Phillips Hue. - advanced controls. Not just basic

So I have hue now and would love the ability to create and use scenes and such like most 3rd party apps allow.

Example. I would love to tell alexa to turn on dinner mode and that would turn on a virtual switch that would then run a rule that told hue to turn on dinning table lights and activate candle light mode where they flicker and act like a candle.

Basically u want to be able to have the hub do what 3rd party apps do.

Check out CoCoHue. That allows for scenes.

The thinking is, create a Hubitat Scene. If you do, you can incorporate both Hue and Hubitat directly connected lights into a Hubitat Scene. You can't do that with a Hue scene. So, hue scenes only make sense if all your lights are through Hue. If they are, why bother having hubitat in the first place?

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I'm a little biased, but I'll second the recommendation for CoCoHue. :slight_smile: However, as-is, it only lets you use scenes you've already defined in Hue (or a third-party app). It does not let you create scenes on Hue from Hubitat for use with other Hue-based apps/automations as some third-party Hue apps do (I don't see a good use for that right now from Hubitat, but it's an idea I'll play around with when I have time). You can still use Hue bulbs or groups in Hubitat scenes.

That being said, part of what you described doesn't sound like Hue scenes at all: the "candle light flicker" thing sounds like something out of Hue Labs, which often uses a combination of scenes (poorly named so hard for a third-party to tell what they are--and ones that are invisible to you as a user of the Hue app) and "schedules" (not supported by CoCoHue or any Hubitat Hue Bridge integration I'm aware of), and possibly more undocumented features, to pull off some effect. These are usually things Philips plays around with and may or may not eventually release as supported features that would be easier for third parties to access.

Hubitat is far more powerful that what you can do with Hue's rudimentary automations alone, and it allows you to use the same sensors for other purposes besides lighting. If all you want is app control, voice control, basic timers, and whatever limited motion and similar automations Hue lets you configure, then it's a good enough system on its own (though I originally started with SmartThings because Hue offered almost none of that at the beginning and I wanted something to automate them--nobody really wants to use their phone to turn on the lights).

Yes sorry guess I should not have used the word scenes. But yes stuff like hue labs. I dont understand why hue itself does not give us the ability to do that kind of stuff. Another thing I want to do is have my outside lights flash between red and blue light police lights for when my alarm goes off and have the inside ones strobe.

If it’s a beta feature of hue, I could see why they don’t want it to be exposed to third party integrations. It could be buggy, not fully supported, etc.