Getting the IKEA Dirigera Hub connected to Home Assistant
I'm not new to home automation, I have been dipping my toes few times over the years, but never found HomeKit (yes, we are a Apple house) powerful enough to push some of the ideas I have.
Everyone swear by Home Assistant (HA from now on), and so, this is the year I will give it a try.
I already installed HAOS on a VM running on the NAS, did the vanilla config and now it's time to connect some stuff, I'll start with the IKEA stack.
What did I get myself into
NGL right off the bat, HA is intimidating, there are a ton of menus, settings, options, and once you find the one you want to use the documentation is yuuuuuge. Oh, and did I mentioned there are two different ways (OS vs Container) and many different installers?
Feels bad complaining about abundant documentation, but it's just too wordy, look at this page for Matter Integration, there are three dozens listing for "On This Page"!
Way too much, and if you start fresh, you gonna end up on a lot of these pages, all looking kind of the same, all very long and kinda boring.\
Your head will quickly start spinning, you will get distracted, shut down the damn thing and say "another time" - ask me how I know!
Ready to rumble
After what is easily 30 minutes of my life, I find what I want to do and how to do it:
How to add a Matter bridge to Home Assistant
How you add a bridge to Home Assistant depends on the device. Check the documentation of that device for the specific steps. In case of SwitchBot Hub 2, for example, you need to enable the Matter-paring mode within the app. It then gives you a pairing code and tells you to set the actual device into pairing mode. You can then add that bridge device to Home Assistant as a Matter device. There is no guarantee that all the devices from that ecosystem can be used in Home Assistant. SwitchBot Hub 2 V1.5, for example, allows you to use curtain, lock, and blind via Matter, but not light.
How to add a Matter bridge to Home Assistant
So, what are the steps?
- in HA navigate to Settings → Devices & Services → + Add integration (bottom right) → Add Matter Device → Yes, It's Already in use (in my case) → Other controllers → Box asking for "Setup Code" (hurray!)
- in IKEA Smart Home app Settings → Tap your Dirigera Hub picture (Tap for hub settings) → Integrations → Pair using a code → You got the code! (expires in 15 minutes)
- Go back to HA and write the code and press add device
- Pray
- You will see a lot (but maybe not all) of your IKEA smart devices in HA!
Wasn't that bad, was it? /s
Lipstick on a backend
My general impression is that HA is indeed very powerful and capable of amazing things, but also the UI / UX is just lipstick on a pig.
I can already hear the white knights shouting "It's free, what you expect?" and yes it is free and yes I expect something that I can use without reading 15 manuscripts of documentation - the UI is functional and that's being kind, the UX is diabolical, I don't see how it will ever become popular apart for technically inclined hobbyists or resellers.
What's next?
All of this was just to bring in devices I had already configured with IKEA, an not even all of them, I have many more ecosystems and devices to connect, so there will be more of this, if I can muster the strength to read tomes of documentation...