I love them, use them for all sorts of things - mood lighting, notifications, cues for various events, etc.
The only complaint I have is that they don’t “remember” last hue and intensity. When you physically turn them on (i.e. with the switch), they come up 100% warm white. So if say you wanted to turn them on to soft red 10% when motion is detected in the middle of the night and the switch happened to be off, they’ll blind everybody first before transitioning to dim red.
@scottinpollock I’m curious why ST couldn’t issue the same scene scripts? I don’t have HUE but I don’t see why if you can send it via cURL, why ST can’t send the same thing? Is it a raw socket send vs API command?
But they DO remember their last state so long as you don’t kill their power. I supposed it would be nice if there was some flash in there to remember across power cycles, but not a big issue for me as I don’t have there load switched.
But this does bring up a minor con. After a power failure, when power is restored, all of your Hues will come on full brightness and stay on. I use a modified version of the power failure app to turn them off after power is restored. Of course you need a device that has both powered and battery states to do this (like the discontinued Smartsense motion). Possibly the Aeon Multi can do this too as it has external power input (but have not tested it).
@pstuart
It could, but each light has to be a different Put (unless you want to issue the same state values to lights in a group). But I am not aware of any convenient way for that much user input… say four different values for each light in the scene, and seven lights in a scene. Is there? Ideally I would want to enter it as an array, and execute it in a for loop:
ID,onOff,Bri,Hue,Sat,transTime
Plus going back into the app settings to edit it would be a PITA. The scripts on the server are just simple text files I can edit from anywhere, from anything.
So, basically, they don’t. Because my family uses wall switches (Z-Wave) to control the lights. Just as you’d expect any normal people to.
I realize that it’s all just growing pains. The necessity to support a dump device on the other end of the wire, all these hubs and the multitude of protocols and so on and so forth. We have to start somewhere. But it’s hard to wait! 
Agree with all points here, plus, with the addition of the Hue Tap, you can bring control to people in your family that don’t like using their phone. I have a Tap for my wife so she can easily turn on and off the lights in our room and the kids rooms. A minimote also works.
I have all my Hues in lamps, so I didn’t bother with switches. I have six, and am looking at getting a few strips!
Here’s what I’ve learned.
ST isn’t 100% to where I hope it will be. I have a Nest Thermostat, Nest Protect, HUE Lights, GE Link LED lights, and Security Cameras.
I’m using IFTTT to do some things that ST won’t at the moment. For example, if the smoke alarm goes off for either smoke or CO, IFTTT turns on the HUE lights and specifically turns the Exterior lights to RED (handy for the fire department to quickly locate my house). That said, I’d like to be able to do it with ST. ST will/should integrate all the different devices around the house, regardless of the type of device (IP, zigbee, zwave).
Why ST if it doesn’t do the above use case? Well, all but 1 of my exterior lights are HUE. One is the GE Link. One of the Smart Apps I have, turns on the exterior lights 30 min before sunset and off 30 min after sunrise. Hue couldn’t do that - because the GE light doesn’t appear in the Hue App (or at least I failed to get the light to bind to the HUE bridge).
I like the notion of the color in the Hue bulbs, but I’m finding that if I want to control a light in doors, and its one where the family makes good use of an on/off switch, smart bulbs aren’t a good option. In those cases, I’ve installed smart switches, such as one from GE.
So - Yes - I enjoy the Hue bulbs - for the color options, but they are more expensive. Where I don’t need color, I like the price of the GE Link bulbs - $15 each.
That’s what I learned on the broader topic of Smart Bulbs, having both Hue and Other Smart bulbs.
THank you everyone, this has been a very interesting conversation. I see many interesting uses for the Hue system, but I also see that there are currently issues with using them with ST.
I still have some more research to do, and although right now ST is not handling them well, I assume they will eventually resolve it.
Thanks again everyone!
I’d be careful turning on red lights. Might send a wrong signal to certain people.
The SmartThings iOS app (and ergo most likely the SmartThings hub) does not work property with my Hue. I see the following bad behavior:
o Doing anything on my Things page immediately before turning a Hue light on or off results in the action failing. The controller says “turning on/off”, but the action doesn’t happen. The state on Things is then incorrect.
o If I try to turn a light on or off in isolation, IOW waiting a few seconds after doing anything else, the light will turn on or off properly - with perhaps 2/3 chance. It usually works, but frequently doesn’t.
o Programmed actions are just as unreliable. If I set an action to turn the lights on or off at a specific time of day, it is hit or miss as to whether it works.
I don’t experience this problem when using the Hue app - it works flawlessly. Because SmartThings is so unreliable, I switched to using my Logitech Harmony remote for Hue control, which is flawless (plus has grouping).
I generated a support request, but was told that since Hue is only supported in Labs, I basically had to suck it for now. That’s what I’m doing. Sucking it.
That’s unfortunate. SmartThings should really step it up with getting devices integrated with their hub. Revolv just announce they can now work with Nest Thermostat and will be working with Nest Protect this year. They also officially support the Hue.
I have zero of these problems. A support ticket is the best route right now for you. To be honest in.my home the hue lights are the most reliable automated things I have.
I also doubt they told you to suck it lol. STs support has given me great support on labs stuff before. Maybe the rep was having a bad day, or your demeanor was less than positive, but I’d recommend reaching out again.
Agreed. Maybe you had a bad rep that day, but I can tell you from what I have seen with other people and the HUE system with ST. The issues that you are having are likely resolvable. I don’t see others here who are using the system having the same reliability issues that you are having.
One thing I would recommend, try moving the hub to a new location if you can. Sounds like the connection to HUE might not be sufficient.
How is the Hue controller on your phone? Does it have the same problem?
I should be clear - support was perfectly polite. The “suck it” was implicit in:
Unfortunately our Hue integration is still in our experimental Labs section as there is some work to be done to perfect it.
And I have no complaint, if it’s in Labs, it is not fully baked, I understand that.
But if someone is asking what they can expect with Hue, I feel like my experience is relevant.
How is the Hue controller on your phone? Does it have the same problem?
No, the Hue controller on my phone works flawlessly, as I said in my post.
The Logitech Harmony remote (which I enabled after having Smart Things woes) works flawlessly as well.
@snorkelman your experience is certainly relevant, but I do not see a “suck it” in the reply. That is far stronger than the actual reply as noted.
I do really appreciate you letting me know about your issues, it does work against the product for use with ST. But, I am pretty comfortable with ST and doing some coding. And I believe that I can work around these issues that you described. When I do, I will share my code here so that you too can enjoy your HUE. Of course they might beat me to that (SMILE)
hahah That’s funny! If my house is on fire, I’m looking to attract all the attention I can ! 
I did have a conversation with the fire chief and he loves the idea. If the hue lights could just be commanded to flash until told to stop (without commands in the middle), I’d do that instead of the colors. Given our terrain and rural nature of where we live, any little bit helps!
My question is… is it in “labs” because it is in development, or is that just an excuse for being half baked? When was the last time the code saw an update? N E 1 know?
Hue has an alert state in the API; it’s one of several things that are still missing in SmartThings integration.
If you assign this state to group 0 (groups are also missing), it will flash all lights for 30 seconds. You can call the Hue API from a SmartApp, but scheduling to run every 30 seconds may prove unreliable (at least that has been my experience).
I use a shell script on a mac server to do this as it is simply more reliable than a SmartApp.
@scottinpollock - I just acquired a mac mini - if you don’t mind, share your script - I’d love to see it.