Zigbee

 In my study I have a very good Philips Hue dimmable light bulb.  I can easily control it on my iPad with the Philips app.  However, it really doesn't want to be controlled by Home Assistant (HA) and is very reluctant to be configured in Google Home(GH).  Previously with lots of effort I managed to configure it in GH then control it via a link from HA to GH.  When this stopped working, as you do, I googled a solution.  

Unsurprisingly there were plenty of moans from HA people about Philips and the consensus was that it was better to control their lights through Zigbee.  I know almost nothing about Zigbee but decided this was a good opportunity to find out.

Zigbee is a low-power wireless protocol suitable for devices like bulbs and switches.  A single device called a Zigbee co-ordinator (ZC) talks to Zigbee End Devices (ZED) to make up a network.  You can build a mesh network by adding Zigbee routers (ZR) which can communicate with ZC and ZED.  The Philips Hue "bridge" incorporates a ZC so that it can communicate with the bulbs.

The Sonoff Zigbee dongle is a popular ZC and it costs very little so I sent off for one from Ali Express.

It only took a couple of weeks to arrive and I was quickly able to plug it in to my HA server.  HA discovered it automatically.

I started the Zigbee "Add Device" function and put the Hue bulb into pairing mode.  Zigbee found the bulb straight away and it is now happily working in HA.  Job done.

So we now have wifi, bluetooth and zigbee communication available to us.