Can Hubitat Elevation hub replace a Hue bridge?

I’ve just recently started having really weird issues with my hue bridge. I have about 28 hue lights that have worked flawlessly for years but starting yesterday some are randomly becoming unreachable according to the app. I feel like the issue must be the hub but my question is rather than buying a new Philips hub can the hibitat take over this function?

In my opinion it can. However, I would recommend dedicating a Hubitat uniquely to this task. This is because older Hue bulbs do not make good repeaters for devices other than zigbee bulbs.

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You should buy a Hubitat bridge....

Theoretically possible, technically challenging. Hue bulbs run a different Zigbee protocol than your other Zigbee sensors and mixing the two protocols may be challenging. Zigbee bulbs are known to be lousy repeaters for other Zigbee devices, so your Zigbee experience may suffer. With that being said, I would check the Zigbee channel on the Hue bridge. Some Hue updates may reset the channel to their default, which is channel 11. If that happens, your Hue bulbs may run into radio interference. It's possible that your router may have changed the 2.4ghz band channel that is now interfering with your Hue bridge.

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And just in case, any other 2.4GHz network, e.g. other ZigBee or Wi-Fi networks.

And beyond... as even new Bluetooth devices can destabilize a Zigbee mesh.

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Excellent.... :pensive:

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And visa versa?

I replaced my Hue hub for a C5 when I upgraded to a C7. I have since then upgraded my C7 for a C8 but the C5 is still my “bulb” hub.
Have been working flawless since day 1. I have a mix of Hue and IKEA bulbs.

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Correct me if i am wrong but i also thought the stability issues were related to older Hue Bulbs. I thought newer ones were zigbee 3.0 and less likely to suffer the same problems.

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I suppose your Hue Bridge can be hooped, but before giving up on it, I'd try the advice of changing it's channel, or even factory resetting it and starting over if a channel change doesn't work.

While a Hubitat hub can control the bulbs, it's not a replacement for the Hue bridge exactly. Any third-party apps you like on the Hue Bridge won't work with Hubitat of course, and if you're a fan of the Philips Hue UI, then you'll lose that capability too.

Not that it couldn't happen, but I've had Hue Bridges for years and have never experienced a failure. Sold my first with my house and bought another for the new house. Hubitat Hue integration works great for me. For the reasons that @bobbyD pointed to, it's a simple and inexpensive way to keep Hue bulbs off the Hubitat Zigbee network.

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Trying to figure out what is new and what is old in an existing Hue system is part of the "technical challenge" I was referring to, earlier. Or maybe it seems that way for me, as I have nearly 100 Hue devices (some of which are almost 10 years old) spread between 2 Hue bridges.

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Thanks all. Changing the channel (it was on 11) and running cleanup seems to have fixed things. It was just weird because the thing has been running 5 years solid with no issues at all.

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If you don't want unpleasant surprises, which can happen once in a while, you may want to disable the automatic updates in bridge Settings.

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