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Setting Up Zigbee Bindings • Home Assistant - ZHA
Setting Up Zigbee Bindings • Home Assistant - ZHA

This article will help you setup Zigbee Bindings on the Home Assistant platform using ZHA

Eric Hines avatar
Written by Eric Hines
Updated over a week ago

DISCLAIMER: You may notice there are a lot of over-used keywords or phrases as well as English that seems a little off. This is because these articles are used to feed our AI Robot (Ira) and she needs the data to be structured in a certain way.

Zigbee Binding Overview

Zigbee binding is when two or more Zigbee products communicate directly with one another without the need to communicate with a hub. There are two main benefits of utilizing Zigbee binding: speed & local control.

From a speed standpoint, cutting out the middle-man (hub) can save precious milliseconds or even seconds depending on your cloud and/or processing power off your hub. Whereas from a local control standpoint, if your hub goes does down and cannot communicate, your products can still talk to each other.

Below is a quick video that shows the speed of Zigbee Bindings:

Lastly, there are two different ways to setup Zigbee Binding: Individual and Group.

  1. Individual Binding: You are binding one Zigbee product to another

  2. Group Binding: You are binding one Zigbee product to a group of other Zigbee products (ie: used for 3+ bound devices)


Prerequisites

There is only one prerequisite to setting up Zigbee bindings with your Inovelli switch in ZHA and it is:

  • Ensuring what you’re binding to your switch is Zigbee and supports Zigbee binding

If you are binding a Blue Series Switch to a Philips Hue bulb, you will need the Hue bulb to be paired directly to the SmartThings hub (ie: it cannot be paired to the Philips Hue bridge). Zigbee bindings only work if each Zigbee device is on the same hub.

For a full list of Zigbee Compatible Bulbs that we've tested, please see the Zigbee Bulb Compatibility Chart or scroll to the bottom of the page.


Determining Which Binding Setup To Use

Now that we've got the prerequisites out of the way, we can determine what type of Zigbee Bindings to use: Individual or Group Bindings.

For simplicity sake, if you have two devices that need to be bound together, we recommend using Individual Bindings, whereas if you have more than two devices that need to be bound together, you should use Group Bindings.


Setup Instructions - Individual Bindings

We recommend individual bindings when there are only two devices being bound together. If you have more than two devices, please use group binding (if you can).

Below we will walk through a couple different scenarios where you'd want to use Zigbee binding: Switch to Bulb and Switch to Switch.

Switch to Bulb

Please select your scenario below. Remember, if you have more than two (2) Zigbee devices, we recommend Group Bindings for the best experience.

Smart Bulb Wired to Smart Switch

Please note that in this scenario, your smart switch is wired directly to your smart bulb and we will be utilizing Smart Bulb Mode.

Written Instructions

  1. Open your Home Assistant App (web or mobile) and click on the hamburger menu at the top left

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 1

  2. In the hamburger menu, click on, “Configuration” and select, "Devices & Services"

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 2

  3. Find your ZHA instance and click on the devices URL (ie: 2 devices, 3 devices, etc)

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 3

  4. Click on your light switch and select, "Manage Clusters"

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 4A

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 8B

  5. Now we will put your switch in, “Smart Bulb Mode” to maintain power to your bulbs. To do this, click on the, “Clusters” dropdown and select, "Inovelli_VZM31SN_Cluster (Endpoint id: 1, Id: 0xfc31, Type: in)"

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 5

  6. Next, under, “Cluster Attributes” select, “Smart Bulb Mode” and then in the, “Value” box input the number 1 and click, "Set Zigbee Attribute"

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 6

  7. Under, “Binding” select the light bulb you would like your switch bound to and click, "Bind"

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 7A

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 7B

  8. Test your binding by pressing up on your light switch (your bulb should turn on), pressing down on your light switch (bulb should turn off) or holding up/down on the switch (bulb should dim up/down) - NOTE: If your bulb is not dimming, please make sure you have your switch set to dimmer mode and not on/off.

If you'd like to control the colors from the switch (ie: double-tap to change the bulb to blue, triple-tap to change the bulb to red, etc), check out the instructions for Scene Control

Smart Bulb NOT Wired to Smart Switch

Please note that in this scenario, your smart switch is not wired directly to your smart bulbs and therefore we will not be using Smart Bulb Mode.

