Does Hue lights with Zigbee connection break Hub connection?

[GCalzat]

Can someone please confirm if you have to choose between having the eisy control Philips Hue lights with the ZMatter USB Zigbee controller or have your Philips Hue lights only controlled by Philips Hue hub(s)?

I have not run across anything that confirms this.  For years, I have been running my now 40 Philips Hue lights over two separate Philips Hue hubs using the Hue plugin on Polyglot to interact with the Philips Hue hubs to control my lights.  It's a significant configuration that is also tying each of these Hue nodes to numerous Insteon keypad wall switches that control most of my lights.  I thought it would be great to now configure them as Zigbee devices directly.  However, I seem to have determined after 2 days of trying that if you do this, you completely lose the ability for the Philips Hue hubs to control your lights.  When I configured them as Zigbee devices after factory resetting the bulb and adding the bulbs, the eisy controlled the bulbs as expected, but they immediately lost their connection to the Philips Hue hub.  When I then tried to re-connect the bulb back to the same Philips Hue hub as you would add any bulb to a Philips Hub hub, it then immeditely breaks the direct connection that I just made to the eisy to control the bulb.

When I referred to ChatGPT, it stated the following:

"Can I add a zigbee hue bulb to the universal devices eisy device and have it connected to the philips hue hub at the same time?

No, you cannot connect a Zigbee Hue bulb to both the Universal Devices eisy and the Philips Hue Hub simultaneously. Zigbee devices, such as Philips Hue bulbs, are designed to connect to a single Zigbee controller or hub at a time."

If this is the case, we would lose the ability for numerous mobile apps to control and perform numerous things to your lights which is one of the reasons we purchase Hue bulbs.  Unless anyone knows of a workaround, I will likely have to go back to the only workaround I'm aware of which is using the Hue plugin on Polyglot which has not been updated as of now since May 2022 and has some issues as noted in other threads, but it does work.

Also, someone can feel free to confirm, but if you switch to using them as eisy Zigbee devices instead of the Philips Hue hub, I believe you lose all of the rooms and zones and other Philips Hue app features (special scenes, etc.) since they are no longer being controlled by the hub.  I assume the way to address the rooms/zones as Zigbee devices is to simply create a scene for every room or zone you want to create (e.g. add 3 Hue lights in the living room to a living room scene).

[Guy Lavoie]

Sounds like it's somewhat like z-wave, where a device can only belong to one network at a time. Some topologies, like Insteon, can be controlled by more than one main controller (ie: PLM) but each controller needs to be able to respect (leave) any links that aren't to devices it knows about. That's what the eisy does when you add a new Insteon devices and it gives you the option of leaving any existing links intact. Other networks like z-wave require you to remove a device from any other network in order to add it to a new controller. Zigbee might be similar.

[Geddy]

@GCalzat sounds like you answered your own question in your trial and error. I think the idea was that the newer hue bulbs would be able to connect to the UD zigbee device and therefore not need the hue hub, but as you indicate you might give up a little function by doing that. Having 40 hue bulbs is a lot and if you already had them in the app and pulled into the eisy with the plugin I would suggest leaving them that way. You know...ain't broke don't fix it. I have less than 10 hue bulbs and only one hub and use the Hue Plugin just fine with the eisy. I don't get too fancy with the process though so you might have a lot more for room lighting and color options. I would think the way you had it so well linked is the best way for your situation. 

I agree with @Guy Lavoie that it's more than likely the bulbs can only talk to one hub. Even then it might be an issue that older bulbs might not be able to talk to the Zigbee network that the ZMatter device is using so you would need the hub for those bulbs.