I recently bought my HE and am trying to work out the best way to integrate my Philips hue setup, which includes hue bulbs, motion sensors and switches, all connected to a hue bridge. I am currently managing most of the lighting automations for hue using a combination of groups and scenes on the hue bridge as well as rules and varialbles managed through the All4Hue app, which stores and runs the rules and variables locally on the hue bridge. The All4Hue managed variables I setup are in line with what HE refers to as modes, i.e. controlling whether bright lights for day/evening, or dimmed for bed/night time. These mode variables also alters which bulbs motion sensors control when motion is detected.
From all that I have read, the recommendation is to keep the hue products on the hue bridge, which is fine. I wouldn't have any issue continuing to use the All4Hue rules, either. One of the things I wanted to get out of HE, though, was to make use of a centralised mode setting, allowing me to reference this for automation of other systems such as logitch harmony. The problem is I need a way to get a HE mode setting to influence my hue system. Currently I use a MacrDroid widget (like Tasker) on my phone to send an application intent to the All4Hue app to change the mode variable stored on my hue bridge. The problems with this solution is it happens on my phone, I need to be on my local network and the mode variable is stored on the hue bridge, so is not accessible by other systesm like Harmony.
Does anyone have any suggestions? From what I have read if HE was able to activate hue scenes then I could move the sensors and rules to HE. In my current setup when I change the mode variable in All4Hue I set a "Current Scene" in each hue room to be either the bridght day/evening setting or the dimmed night time setting. If I could do the same from a change in mode on HE that would also give me what I need.
Thanks,
Simon
I'm not an expert, here, so hopefully others will chime in. I'm fairly new to Hubitat. I came from SmartThings. I have Hue bulbs, one Hue switch, and one Hue sensor.
There's a built-in Hue Integration App. It will allow HE to see Hue bulbs and groups, but not sensors, switches, or scenes. HE has its own scene manager. You can recreate your Hue scenes in HE and use HE rules to run them. That's what I've done, with a couple of exceptions that I'll get into in a minute. I only had 5 or 6 scenes I regularly use, so recreating them in the Groups and Scenes app worked well for me. I can do everything I did with them in the Hue app: Turn on, turn off, fade over time (both on and off), transition from one scene to another.
The problem with trying to control Hue bulbs from multiple sources is that they get out of sync. If you use an app on your phone, for example, to change the state of the bulbs, HE will not catch up to that fact for a little while. Some people are bothered by the lag, and others don't care. Personally, I prefer to change bulb state mostly in HE.
Now, the exceptions... I have the Hue Smart Dimmer switch. It wasn't visible to SmartThings, and it's not visible to HE. It's attached to my kitchen lights. For the most part, my lights are automated via motion sensors (ones that are not Hue), and rules in HE. I rarely need to manually turn them off or on or dim them. On the rare occasions that I do, I use the Hue Dimmer. In most cases the lag doesn't matter. The Hue Motion Sensor is in my office. It's only attached to the Hue Bridge, and automates the office ceiling light. It's set up that way because I never could get it to work right with ST. I understand that in the past there were difficulties getting them to pair correctly with HE also, but I think that's been resolved. Right now it's working the way I want it to, there's no other automation on that light, so it's not very high on my priority list.
Hope this helps.
Thanks for the reply jabecker and for sharing your experience.
I have played with the hue integration and the groups and scenes apps. I loaded my bulbs and groups from the bridge and setup a few local scenes in HE to mirror those in hue. I was also able to connect my sensors and dimmer switches, though it seemed a bit hit and miss occassioanally when trying to connect.
The main issue I have, which is no fault of the HE, is that I do like what philips refer to as the "do not disturb my scene" functionality. If I change the state of a bulb, whether it be through a hue switch or third party app, I don't want my sensors or other rules to override my manual setting. I am able to manage this with rules on the hue bridge by checking the status of a bulb / room, but unfortunately not reliably with HE due to the need to poll the bridge.
Thnking about it some more, if there was an app in HE that allowed me to update a variable that is stored on the hue bridge, that would give me the integration I need between a mode change in HE and an update to an equivalent variable I use in my All4Hue rules. I'll search for this, but if anyone has any suggestions or is keen to implement this in a user app that would be great.
Thanks,
Simon
Thought you were just asking about modes. Certainly changing scenes based on mode is possible. I have one scene for day (daylight white), one for evening (warm white), and one for night (dim nightlight). I set them based on mode via RM4. I use a virtual switch to determine whether automation should be turned on or off. The Motion Lighting app allows the use of a virtual switch to restrict automation as well. But, as I said, I’m not an expert. I can only describe what’s working for me.
This is a lot more involved but one workaround is you could install Google Assistant Relay. It requires set up of a separate Node.js server running on a Pi or spare computer. It’s not hard, but it’s quite involved to get setup. once you have all the parts budget about three hours, give or take depending on your skill level. however once you’re done you can make rules in HE trigger Google Assistant silently to control anything that Google Assistant can control, which for you would be Hue Scenes
Jabecker - I probably over complicated my description and have also changed my question throughout this post, so can understand your confusion. My two main requirements originally were to be able to set scenes based on modes and the ability to detect light status when altered, potentially, from outside of HE. I was also able to achieve the first one like you, utilising the "per mode" options in HE rules. The thing I was missing was the up-to-date status of my lights. For various reasons I have decided to moved back to running rules on the hue bridge, which is why my question shifted focus. I may re-post this question in a different way on the developer forum.
SmartHomePrimer - Thanks for the tip, I might take a look at it in the future. At the moment I am probably only at the level of tinkering with things like rules and using different applications to get what I need.
