Recap: I am building a wireless vitals sensor node (heart rate, SpO₂, temperature) that reports over BLE into Home Assistant as a smart way to keep watch over our loved ones, built up in three phases — DK bring-up, a custom miniaturized nRF52832 PCB, then a Matter over Thread proof of concept.
Past Posts
- VitaRF - Part 1 - The Plan
- VitaRF - Part 2 - Interface MAX30102 on NRF52
- VitaRF - Part 3 - Interfacing MAX30208 on NRF52
- VitaRF - Part 4 - Sending Sensor Data to Home Assistant via BLE on NRF52
- VitaRF - Part 5 - Matter over Thread on nRF54L15 with Home Assistant
- VitaRF - Part 6 - An nRF52-Based Heart-Rate & Temperature Wearable PCB for Home Assistant
The board is being manufactured at JLCPCB. JLCPCB has a few days of holidays, and I have no idea how that will affect the final delivery date, so while i wait, this post is a small detour on the Home Assistant side. If something concerning is detected by the sensors, especially at night, it should turn on the lights so that people don't bump into things in panic.
The bulb
I found this Philips Smart LED 10 W "Connected by WiZ" (there is no affiliate code or anything) for around 5 USD (INR 449). Standard bulb base, full colour plus warm-to-cool white, Wi-Fi + Bluetooth. WiZ seems to be their Branding for controls and the nice thing for me is that Home Assistant has a built-in WiZ integration that talks to the bulb locally over the LAN, no cloud account involved on the HA side.
Setting it up in the WiZ app
The bulb needs to be put on your Wi-Fi first, and for that you need the WiZ Connected app from the Play Store. It was published by Signify Netherlands B.V. I was not sure if it was the right app, the logo seemed the same as on the box. A google search later, it turned out that Signify is the company behind Philips lighting (it used to be called Philips Lighting) and WiZ is their smart lighting brand, so it is the right app. It has a Google or Facebook sign-in, but I preferred the "Maybe later" option. Then, after a theme choice, it asks you to create a "home".
After the expected permission page, it searches over Bluetooth, and the bulb shows up as A60 with it's MAC.
A Misleading Dropdown for Wifi
Next is "Smart pairing": it asks for your Wi-Fi name and password, and at the top there is a big 2.4 GHz banner. The bulb's radio is 2.4 GHz only. The app helpfully lists the networks the phone can see in a dropdown, and that list included my 5 GHz network. I did not read the banner, i picked the 5 GHz one, typed the password, and hit Next.
The bulb did not join, and started breathing red. It is a pretty clear "something went wrong" signal, to be fair, but the app does not tell you what it was. The app's own result screen says "Wrong password" on the second entry. My password was right, so my guess is that this is just how the app reports "the bulb could not join this network", and the actual reason was the 5 GHz band.
After choosing the 2.4 GHz network instead, it went through, the app ran through a few optional steps (icon, name, power-on behaviour, fade time, all left at defaults) and finished with "Your device is successfully set up!".
Apart from that dropdown, everything else about the app setup was straightforward.
Finding it from Home Assistant
I did this on the Home Assistant Docker instance that runs on my PC (for pure experimentation), and the PC is wired to a range extender. The bulb had joined the main router's Wi-Fi, and Home Assistant could not see it. I tried adding it manually (Add integration, search "wiz", leave the IP empty so it uses discovery) and nothing came of it:
But then I made the bulb join the range extender's Wi-Fi instead, and it got detected. It is the same problem i faced during the Matter setup, so i think it has something to do with my networking setup at home.
Home Assistant picked it up on its own, "WiZ 64B3D2 (192.168.29.254)", in the discovered devices. One click on Submit and it was in.
It works
The device page shows it as SHRGB by WiZ, firmware 1.34.0, hardware ESP25 01, MAC 98:77:D5:64:B3:D2. It shows up as Hue1, in the Bedroom. There is an on/off control, an "Effect speed" slider, and a Power sensor which just says "Unknown"
And here it is being controlled from Home Assistant:
The Home Assistant side is documented here: WiZ integration.
Final notes
The bulb is on my Home Assistant, and i can switch it on and off and change its colour from the dashboard. Time for some automation fun.
Fun 1 - Music Sync
Using the Mobile app as an Microphone, It can visualize the song on the Bulb. There was no lag, but I felt the transitions were sometime choppy.