We are getting “Hue Bridge - The current Hue username is invalid. Please press the button on Hue Bridge to relink” weekly on one of our Hubitat Hubs.
We run 3 Hubitat Hubs each linked to it’s own Hue Bridge, but weekly on only one Hubitat hub, we are required to press the button. After about 4 times of relinking (approximately 4 weeks), pressing the button to relink doesn’t work, requiring us to remove the Hue Bridge via the Hubitat Apps section and relink.
When we do this we loose Hue devices and all Hubitat Apps need to be reconfigured once we relink Hue Bridge to Hubitat.
This started about 3 months ago and we thought is was after a Hubitat update, but it’s still happening on this on hub.
Before we remove Hue Bridge for the 3rd time and reinstall has anyone got any suggestions?
I'm assuming you're using the built-in Hue Bridge Integration app on Hubitat?
There should be a link to your existing Hue Bridge on the main page between "Find Groups" and "Options." Click/tap into there, make sure your bridge is selected, hit the button on your Hue Bridge, and then select "Done" or possibly "Next" if you see that instead. If there is any way to re-link, that might do it.
But this shouldn't keep happening, at least not if you don't log into your Hue account online and remove usernames/devices under My Philips Hue System > All Applications on account.meethue.com (or likely various other ways to get there). The Hue integration app "registers" (requests) a username with the Hue Bridge, which is stored until it gets removed, with this being the only method to do so as of any relatively recent firmware version (years ago, the API could do it too, so any other username that also had access could, but now it's just your online account).
I agree with your answers and haven't been into hue online.
This only happens on 1 Hubitat hub. The other two each linked to a hue bridge never have this problem.
The Hubitat hub that drops the user name and password ran without issues for well over 12 months before this started happening appropriately 3 months ago.
There's no password, so if you're seeing an error about that, you're looking at something else. But assuming you aren't...
Have you ruled out database corruption on the problematic hub? You could try the "Soft Reset" (really just taking a backup and restoring it) section of this document to see if it helps: How to Troubleshoot Apps or Devices | Hubitat Documentation (bonus points if you have a backup from before the problem started happening and don't mind using that, but either way is worth a shot). To avoid this in the first place, make sure you try to avoid shutting down the hub from anything other than the Settings menu options. If you have frequent power outages or similar, consider a UPS.
When the problem happens, I suspect you're losing the "username" data in the application state, visible in the table on the App Status (gear icon) page for the app. There's nothing you can do to change/fix it there, though it may be interesting to see if that or something else changed and caused the problem. If that is still there, I'd suggest logging into your Hue account online as above and seeing if your hub is listed as a authorized application (you'll get a pretty non-descriptive default name that I think is the app ID on the hub, so it may be hard to recognize...). If not, that could be the problem, the question being how it got removed--but it's nothing Hubitat could do.
Finally, does going to the page above in the integration app help you re-link as described in my first post?
In the Apps list it states the following "Hue bridge intersection [hue name (123456)]". Once clicked all you get is the message in the photo.
We run a UPS so maybe data base related.
The bridge we have the problem with contains all the rule manager apps that run the lights across the 3 hubs and 3 hue bridges and the dashboard to control the lights.
I'm not sure if you've answered: does pushing the button on your Hue Bridge fix the problem?
Otherwise, how are you opening the Hue Bridge Integration app? If you're using a bookmark or something, I'd try the hub interface directly: on the left, Apps, then click/tap into the Hue Bridge Integration app that lists the Bridge ID in question. If that still fails, do your bulbs/groups still work? If so, there's hope for recovery. You'll probably be at a URL like this:
(leave <hubIP> and <appID> as they are in your actual URL; just change the part at the end)
If not, there's probably something else wrong, and I'm not sure what else you can do unless you can find a backup you can restore from where this did work. If so, you can export that app from the backup, then restore it on your current hub (which you'll need to save a backup from before doing all of this so you have such a backup).
The only other thing it seems like it could be is if your Bridge keeps deleting this username for some reason. You can check that in your Hue online account as I described above, though you'll need to know the ID to look for (it's somewhat cryptic from what I recall but normally contains the app ID from the URL I referred to above).
EDIT -- Another thing: could your Hue Bridge be changing IP address? The integration app should handle this gracefully, but you can eliminate the worry either way. A DHCP reservation on your router is probably best, but you could also set a static IP on the Bridge itself (keeping in mind you could lock yourself out if you get something wrong on that end unless you want to reset it).
This happened this morning to myself as well. I believe Hubitat is getting confused by 2 hue bridges on the local network and is swapping the 'BridgeHost' config item to the hue bridge.
Normal config, 2 hue bridges on network
Bridge 1: 192.168.2.226 (ffc4) - Configured in hubitat
Bridge 2: 192.168.2.227 (bd32) - Not used in hubitat at all.
I checked this morning after noticing lights weren't turning on after they were working last night and it was showing the same error message that you're seeing, The hue bridge integration shows that it is pointed at 192.168.2.227. Of course it's not going to work against .227, it doesn't have an API key for that one.
Just to make sure my router wasn't changing the IP, I checked the dhcp logs:
My theory is that there was an automatic update on my bridge last night which forced a restart, as the hue release notes page shows an update being released in the last week:
October 18, 2023
Software version: 1960149090
Improved performance and reliability of the system
I understand hubitat trying the other hue bridge's IP address to see if it will work, as IP addresses can change on some networks. What I don't understand is why it doesn't swap back to the original IP if that step fails.
I'm trying to find a way to manually change the bridge IP in hubitat, but I don't see any method of doing so.
Method that worked for me:
I paired the (wrong) hue bridge that hubitat was trying to connect to.
Unplugged the (wrong) hue bridge.
Hubitat swapped ip addresses from the wrong bridge to the correct bridge.
Then I went into the hue bridge integration options, clicked on 'clear bridge link'. Waited a little bit, then it popped up the error message "Current hue username is invalid, please relink."
After seeing this error message, I pressed the button on the correct hue bridge and now hubitat is happy again with all my lights.
It happened again this morning, and there was another recent software update for the hue bridges. I have the hue bridges setup to auto-update around 3AM, and hubitat automations that turn off my hue lights for Christmas related stuff worked around 2AM this morning.
I'm confident this is occurring because the hue bridge became unavailable for a few minutes, so hubitat attempted to find the bridge again on my network and picked up the other bridge while the first was restarting.
Happened again after another hue bridge update. Same fix. This is annoying. I'll go ahead and add the 2nd hub to my hubitat even though it's only used for entertainment mode.
But assuming you aren't...
