Hue smart button to control kobold switch w/o always on gateway

Advice
1

Hi there,

I have a lamp in my living room with a 2000lumen light bulb and I would like to control it by a battery powered switch. I don’t necessarily need to control it also by my phone, but that would be nice to have. Also, I only use my phone’s hotspot at home for internet - so I don’t have a router that can provide internet to a hue bridge via Ethernet.

I then bought a Kobold switch, connected the lamp to it and a Philipps hue smart button because I like how small it is. Also, the Philipps hue smart button has a functionality to control light bulbs without a gateway, I though it might work with just those two products (w/o a gateway). Unfortunately, it doesn’t.

For just controlling one lamp from one switch, feels like setting up a raspberry pi + a raspbee is an overkill.

  • So would it work to buy a conbee for the setup (from my laptop) and then unpower it? Will it continue working? Or does that feature of the Kobold only work when it is used as switch (and not as actor)?
  • And alternatively, what if I just power the conbee via a phone charger and don’t connect it to any kind of computer? As I said - I only need the button to control the Kobold switch.

Thank you for your help!

Raphael

2

I have helped a friend setting up a HUBless system at his cottage which does not have any AC mains, only 12V solar panels and a battery.
With just a PC with a Conbee USB stick, we added all the 12V lights and the battery switches in Deconz, then used the Wireless Light Control App, aka Old WEB App from the Help menu in Deconz to associate lights to the switch buttons.
After that, everything works after unplugging Conbee and shutting down the PC.

So yes, I can tell from experience that that is fully possible.
Much easier than pairing with switch buttons in close proximity to the lights, especially if the lights are not easily accessible.

3

Great, thank you very much for the super fast and very helpful answer! I now ordered a conbee.

4

You’re welcome.
Just keep in mind that most switches are on/off and dimming only.
If you need to adjust color temperature or RBGW color, you need to adjust that in Deconz.
After taking the Zigbee network down again (aka removing the Conbee), the lights will remember the color settings.

5

Yes, I know. Neither the Phillips Hue Smart Button nor the Kobold dimmer can do more than on/off+dimming anyway.

But it might be valuable info for other people reading this thread with more capable devices. Thanks! :slight_smile: