Hub mesh setup to remove Hue hub. splitting devices and apps

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#1

Hi All.

Been having issues with hue hub connecting to the cloud, to keep a long story short, ive had enough of it and want to remove the cloud connection and so i want to move all of my lights to the hubitat.

Now i know that has its own problems and so ive bought a separate HE. The plan is to put all of my devices on one hub and all of the apps on another and use hub mesh.

At the moment i have all devices and apps (excluding hue stuff) on the one hub and want to know the best way to set all of this up.

would it be possible to make a backup of the working hub and then load it onto the new hub, once done i could delete all of the devices off one hub and all of the apps off the other hub, then i can add my hue lamps to the device hub, thoughts?

#2

If I understand what you want to do then I'd put the hue bulbs on a separate zigbee channel (and Hubitat hub), Ideally you could use the same zigbee channel as the current Hue hub is using but either way you have to get the HE hub to discover and pair all the hue bulbs individually and unpair from the Hue hub. Seems like a lot of work and expense for little benefit but what do I know?

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#3

I second @ccoupe’s recommendation. You could have all apps and Hue bulbs on one bulb.

This recommendation assumes that you have other Zigbee devices. These will try to mesh to the bulbs, but those are terrible repeaters and will cause you to have Zigbee issues. If you only have zigbee bulbs, then you should be okay.

As for the apps, you could restore a backup, but then will need to relink all the devices in them and this will take a while. Alternatively, you could move them to the new hub using the Export / Import functionality. When you import, you will be asked to re-select the devices used by the app, so it will likely be quicker.

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#4

Thanks to both of you for taking the time to reply, The hue is back up and running now but its just not reliable, the hue integration on the HE has failed and need re setting up for the 3rd time in 6 months. if i have a power outage or need to reboot it can take days to re establish its connection to the cloud.
The whole idea of using HE was to remove as much cloud dependency as possible and ive avoided removing the hue because of the work involved. I already have a spare HE and so there is no extra cost.
so from what you are saying, i should keep all of my lights on one HE and all apps and other devices on the other?
Can you please clarify what you mean about the zigbee channels? do i need both HE's to use the same or do they need to be different?

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#5

i have many different types of zigbee devices, various sensors as well as bulbs power outlet ect.

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#6

thanks, thats a little confusing! do i need the bulbs on one channel and the hubs on the same?

#7

What Hue cloud connection? Maybe for the Hue app on my phone but I only use that once a year or less - I only have a few odd bulbs on Hue. I have seen the Hue hub lose the ethernet connection but its been a good year since that happened and only took a few minutes to reconnect - not days like you said. That is the problem to solve. I wouldn't use a spare hubitat to do that but that what you asked about.

There is not enough space and time here for another a zigbee tutorial. The radio in your automobile has channels, right? Zigbee radios have channels too. You can tell a hubitat hub which channel to broadcast too and listen on. Two hubs would use two different channels - In fact that's what you have now - Hubitat on one channel and Hue on another. Depending on your channel choices it is possible you have wifi intererence on your Hue's zigbee channel or some other problem on that channel like lack of repeaters. Using a second Hubitat in place of the Hue hub probably won't fix that problem.

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#8

Thanks again for taking the time to reply, The confusion about channels was from you original
post which said

and then said.

I know how to put the hubs on separate channels, but dont know of any way that this can be done at the bulb level and so assumed you were talking about the hubs? So i was just trying to clarify if the hubs needed to be on different or the same channels.

Logically speaking i think theyd need to be separate.

Regarding the Hue hub, I dont know why it wont join the cloud, if tried 2 different routers, the Hub is connected directly to the router itself, ive tried different cables and tested them all. some times it can take days to join and sometimes hours. Switching router ports sometimes speeds things up!

I dont use the remote login for the Hue but i do use alexa voice commands via the Hue Skill on alexa. If i can get alexa to control the lights without the cloud then im sorted!

Ive seen the "control with alexa" button on the motion app, i need to see if i can use this to remove the cloud dependency.

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I work away from home A LOT, and i need to get this to be reliable or my wife will make me strip it all out....

#9

The integration between the Hue hub and Hubitat does not use the cloud, it's all local. I don't use my Hue hub for anything but interacting with Hue bulbs and lights via Hubitat. The only time I need the Hue cloud is when I am installing new bulbs, as @ccoupe suggests. All of my Alexa integrations are to HE not Hue. So if the Hue hub drops its cloud connection for some reason all of my Alexa integrations continue to operate just fine and I would likely never even realize there was an issue.

FYI you cannot get Alexa to control the Hue hub without "the cloud" but you CAN get it to control the Hue hub without the Hue cloud! You still need the Alexa cloud connection with HE. I think using this approach will solve your problem without a ton of work or worrying about channels and more hubs.

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#10

Thanks Brad.

It sounds like you are doing what i need to do, now i just need to figure out how to get alexa to work via the HE instead of the cloud. Ill start to google how to do it, if you have the time to point me in the right direction, it would be much appreciated.

#11

Happy to! It's really pretty straightforward using the built-in Alexa integration. Documentation is here. Give it a shot and if you have any questions just ask.

https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=Amazon_Echo_Skill

If you really want to have some fun you can also add the ability for HE to control Alexa devices rather than the other way around. This means you can use Alexa devices for notifications, play sounds, run commands, and so on, all from HE rules. It's a community-supported app and a little complicated to set up but many of us use it.

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#12

Brilliant, Thanks! Ive already done the HE to control alexa, ive got some door sensors on the Freezer doors and they send voice alerts if they are left open... The wife loves them, she says its the only automation that ive done thats any good... ;(

#13

Perfect! I have alerts like that for the fridge and freezers, the hot tub, the humidor, some of my plants, and critical hub events. The freezer warning has quite literally saved my bacon more than once. And just the other day there was a brief power outage that tripped the breaker to the hot tub. I didn't realize it but Alexa notified me that the water temperature was below 100 and sure enough, no power!

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#14

ooooh, ill have to buy a hot tub to impress the wife with that alert.... :wink:

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#15

Do i need to remove all of my existing rooms and hue lights from the alexa app?

#16

Not sure but I would guess yes...

#17

Do i need to do anything with the Advanced hue integration app? at the moment ill still need it for the button controllers

#18

Not familiar with it but I use cocohue for some of my devices - I assume it's similar. As long as the Hue devices you want to control are exposed to HE already, then no, you shouldn't.

#19

The original goal was to get rid of the hue hub and 'hue cloud'. Assuming that is still true then you'd want to try pairing one of the hue button devices with hubitat - HE ->Devices->Add Device-> zigbee scan and then factory reset the button device (so it finds the waiting zigbee channel)

Alexa gets confused when both HE and HUE skills are active and devices are named similarly. Just use HE, imo.

#20

Thanks for that, The hue skill for Alexa has been removed. I ran another thread on the dimmer switches and was advised that they should be paired to the hue hub for the best performance and then use either coco or advanced hue integration to link them to the HE.

Ive now removed the HUE dependence on the cloud link for Alexa integration. However if i unplug the Ethernet to the hue hub, the Alexa integration doesn't work and i cant even switch lights on/off from the HE panel.

So at the moment i have 2 blue lights on the hue hub, Power and network, but no internet, the buttons work but nothing else

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