Intro
With Zendo, you can control all your lights, including smart light bulbs, wall switches, dimmers, and relays. You can turn lights on or off, adjust the dimming level, change colour, and monitor the battery level of portable lights in the Batteries section of the app. A single light accessory on your floorplan can control one light, a whole room, or a group of lights of your choice.Add lights to the floorplan
Lights are essential in every automated property, and a room often has multiple light sources. To keep control simple, add a light room accessory to control all the lights in the room. This gives you quick, easy control, so you can turn them all off with a single tap.Automatic grouping
This is the recommended setup. Before you start, please link each Zendo room to the matching Home Assistant/Homey room/area. When the rooms are linked, select “All lights” when you add the light room accessory. Zendo will automatically create the group for you, and keep it up to date when lights are added or removed from the room.Manual selection
If you’d rather choose the lights yourself, select “Let me choose” when you add the light accessory. Pick one or more lights from the list. As well as your individual lights, the list includes any light groups you’ve already made in Home Assistant/Homey, such as a Philips Hue room/zone or a wall switch that controls several lights. For example, if you have three pendant lights over your dining table, pick all three to show them as a single accessory on your floorplan, with one on/off and brightness for all of them. You don’t need to create a group in Home Assistant/Homey first, and you can still control them individually.Add individual lights to the floorplan (optional)
Some lights are better as individual accessories on the floorplan, especially lights you often control individually. For example:- Task lighting, such as a desk lamp or a reading light next to a chair or sofa.
- Bedside table lights.
- Kitchen under-cabinet lights.
Outdoor lights
Got garden, patio or perimeter lights? Map your outdoor areas first, then place the lights where they belong. For perimeter lights, draw a thin strip of gravel or paving around your house as a buffer, then drop your lights onto it. That way your outdoor lighting sits exactly where it does in real life.Control a group of lights
Whenever an accessory controls more than one light - a whole room, a Home Assistant/Homey group, or lights you picked yourself - Zendo gives you a colour wheel that sets them all from one place, so you don’t have to adjust each light individually. It’s the same wheel you use to edit a mood from the mood gallery, so there’s nothing new to learn.See every light on the wheel
Each light sits on the wheel as its own dot, at the colour it’s currently set to. One look tells you what the whole room is doing. Drag a dot to change the colour of that light.Group lights while you adjust them
Drag two dots close together and they snap into one. A single drag then moves all of them at once. Drag them apart to split them again.Colour & whites
A selector switches the wheel between colour and warm-to-cool whites. Only the modes your lights support are shown, so you never see an option a light can’t do.Set the brightness
A single slider sets the brightness of whatever you’ve selected: one light, a group of lights, or the whole room.Smooth dimming for groups
When the lights in a group are set to different brightness levels, dimming or brightening the group keeps them that way. Zendo moves them up and down together and keeps their relative brightness, instead of setting them all to the same level.Control individual lights in a group
Along the bottom, there’s a tile for each light in its real colour, with a switch to turn that light on or off. Tap a tile to jump to that light and adjust it on its own. You get both:- Control the whole group with a single tap.
- Control individual lights when you need to.
Setting the mood
The room feels different with the right light. Bright for getting things done. Warm and soft for slowing down. With Zendo, you can bring up mood scenes for each room right from your floorplan. Tap “Wake up”, “Relax”, “Party”, “Sleep”, or any mood you’ve set up in Home Assistant/Homey, and let the room shift to match the moment. It’s an easy way to make each space feel just right, with a single tap. Here are some examples of mood scenes created for Homes:- Wake up: Start your day gently with wake-up lighting that helps you feel refreshed.
- Work from home: Need to focus? This mood helps you concentrate and stay productive.
- Housekeeping/cleaning: Sometimes, you just need everything bright to spot the dust or focus on the ironing.
- Relax: When your day is done, it’s time to wind down.
- Party: Celebrate any occasion, big or small, in style.
- Sleep: Drift off as the lights transition to a warm tone and dim.
- Meditate: Put both your mind and body at rest.
Mood gallery
Getting a colour scene right takes time. Choosing colours that work together, deciding how bright each light should be, and adjusting until the room feels the way you want. The mood gallery does that work for you. Tap “Moods” on a light to open it, and you’ll find a collection of ready-made moods for your colour lights, from soft relaxing to deep, saturated colour.Zendo Originals
Every mood in the gallery is a Zendo Original, created by professional lighting designers in collaboration with Zendo. They choose the colours, how they sit next to each other across the room, and the brightness of each light, so the result looks considered instead of a random set of colours. A warm mood stays warm across every light. A vivid one keeps enough contrast that the room still feels comfortable to sit in. We add new Zendo Originals over time, so it’s worth coming back to the gallery.Try, edit, apply
You’re never stuck with a mood as it comes:- Try it. Tap a mood to apply it to your lights straight away, so you can see it in the room before you decide.
- Edit it. Change the colours and brightness on the same colour wheel you use to control a group of lights. Drag a dot to recolour one light, drag dots together to move several at once, and set the brightness with the slider.
- Apply it. Set the mood to your light or room.
Moods in the gallery are designed for colour lights, and calibrated on Philips Hue bulbs (Gamut C, the colour range covered by most current Hue colour lights). Older Hue bulbs and other brands cover a slightly different range, so the same mood can look a little different on them.Lights that only support warm-to-cool whites, or brightness alone, follow along as closely as they can.
Troubleshooting
Sockets as lights on Homey
On Homey, some devices are classified as “socket” even though they are physically lights (e.g. a smart plug controlling a lamp, or a relay wired to a light fixture). Zendo uses the device type set in Homey to decide what is a light, to stay consistent with the official Homey app. If a device is not marked as a light in Homey, it can’t be used as a light in Zendo.How to fix it
- Open the Homey app.
- Go to Devices and find the device in question.
- Tap the device, then open its Settings (gear icon).
- Under “Plugged in”, change the device type from “Socket” to “Light”.
- Save the changes.