Ikea Remote controller sucessfully bound to group on firmware version 24.4.5

[chemicalstorm]

Hello!

Lots of places in the documentation mention that Ikea remote controllers cannot be bound to group, only to individual devices, depending on which version of the firmware they are running.
This has some limitation as most of the remotes can only be bound to a maximum of 7 devices.

However, I managed to bind one of my remote to a group!
Remote is a E1524/E1810 (the one with 5 buttons), and it's running firmware version 24.4.5.

The remote is currently bound to the following clusters, but note that I haven't done any work to try to trace what is the minimal set needed: genBasic, Groups, LevelCtrl, OnOff, genPollCtrl, Scenes.

Just wanted to let people know that it appears to be possible, and if more people can try & confirm that this is indeed now working, we could update the docs!

Cheers!

[Koenkk]

Could you make a PR to update the docs? To do this scroll down to the docs page and press "Help to make.."

[chemicalstorm]

Done: Koenkk/zigbee2mqtt.io#2476

[sjorge]

Minimal set is onOff (for just toggel button/or on/off on the onoff remote), you can add levelCtrl for brightness control.

[kjw1985]

However, I managed to bind one of my remote to a group!

Did you do anything special? I tried this today and could bind my remote to a group (via GUI or mqtt). However the buttons don't seem to do anything. I see the toggle action or brightness action published to mqtt, however nothing happens to my light group.
However if I bind it to a light it seems at least to toggle the light on/off.
I have 24.4.5 installed on the remote and z2m 1.35.3.

[chemicalstorm]

I think you need to unbind to the coordinator for it to work with a group.
I only have the binding between the source endpoint 1 and the group on mine.

[kjw1985]

Thank you for your quick answer. I will try this when I have the time and comment back if this works. Also need to look into the need of the binding with the coordinator.

[danmichaelo]

Thanks a lot! Had the same problem and unbinding from the coordinator helped!

[cipisek9]

Hi, do you have any tips on how to configure it? I’ve tried to bind a group of IKEA bulbs, and everything seems to be okay, but when I press the button, nothing happens. I have firmware version 24.4.5, and according to the website, it should support binding to both individual devices and groups. Thank you.

[kjw1985]

I tried it today as for some reason 1 of my 5 bindend lamps did not respond anymore. But whatever I tried groups didn't seem to work. I could bind the group (used on off and lvlcobtrol), but no message was send after a press. Reconfigure would also not work (as stated on the page). So binded all devices separately again.

[chemicalstorm]

What type of bulb do you have? Maybe there are different firmware for them and they do not support group binding :(
Mine are LED1536G5 (fw version 2.3.087), LED2101G4 (fw version 1.1.003), LED1622G12 (fw version 2.3.094), LED1649C5 (fw version 2.3.094), all grouped and bound to a E1524/E1810 (fw version 24.4.5) remote controller.

On the remote configuration page in z2mqtt, source endpoint is 1, destination is the group and clusters are as follows: genBasic, Groups, LevelCtrl, OnOff, genPollCtrl, Scenes

The remote was unbound from the controller (thus it does not transmit its input to z2mqtt).

[kjw1985]

Mine are 5 times the LED1537R6/LED1739R5 with fw 2.3.087. I did remove unbind the controller indeed. I forgot that it won't register the presses anymore. Maybe the the selected clusters does matter?

[sbrunk]

First of all, thanks @chemicalstorm, I got group binding working too with a E1524/E1810, thanks to your description above, and especially this:

I think you need to unbind to the coordinator for it to work with a group.

I have a also have a E2001/E2002 / STYRBAR, and according to the current docs, or #17238, it doesn't do group binding with newer firmware versions. So I got curious and tried your approach, and got it working too!

I played a little bit with it, and the important thing seems to be not to bind any clusters to both, remote and coordinator, in which case the lights in the group don't react to commands from the remote corresponding to that cluster any more. It seems like non-overlapping clusters are fine, with i.e. the setup shown in the screenshot the remote is working fine & the remote commands also still arrive as MQTT messages (haven't checked yet if Ota still works this way).

@Koenkk would you like me to draft a PR for the docs for this? Might be helpful to others as well. I've seen quite a few issues/discussions about it.

[Koenkk]

@Koenkk would you like me to draft a PR for the docs for this? Might be helpful to others as well. I've seen quite a few issues/discussions about it.

yes please!