the time of writing this article 2245 devices are supported from 308 different vendors!

This video presents an almost plug-n-play way to add an Ikea Trådfri remote to Home Assistant by using an iTead Sonoff Zigbee USB Plus adapter. No programming required!

 

Resources

  • Zigbee2MQTT, a Zigbee to MQTT bridge to help you get rid of your proprietary Zigbee bridges.
  • Home Assistant open-source home automation, perfect to run on a Raspberry Pi or a local server.