Hue Hub failure and the way forward

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1

Hi All.

We had a power cut yesterday and the Hue hub must have got a spike, its gone tits up and even a factory reset will not allow reconnection.

So i need to move forward, A new hue? possible yes but as far as i can see theres no way to back up the config and im doing all this setup every time.

Another He, i have one sitting on the shelf waiting to be fitted to my workshop.... i could add all of the devices to this and the rules/apps to the other.

use node red for rules, devices on the HE and i still have my he for the workshop... never used Node red before, i know nothing about it but if its a good way forward then thats the way that ill go.

Any advice much appreciated.

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If you have a second HE that's the way to go. Simply move all bulbs to that one and keep any other sesnors on your original. As for node red, I don't see a need but some people like it better than RM...

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ok thanks for that, i assume i need to do the hub link thing? May iask, why just the bulbs and not all of the sensors/devices?

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You can use hub mesh to connect it all. The reason is that most bulbs like yours are ZLL based zigbee while most sensors are ZHA. ZLL bulbs make incredibly bad repeaters and need to be separated from ZHA or ZHA devices will try to route through them then the mesh will crash when they get turned off (that is the simplistic answer). So the answer is always have zll bulbs on their own mesh either with a hue bridge or another hubitat. (I have a few crappy bulbs left on my hue bridge but I'll eventually get rid of even those for Lifx) The exception to the ZLL rule are sengled bulbs because they don't repeat (but you want zigbee repeaters in your mesh so you'll want lets say a zigbee repeating outlet on your ZHA mesh)

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Depending on how many hue devices you have… it may be easier to reset them with a replacement hue bridge.

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OK now i understand a little better, when you say turned off, do you mean have no power supply or just turned off in the app?

Im just curious why a company would design a repeating product that doesn't repeat even though it has power but no on signal?

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i have 30, but do not intend staying with hue, there are so many better/just as good alternative at cheaper prices now

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8

The bulbs when either physically turned off or turned off via app and go into low power mode (essentially off but waiting for signal) do not repeat. Zigbee 3.0 bulbs don't suffer from this

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ok got it thanks. So my other sensors (zigbee) things like sonoff contact sensors, motion sensors, button controllers etc, all without mains so they wont repeat. Do i move them to the new hub?

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Do you have any of these better bulbs? I have 2 Hue bridges with around 60 Hue lights because for A-19 bulbs, I haven’t found anything that works as reliably. The other thing is that I use these in bedrooms and if there is a power outage, my Hue lights don’t come on. This is saved on the bulb and not something that requires the hub to shut them back off when the power comes back on. This does require a Hue bridge though.

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Nope! i dont have any, but i will when the Hue ones go, (if they indeed exist which many say they do) I too use them in bedroom, and mine did come on after a power outage, obviously a setting that i didnt know about.

from what ive read/googled, hue are overpriced and from what i can see looking around this true, as to if the alternatives are as good/ better for a lower price, i guess ill just have to wait and see.

ill try the he and if is no good ill consider another hub, but as ill be moving away from hue bulbs, im not sure that the way forward.

Who knows, maybe HE will get better at controlling hue bulbs?

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Lifx bulbs

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Lifx

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Will look at them when i need any. Do i move other none mains/repeating type sensors to the slave?

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keep only bulbs on one mesh and everything else on the other

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Which is a good reason to have the Hue bridge. Also, in my experience, Hue bulbs lose all of their benefits when not on the Hue bridge, and don’t work as well as Sylvania on Hubitat. I tried moving them to my “lights” hub a couple years ago and immediately realized it was a bad idea.

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BTW, Costco usually carries a decent selection of Hue lights and motion sensors online, much cheaper than retail.

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Honestly, I only have a few hue/cree lights left... (like 3) I need to just order the Lifx bulbs

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YMMV, of course... My personal experience with smart bulbs went something like this... GE Link Zigbee bulbs were among the first reasonably priced Zigbee bulbs, and were available at Home Depot. I grabbed several and used them, along with some of the Cree Connected bulbs for quite some time back on SmartThings (2014-2017 time frame.) I had some random issues with bulbs dropping off the Zigbee network, requiring these bulbs to need to be factory reset and re-paired to the hub. When I bought my first Hubitat C-3 Hub in early 2018, I moved these bulbs over and started having the exact same random issues with them. This led me to buy a bunch of Sengled Zigbee smart bulbs, as they play very nicely with Hubitat's ZHA Zigbee implementation. The Sengled bulbs are NOT Zigbee repeaters, and thus did not mess up my mesh network. They also performed very well and were reasonably priced. I ran this configuration from about 2019 until mid-2020. At this point, I decided I really wanted all of my lighting to have native Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Logitech Harmony Hub, Hubitat, and Home Assistant compatibility. I had already removed all of my old GE Z-Wave switches and dimmers in favor of Lutron Caseta switches, dimmers, fan controllers, and Pico remotes. The Lutron system was compatible with Apple HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Logitech Harmony Hub, Hubitat, and Home Assistant already. Thus, after doing some research, I decided to buy into the Philips Hue lighting system. I bought a used Hue bridge on eBay for about $15, and then bought Hue bulbs over a period of time to replace the Sengled bulbs. I must say, the Hue system, like the Lutron system, has been 99.99% reliable, and I like the flexibility the Hue bridge offers in terms of having my lighting integrated with multiple home automation systems at the same time.

Hubitat offers native local integration over the LAN for both Philips Hue and Lutron Caseta. The performance and reliability of both of these lighting systems has been great. I can also access all of my lighting from my iPhone via HomeKit without needing to hack together a Homebridge solution to make Hubitat devices show up (of course, I still do have Homebridge...but that's mostly just for fun and for a few devices that are only accessible via Hubitat. :wink: )

I have also been messing around with Home Assistant and find that it easily integrates locally with both Philips Hue and Lutron Caseta, without needing to disconnect anything from Hubitat. All of my lighting is available in both system simultaneously. Want to try Node-RED? Lots of options for Lutron and Philips there as well.

I guess the point of this long-winded reply is that one should step back and realize that lighting systems, like Hue and Caseta, offer a whole lot more to the user than what a box full of cheap Zigbee/Z-Wave devices can. Knowing that if my Hubitat hub dies, my lighting can still be easily controlled and integrated with other solutions (including a new Hubitat hub) in a matter of minutes is quite a nice feeling. Not having to try to factory reset and re-pair a bunch of Zigbee/Z-Wave devices just to try out a new home automation solution is great as well.

For me, the added cost of both the Lutron and Philips solutions is worth it. As I said earlier, YMMV of course! :sunglasses:

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Thanks for the thoughtful response, cost really isnt tat much of an issue, my time is far more valuable. My Hue bridge suddenly sprang back into life and i had the option to set it all back up again on the Hue.
I had already started the HE intergration, When my wife asked me "how do we change the mood?" at this point i entered a cold sweat and deleted them all and put them on the hue bridge, it is now as it was before my power cut.
I obviously need to do a lot more research regarding lighting moving forward, but ive got to have ease of control, if my wife cant work it, we cant have it....
is ther anyway to back up the hue bridge so it can be instantly recovered if this ever happens again?

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