We brought you the news IKEA has moved into home automation lighting with its Trådfri system.

(Read article here http://www.smarthomegeeks.co. uk/news/ikea-moves-into- automation-tech/ )

As we mentioned in the article IKEA’s Trådfri uses ZigBee to communicate. To be precise they work with ZigBee’s standard called ‘ZigBee Light Link’ or ZLL for short.

( If you fancy a geeky read here is the specification for it:

http://www.zigbee.org/zigbee- for-developers/ applicationstandards/zigbee- light-link/ )

The very interesting part is this is the same standard that Philip’s Hue uses.

You can purchase Philips Hue products from Amazon UK.

Philips Hue White Starter Kit

This has excited lots of Philip’s Hue fans as this should allow interoperability, ZigBees term for working together, between Hue and Trådfri. This would opens up an entire new ecosystem to existing Philips Hue owners. For example adding IKEA’s furniture compatible Trådfri lights to an existing Hue setup. Not to mention the possibility of adding cheaper lights to an existing Hue setup.

Philips confirmed they will allow it via a statement on their developers forum:

“There is no intention to block any third-party bulbs using ZigBee Light Link from working with the Philips Hue system”

However unfortunately at present the bulbs do not work with Hue.

A further comment from Philips said:

“As the IKEA bulbs do not behave fully compliant with the ZLL standard, they are rejected by the Hue bridge. IKEA is aware of this and informed us their intent is to have the IKEA smart lighting bulbs to work with the Philips Hue bridge. We offer our support to realize this in the future.”

This goes against a basic principle of ZigBee as defined on their website:

“Products with the ZigBee logo work together seamlessly, even if they’re from different companies”

We have asked both Philips, Ikea and ZigBee for a comment and any idea of timescales and we will update you when we here back.

Hopefully this will be fixed soon as the system has just gone on sale in the UK. The more Smart Tech that works together the better!

**UPDATE 27/4/2017**

We have had an exclusive comment from IKEA and Philip’s after contacting their press office for a comment:

Philip’s Lighting commented:

“Philips Hue follows the ZigBee Light Link standard. Several third party brands have implemented this standard in the way that the Hue system expects and can therefore be connected to the Hue bridge. The Hue app will recognize and display these third party products as generic ZigBee Light Link products. IKEA is free to make the same implementation choices. We cannot confirm if in that case the IKEA products would work with the Hue bridge without having done the required testing from our side.”

IKEA then said:

“We are working on a software update to be compliant with Philips Hue Bridge and will release it as soon as it is ready. We will continue the journey towards the smart home and making our products compatible with others on the market with the ambition to make it simple for the many people to create a better everyday life at home.”

These comments confirm that at some point IKEA Trådfri lights will work with Philips Hue – allowing you do add their bulbs or lights and hopefully control them within the Hue app.

Brilliant news for all Hue owners – follow us on Facebook & Twitter for the latest updates.

PS. You can purchase Philips Hue products from Amazon UK.