Detecting HUE Bulbs Offline - Hue Hub Integration

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Happy Holiday Season Hubitat Community,

I’ve recently joined the HE community and dashboard prettyness aside I’m really loving my Hubitat C8. Before Hubitat I had everything connected to a Hue Bridge with HomeKit integration and whilst basic it did the job – the extra automation power the Hubitat delivers is pretty amazing though (going to get a lot of use out of it).

The one thing the Hue Bridge did that I wish I could replicate in Hubitat, and hence the reason for this post, is detect when bulbs go-offline (like when a dumb switch turns them off). The Hue hub would detect if a blub had gone offline in less than a minute and then show it in HomeKit, but Hubitat never seems to report that blubs have gone offline in its dashboards (even when hooked up to the Hue hub integration – when the Hue hub knows).

Does anyone know how I can replicate the Hue Hub functionality of reporting offline blubs in Hubitat, and show there offline status in a Dashboard and HomeKit (through the Hubitat HomeKit integration)? I don’t mind of if my bulbs (Hue and Ikea) are either directly connected to Hubitat or brought in through the Hue Hub integration.

Thanks to anyone that can help me with this! It would be really appreciated.

I also know that home automation systems aren’t mean to have devices turned off on them, but that is the state of my current situation. In Australia we need to employ and electrician to install devices like Shelly pucks and that costs some serious $$.

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The built-in Hue Bridge integration will pass along this information from the Hue Bridge, either in real time if you're using a new setup with the V2 Hue API (the default for new installs with a V2 Bridge) or on any setup as retrieved by polling.

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Great that is what I would have imagined!

Any ideas as to how I can make the bulbs show as offline in Hubitat dashboards (and the device itself)?

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I forget if Easy Dashboard looks at any of the commonly used (though not standard) attributes for this, but if so, it might show some sort of "offline" icon like the Devices list and other new UI pages in platform 2.4.0 do.

On a classic Hubitat Dashboard, you can definitely use an attribute tile and select whatever you want, including the reachable attribute in question here.

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Thanks - I don't think Easy Dashboard does (hence my assumption it wasn't being passed through) so it seems like I'll have to look at some more advanced dashboards.

Really appreciate your help and I'm excited that Hubitat knows about the device status.

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One more question though. Do you know why when the blubs are paired directly with Hubitat (not through the Hue Bridge) and passed through to HomeKit they don't show as offline in HomeKit?

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Two reasons:

  • Directly paired Hue bulbs, like most directly paired Zigbee (and Z-Wave, etc.) devices, do not have any reliable method of reporting online/offline status to Hubitat. Even if there were, there is no standard attribute available on the hub for this, though some third-party drivers to try (it's a bit easier for powered devices but it's a bit of a guess for others, and you can find some lively discussions on this topic with a search)
  • I don't know if HomeKit has a standard "attribute" (or whatever the equivalent is; I don't know HomeKit architecture) for reporting this status for individual devices for third-party integrations, though I think it has some insight into the HomeKit bridge (i.e., Hubitat hub) as a whole. But if such a mechanism exists, I don't think Hubitat is using it -- in large part for the first reason above. This is also true for any third-party HomeKit integration for Hubitat I know of, not just the built-in.
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Thanks!