thanks, thats a little confusing! do i need the bulbs on one channel and the hubs on the same?
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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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.
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....
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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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.
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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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... ;(
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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ooooh, ill have to buy a hot tub to impress the wife with that alert.... 
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Do i need to remove all of my existing rooms and hue lights from the alexa app?
Not sure but I would guess yes...
Do i need to do anything with the Advanced hue integration app? at the moment ill still need it for the button controllers
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.
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.
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
The connection between HE and the Hue hub still depends on the Hue hub being connected to the network, just not to the cloud service. It's all local.
Hi Brad.
Yes i know that, the network light is on and solid and so it has a LAN connection The Ethernet light is off and so no WAN connection.
The WAN/cloud connection is back on now and everything now works. Im certain that ive done something wrong in the HE setup, but have yet to figure it out!
Sorry for stating the obvious... 
Yeah something is very odd. You should most definitely be able to communicate between HE and the Hue hub without any internet connection.
I wonder if it's possible you have a defective Hue hub that occasionally drops its IP connection to the local network? When it stops working you might try pinging the Hue hub from a workstation on the same network.
I use the Hubitat Presence Ping device driver to ping my various hubs and provide me with cheap network monitoring. It's basic but it does work.
Well something is way off, im unable to switch lights on/off via the device list in HE. The HE MUST have a network connection as i can see the GUI and control none hue equipment.... Ive most definitely done something very stupid!
Hue Hub now totally failed..... power light only, doesnt even try to join the network.
