Can you use the Philips Hue Smart Dimmer Switch with Remote with Hue Bulbs Already Controlled By SmartThings?

As our lives continue to be filled with more and more gadgets and more ways to connect them, it's quickly becoming imperative for companies to allow its products to talk to other company's products. The simple truth of it is that most us have a wide variety of gadgets from all sorts of different companies. Thankfully, Philips Hue and Samsung SmartThings both understand this.

Philips Hue is easily one of the biggest names in smart lights and one of the main reasons for its success, aside from its impressive array of features, is the fact that its products can work with almost any smart home setup you have, including SmartThings. One of the Hue's biggest selling points is that you can connect it up to your smart home setup, then control your lights from your smartphone, tablet, or even use your voice. Philips has also created a few simple remotes that you can use if you prefer, including the Dimmer Switch.

The ability to control all the lights in your home with your smartphone or your voice definitely excites my nerd side, but it also can be a little overwhelming at times. There are certainly times when I just want simple controls, not to mention the fact that my wife cannot live without dimmer switches, and this is where the Dimmer Switch is a perfect fit. Even if you have SmartThings set up in your home to control your lights, the Hue Dimmer Switch will still work perfectly well, as long as you have a Hue Bridge.

While SmartThings is a great way to control your lights, it actually doesn't connect to the Dimmer Switch itself without quite a bit of hacking and coding which neither myself nor the manufacturers recommend. Essentially, if you want to use a Dimmer Switch to control your Hue lights while they're connected to your SmartThings Hub, you'll need a Hue Bridge. The Dimmer Switch will connect to your lights via the Hue Bridge allowing you to control your lights with the remote. You'll need to use the Hue App to set it up but that's it.

To be clear, the Dimmer Switch will not connect directly to the SmartThings Hub so it will never even know that it's there, but it will also not interfere with anything. The Dimmer Switch will not interrupt your Hue lights connection to SmartThings and vice versa. SmartThings will still give you full compatibility with your smartphone or tablet.