Hue bridge accessories (4 button)

If you mean the Phillips Hue Dimmer Switch, it can be paired directly as a zigbee button controller.
https://docs.hubitat.com/index.php?title=Join_and_Reset_Instructions#Philips_Hue

To add to the above, Hubitat's stock Hue Bridge integration does not expose "sensors" (in Hue terms) like buttons/remotes. If you have the Hue Dimmer (four buttons and rectangular, looking vaguely like a real dimmer), then as mentioned above, you can pair it directly to Hubitat. If you have a Hue Tap (round but also four buttons), then that is not supported on Hubitat.

But either can be kept on Hue and used to control Hue devices that way. The bulbs and whatnot can still be integrated. No custom integration I'm aware of (I wrote one) supports them either as a consequence of the Hue Bridge API, which doesn't provide a way to "push" events but instead relies on polling, so their usefulness even if exposed (not impossible) would be questionable for many uses.

One (roundabout) way to integrate them is through Homebridge. The Hue HomeKit integration exposes the dimmers, and they can be configured in HomeKit, which should allow them to control non-Hue devices.

HE does recognize them directly, and actions can be defined for each button. No need to go through Homebridge.

These are very fast Zigbee buttons which I find very practical and reliable.

Button 1 and 4 only recognize pressing them, but button 2 and 3 recognize, press, hold and release, son these two can be used as dimmers, or as two functions each (press and hold).

Do all hue 4 button dimmers work?

Which other four button dimmers do you refer to?

In case you are asking if all four buttons can be used as dimmers, the answer is no. Only the middle buttons recognize the actions of “holding” and “releasing”, therefore are the only ones practical for using as dimmer buttons.

(All four do recognize “pressing”, of course.)

Are there any four button devices similar that can be mailed without issue for all buttons?

Aeotec has a couple of four button devices that recognize push, hold and release on all of them, the NamoMote and the WallMote.

Z-Wave in this case, nicely built but not cheap, and with shorter range in my experience. Nice products.

Ah, thanks!

I was beating my head against that last night.
I'll try to get hold on button 2 to work.

Semi-related: I'm completely new to Hubitat, and do not come from ST, so a lot of this stuff is new to me. Though I have been in the tech industry for a very long time.

Is there a way in the HE world to see if a button being pressed is actually triggering anything?
(In my case, I couldn't tell if I had misconfigured the button-1-hold rule, or if the device was the problem)

I mostly want the "On" button to turn on to the low-light scene, and holding it down to switch to a high-light scene... without hold working, is there a way to have that button toggle between the two scenes? (Is that a Rules Manager thing?)

Thanks.

In the button device page you can see real time when a button pressing is recognized.

In that same page you can see all the Apps / Actions that have dependencies to the button.

If you have the device logging enabled you can trace all of its commands.

If you have logging enabled in the Apps you want to trace, you will also trace everything it is receiving or ordering.

Toggle is best suited to change between two alternatives. You could easily achieve what you what with conditional actions and virtual buttons.

  1. Define virtual buttons for every scene you want to have.
  2. Use a conditional action when your Hue button is pressed.
  3. “If SCENE 1 then press virtual button for SCENE 2”
    “If SCENE 2 then press virtual button for SCENE 3”
    “If SCENE 3 hen press virtual button for SCENE 1”

This way you could change between three scenes with one physical button.

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Thanks!

I'll read up on virtual buttons next

I have not managed to do this. I'm trying to replicate the excellent way that the Hue Hub manages buttons, but no luck so far. My first problem is that the Hubitat rule machine doesn't allow an "if" condition for a certain scene being set as far as I can tell. So I used a virtual device. But it still doesn't work...... Here's my code so far - currently, it only turns on the first scene, "hell" (which means "bright" in German) :D, but the the second push of the button to get to the other scenes don't work:

Update: I haven't changed anything, but now I had to push the button multiple times to get a reaction, then it went to scene one. I was then able to advance it to scene two. After that I tried pressing the button a few times, but it never actually advanced to the next scene.....

Here's the log:

I'm starting to wonder whether it's not the rule that is faulty, but the Hubitat itself?

“Action" logging in the rule would probably be better than looking at device logs. One oddity is that you're using nested IFs instead of actual ELSE-IFs, but the result in this case should be the same. In that first screenshot, all of the conditions appear to be false, however, so nothing would actually run. My guess for why it doesn't always work is because the devices you expect to be in the correct state are not. In any case, logging will probably be of help.

That being said, I also wanted what you wanted and wrote an app to do it for me instead:

I don't want to push a specific solution onto you but figure I'd at least mention this option. I've also seen people do this in rules with a local variable that tracks the current "push number," which is likely to be more reliable than relying on device states and definitely easier than setting up a bunch of virtual devices just for thus purpose regardless. Something a bit like this, though this isn't exactly how I'd do it personally: [How to] recreate Philips Hue Dimmer Switch functionality with RuleMachine

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This is because I can't figure out in the Hubitat interface how to do it differently.... I looked forever and couldn't find a way not to nest them, so I assumed in the end that there was no way... Could you point me to any kind of instructions on how they can not be nested? Thanks!!

Thank you! I will definitely try it! I tried the native button controller app, but it is extremely limited in what it can do, hence why I was trying to find a solution to be able to use the rule machine...

Thanks for this as well, I'll look at that too in order to learn! But I think I'll probably do it through your app. I really appreciate your help!!

If you're using Rule 4.0 or, I think, older versions of Rule 4.1, then "ELSE-IF" and whatnot are available from the same menus/drop-downs that the rest of the conditional-related actions are ("Conditional Actions" in the first drop-down). If you're using Rule 4.1 (and if you're not sure but are creating a new rule on the current Hubitat platform version, then you are), then there should be buttons that appear towards the top when you need them (i.e., after you've created an IF THEN) to add things like ELSE, ELSE-IF, or END-IF. My guess is that this is what is happening for you, but if you're using a small screen (like a phone), maybe some layout oddity is hiding one of them?

Otherwise. hopefully the app works for you!

I read through this and clicked through to the github page, but - I'm unsure how to install the app. Do I copy the code into hubitat?

Yes. In the HE left menĂş go to Apps Code.

Then open “+ New App”.
Select “Import”.

Copy the link to the App code. Make sure you use the “raw” version that you will find in GitHub or whatever other source (it only has the code).

Save and close.

You will now be able to add it by using “Add User App” in the “Apps” menu. Press install after choosing it, and you will have it there, with the rest of Apps.

Thank you, that's really helpful!

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