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How to add IKEA Trådfri lights to Your Philips Hue bridge

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The Philips Hue app offers you a convenient way of controlling your Hue smart bulbs, but did you know it’s possible to use the app to control the Ikea Trådfri?

You can now add more smart bulbs at your home without the need to spend more and that is through synchronization of the Ikea Trådfri with your Philips Hue App. Philips Hue uses the Zingbee Light Link protocol, so many of the products that are ZingBee compliant will easily sync with the Hue Bridge. You could even try this system with alternative hue bulbs from Osram and GE.

Ikea Trådfri Working with Philips Hue

However, although this sounds impressive, it might not be the rosy walk you would expect it is. There are many things you need to get right for the setup to work seamlessly.

There are several rules that you should observe to ensure you don’t encounter problems trying to connect the bulb to the Hue system.

Straight from the Ikea support site –

If the software version of your IKEA smart lighting products is 1.2.x or later, you can connect them directly to a Philips Hue Bridge.

Simply follow these steps:

  • First of all, make sure that the light sources you want to connect have an updated software version (1.2.x or later).
  • Keep the light sources close to the Philips Hue Bridge.
  • Search for new devices with the Philips Hue app.
  • Do a factory reset of the light sources by toggling the main switch 6 times.

The steps shown above sound very easy, but in some cases you might encounter challenges. To ensure you get everything right, here is a comprehensive breakdown of things and how you should go about the process.

Updating the Ikea Trådfri bulbs

Bulbs released to the market recently are likely to have the newest firmware version. If yours is new, then you might not need to deal with updating the software. For those who bought their bulbs in 2017 and are yet to connect them to the Trådfri Gateway, it is possible the bulbs are running an old firmware version, which simply means you will have problems using it on Hue.

You should update the firmware with the Trådfri app, but you have to be patient as this takes some time. Next thing you should do is to remove your Trådfri from the system. It is important to get it off the app before you reset.

Adding to the network

Once you are through with the update, the next challenge you have is to ensure the Ikea Trådfri bulb appears on the Hue App. For this you might need to try up to 10 attempts. Switch on and off the light containing the IKEA bulb six times in quick progression. This resets settings and retains the firmware. Make sure to also switch off other Hue lights, and this is to ensure there is no interference of ZingBee.

Move your IKEA bulb closer to the Hue bulb. Now go to your hue app and start searching for a bulb, just in the same manner you normally search. You will see ‘color temperature light 1’, which represents the bulb. Hit the title and you will get a new window where you can name it and add to a group of your choice as would be the case with any Philips Hue bulb.

The search process might take longer than you expect, but don’t give up if this is the case. Sometimes the system is slow to detect external devices. Just make sure the Ikea Trådfri bulb is as close to the Hue as possible as this will increase your chances of successfully connecting to the system.

You do realize that this will not allow you control of the bulb using Alexa or Homekit. Not until you add some more configurations that will make this possible. If the setup is not fully synced with Alexa and Homekit, you will get a “Failed to update Siri” error, which you don’t need to worry about as you can still use the bulb.

One of the errors you are likely to encounter is where after giving instructions Alexa only switches off all other lights except the Ikea Trådfri. This case is also dependent on whether you are running the right firmware, so make sure to first update to allow compatibility with Alexa. There are also third party apps like Lamp Finder that will assist you in the process of searching for the bulb if this process fails on the main Hue app.

This video below shows a guide and run through of adding these bulbs to your Hue set up.

Pairing Ikea Trådfri with other smart hubs

Besides Philips Hue bulbs, there are other hubs that can accommodate the Ikea Trådfri bulb, without necessarily having to work with an Ikea Trådfri Gateway. Just look for smart hubs that are available on the Zingbee board and follow the guidelines outlined here to see if things will work as expected. Of course it might be different for other hubs so you have to look for more information from Ikea to understand how each is supposed to connect.

You could for example pair your Ikea Trådfri with a Wink hub that allows you to control it from the hub, just in the same way you do with Hue. The connections above only allow you to access on and off controls, so no color changes or white spectrum.


Founder & Editor

Mike is the founder of Hue Home Lighting, a huge Hue fan with far too many lights, covering home and garden. A smart home gadget addict and also enjoys the odd bit of DIY

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2 Comments

  1. Caio Figueiredo

    I have connected 7 tradfri lights now and would like to share the experience:

    – If you are buying this lights in 2019 there is a 99% chance that you won’t need a firmware upgrade. You can check the batch number for confirmation (the hard printed number on the back of the box) mine was 1828 and works just fine. Legend said that any number greater or equal to 1721 should work.

    – Getting closer is fine and good but there is no need to overstate this, I connect mine a room away just fine. There is also no need to turn off the bridge.

    – The reset procedure is the real deal, at first I toggle switch on/switch off very fast for 10 times, that didn’t work, allow a small second between each toggle. I usually do this for 13 ~ 15 times, since I don’t see any visual confirmation that the procedure worked, and then try to connect.

    – I often forgot to leave the bulb turned on after the reset procedure. Don’t do this.

    This is not a complicated, but can take some time.

    Reply
  2. Thijs

    This worked like a charm.

    Important to state:

    Step 4 “Do a factory reset of the light sources by toggling the main switch 6 times”, must be performed while Step 3 “Search for new devices with the Philips Hue app” is running

    Initially I made the mistake of running step 3, and just sit and wait until they appeared… which didn’t work… duh.

    Once I figured that out, I had a light with 3 Tradfri bulbs in it, with a single powercord. Ran the procedure, un/plugged the cord 6 times, and all 3 bulb were immediately recognized and added.

    Reply

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