Hello, I've been evaluating my options for an upcoming migration from Wink/Stringify. One of the requirements is local rules processing which is what lead me here. I have a question if something is possible with Hubitat.
I have a Phillips Hue bridge and a few rooms with Hue bulbs. The living room is 3 hue builds and 1 hue dimmer switch. By the front door I have a motion detector. I hate coming home to a dark living room. With Stringify, I had a setup that would turn on the lights 1 - 2 hours before sunset (depending on clear or overcast skies). I don't believe there should be any trouble here.
What I tried (and somewhat failed) with Stringify was the following:
if after 10p and front door motion and 1 living room hue is off, set all living room lights to dim. (in other words, the i don't want to step on a lego when i come home late rule 
). What I am assuming with the above is if the light is on then someone is in the living room and I wouldn't want to dim the lights.
Stringify wasn't able to poll for hue status. Some reading in the forums makes me think it is possible but I am not sure.
Thanks for the read / help.
I came here from Stringify also, and have Hue bulbs on a Hue bridge.
Yes, you can treat a Hue bulb as either a switch or as a dimmer. You can query the dimmer level, as well as on/off. I have some rules (what Stringify called flows) that work as you described.
I've even found that HE will treat a Hue group as a single light, so there's no popcorn effect if you turn the group on or off. And, there's a decent dim over time feature as well. These were things that Stringify could handle but SmartThings struggled with.
I've been very happy with my move.
Yes this is all possible if you have the motion sensor on the hub. As long as HE is telling the lights what to do via the hub all the states stay up to date. There is a few people mentioned on here that the hue hub is slow to update but that is only when you change something within the hue app.
This is all not a problem. Very powerful automations are now possible with Hubitat Elevations Rule Machine 4.0.
Your only limit will be in polling Hue lights. As long as you don't expect a result in less that 1 minute when there is a change, you'll be fine. This is a limitation of the Hue API. It can be seen even in the Hue app if you control a Hue light from another platform, it will take the Hue App a minute to show the updated status. This is a limitation that HE must suffer too.
However, when you control the lights from HE, then there is no issue, because then the status is known instantly. So this is not a problem with automations. It's when you try to mix Hue bridge automations with HE automations that you run into this limitation. I know this from trying to keep my Hue motion sensor on the bridge (this was before it was fully compatible with HE) and run automations from HE using the light status.
Now the Hue motion sensor is compatible, so that scenario I ran into wouldn't be a problem if I attempted it again.
thank you for the feedback. i don't think the minute delay in this cause will be much of an issue. a lot of unlikely scenarios would have to occur (the light just turned off, max polling wait). i just ordered the hub and look forward to some summer rainy days to get it configured.
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