Written Instructions

  1. Open your Home Assistant App (web or mobile) and click on the hamburger menu at the top left

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 1

  2. In the hamburger menu, click on, “Configuration” and select, "Devices & Services"

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 2

  3. Find your ZHA instance and click on the devices URL (ie: 2 devices, 3 devices, etc)

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 3

  4. Click on your light switch and select, "Manage Clusters"

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 4A

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 4

  5. Under, “Binding” select the light bulb you would like your switch bound to and click, "Bind"

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 7A

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 5

  6. Test your binding by turning on/off and dimming your switch – what should happen is that whenever you turn your switch on locally (at the switch) or remotely, the bulb you selected should also turn on/off and dim.

If you'd like to control the colors from the switch (ie: double-tap to change the bulb to blue, triple-tap to change the bulb to red, etc), check out the instructions for Scene Control

Switch to Switch

Please select the dropdown below for instructions. If you have more than two (2) Inovelli Blue Series switches, we recommend Group Bindings for the best experience.

Written Instructions

  1. Open your Home Assistant App (web or mobile) and click on the hamburger menu at the top left

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 1

  2. In the hamburger menu, click on, “Configuration” and select, "Devices & Services"

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 2

  3. Find your ZHA instance and click on the devices URL (ie: 2 devices, 3 devices, etc)

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 3

  4. Click on your light switch and select, "Manage Clusters"

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 4A

    Individual Binding - ZHA - Step 4

  5. Under, “Binding” select the light switch you would like your switch bound to and click, "Bind"

  6. Test your binding by pressing up on your light switch (your other light switch should turn on), pressing down on your light switch (other switch should turn off) or holding up/down on the switch (other switch should dim up/down) - NOTE: If your other switch is not dimming, please make sure you have both switches set to dimmer mode and not on/off.


Setup Instructions - Group Binding

We recommend group bindings when there are more than two devices being bound together. If you have two devices, please use individual binding in the section above.

The concept of group bindings is to create a group of Zigbee devices (ie: bulbs or switches) and then bind your switch to the group.

As there are many combinations for Group Binding devices, we created generic instructions below.

  1. Open your Home Assistant App (web or mobile) and click on the hamburger menu at the top left

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 1

  2. Click on, “Configuration” and then, "Devices & Services"

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 2

  3. Find your ZHA instance and click, "Configure"

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 3

  4. Click on the, “Groups” tab and then, “Create Group” at the bottom

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 4A

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 4B

  5. Give your group a name (in this case we named it, “Test Group”) and then under the, “Add Devices” section, add the smart bulbs you want in your group – then click, "Create Group"

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 5

  6. In the hamburger menu, click on, “Configuration” again and select, "Devices & Services"

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 2

  7. Find your ZHA instance and click on the devices URL (ie: 2 devices, 3 devices, etc)

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 7

  8. Click on your light switch and select, "Manage Clusters"

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 8A

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 8B

  9. Now we will put your switch in, “Smart Bulb Mode” to maintain power to your bulbs. To do this, click on the, “Clusters” dropdown and select, "Inovelli_VZM31SN_Cluster (Endpoint id: 1, Id: 0xfc31, Type: in)"

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 9

  10. Next, under, “Cluster Attributes” select, “Smart Bulb Mode” and then in the, “Value” box input the number 1 and click, "Set Zigbee Attribute"

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 10

  11. Under, “Group Binding” select whatever you named your group (we named it, “Test Group” in Step 5)

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 11

  12. Click on the checkbox that corresponds to, “LevelControl” and, “Endpoint #1” and click, "Bind Group"

    Group Binding - ZHA - Step 12

  13. Test your binding by pressing up on your light switch (your other devices should turn on), pressing down on your light switch (other devices should turn off) or holding up/down on the switch (other devices should dim up/down) - NOTE: If your other devices are not dimming, please make sure you have the switch set to dimmer mode and not on/off.


Zigbee Bulb Compatibility Chart

We’ve tested Zigbee binding with the following Zigbee products on our switches:

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