IKEA Tradfri

IKEA Tradfri + Phillips Hue + HomeKit

Both the Tradfri and Hue use ZigBee protocol to operate and also implement some standardized data interface. That means that a Hue bridge can be used to control Tradfri lightbulbs and read data from other sensors.

To connect a lightbulb to the bridge, first in the app it is required to start search for lights. Then the lightbulb needs to be turned off and on 6 times leaving it in connection mode (the bulb changes its brightness in three steps).

The bridge should then identify the bulb and pair with it.

When the connection mode is activated a new search for lightbulbs in the app can be performed.

After the pairing finishes, the lightbulb can be easily used with the Hue app, unfortunately the app won't publish the 3rd party accessories to HomeKit.

There are two solutions to this problem - either buy the IKEA Tradfri bridge and use it to publish the accessories to the HomeKit, or use a home server running Homebridge with appropriate plugins.

The Homebridge server can be installed using the tutorial here and can then be used to control devices from many more manufacturers that do not implement HomeKit on their own.

To make the devices connected to the Hue bridge work, a plugin homebridge-hue needs to be installed and configured with the following configuration, that ensures that the plugin won't advertise native Hue devices, but only the third party one.

...
"platforms": [
        ...
        {
            "name": "Hue-tradfri",
            "anyOn": true,
            "lights": true,
            "nativeHomeKitLights": true,
            "nativeHomeKitSensors": true,
            "nupnp": true,
            "resource": true,
            "users": {
                "USER_ID": "TOKEN"
            },
            "platform": "Hue"
        }
        ...
    ]
...

Bear in mind, that after installing the plugin and making it connect to the bridge it is required to save the USER_ID and TOKEN to the configuration file.