Best way to connect Hue and Google Home to SmartThings

Devices & Integrations
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I’ve got a hue setup which connects to smart things and then ST is connected to Google home. Used to work really well but GH has added restrictions for accounts under family link and now kids can’t control devices. Removing voice match is an option but I loose all control.

I also have the hue beta integration but I can’t control individual lights and only rooms which is a new issue.

Just wondering the best way to streamline my setup?

I’ve considered integrating hue straight to GH and then to smart things but not sure if I loose some functionality.

Thanks!

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It really depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.

I mentioned in your other thread that I haven’t seen anyway of opening up the supervised accounts to SmartHome control regardless of the platform so that seems to be something you’ll need to bring up with Google support. It’s affecting lots of platforms and brands, not just SmartThings, and it seems to be a decision on the Google side.

As far as the best way to handle linking a Hue bridge to multiple Home Automation platforms, as I mentioned, it really depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Different methods will work for different people.

By far the simplest (and the best way to avoid duplicate entries) is to use matter to connect the Hue Bridge to any platform you want to use it with. That should work fine, it will avoid duplicate entries, and you will still be able to use the Hue devices in their own app as well as in the app for each platform. However, this method doesn’t support all features. For example, if you like circadian rhythm lighting in Apple Home, you’ll lose that if you use the matter integration between Hue and Apple.

Also, the native hue integration to Alexa brings in The Hue scenes that you created in the Hue app. At the time of this posting, the Matter integration does not. (That might change in the future.) i’m not sure how that works with Google. I know the matter integration doesn’t support Hue scenes, I just don’t know if the native Google integration does. :thinking:

The matter integration doesn’t bring in rooms to any platform at the time of this posting. Some of the other Hue integration methods do.

So there’s just a lot of variation, depending on the details.

At the time of this writing, I personally prefer the native Hue integration to Alexa and Apple Home, and the custom community built integration to SmartThings. But mixing those does mean that I get duplicate entries in Alexa which I then have to disable. :rage: Which is annoying, but worth it to me for the other features which I get.

So if you just want simple, use the matter integration to everything. But if it’s missing some advanced features that you used to have with other integration methods, you may have to go to a patchwork like I use. :man_shrugging:t2:

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Also, you probably already know this, but for those who are newer to Hue products, there are four different ways to integrate a Hue bridge with your SmartThings account, and the system will even allow you to do more than one at once for the same bridge (although that will result in duplicate entries). Which one you pick again depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

  1. Cloud to cloud through linked services.

If you don’t have a SmartThings/Aeotec hub, then, at the time of this writing, your only option will be to use “linked services.“ this connects your Hue account to your SmartThings account via the Internet. Not all devices and all features are shared, but it’s still useful.

The remaining three options all require that you have a SmartThings/aeotec hub

  1. Matter.

You will have to set up your Hue Bridge for matter integration using the Hue app and then you can add it to your SmartThings account as a “matter bridge“ and it will bring in many of its attached devices with it, even some that don’t come in through method one. But it won’t bring in scenes created in the hue app at the time of this writing.

You may lose a few features, but this has the advantage of letting you connect the same Hue bridge to multiple platforms at the same time without creating duplicate devices and without needing any custom code.

  1. The official native SmartThings/Hue LAN integration.

This is a special integration method created by the two companies working together. It doesn’t require any custom code, but it brings in fewer devices than most of the other methods, and it hasn’t really been kept up-to-date other than porting it to the edge architecture. Nothing official has been said, but it feels like eventually this will probably be deprecated in favor of method two.

  1. A communitycreated custom edge driver from @blueyetisoftware

This is an absolutely brilliant bit of coding and very popular. It creates a local integration between your smartthings/Aeotec hub and your hue bridge and supports more features than any other integration method at this time. You can bring in all kinds of devices, including green power devices like the “friends of Hue” switches. It supports rooms and scenes created in the Hue app. It is frequently updated.

But…it’s fragile because at any time, SmartThings can change a platform feature which breaks this integration. And they have done so a couple of times without any prior notification or warning. If you read through the discussion thread on the custom edge driver, you will see where this happens, and then the author has to scramble, sometimes for a couple of weeks, trying to find either a fix or a workaround.

This is a problem with all community – created custom code, of course. SmartThings does not have a good history of pre-announcing or even just documenting its platform changes. :firecracker:

It doesn’t mean you should necessarily avoid custom code, it often provides features and integrations which the official options do not. But it does mean you should be aware of this issue before using it and be prepared for occasional glitches.

[ST Edge] Philips Hue LAN [BETA] (3rd Party Driver, Not ST Native)

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Choice is good, and in the case of Hue, you will have more choices than usual. :thinking: and different ones will work for different people.

If you don’t have a SmartThings/Aeotec hub, then option one is your only available choice, but it’s easy to set up and works quite well as long as both clouds are working and available.

If you want the simplest local option and you do have a ST hub, go with option two and use matter. At the time of this writing, it’s a little harder to set up than option three, but it’s a great way to add the same Hue bridge to multiple platforms and it doesn’t require any custom code.

If you want more features, you will need to choose between option three (official, no custom code required) and option four (Community-created custom code, tons of features that none of the other three integration options have, but can be fragile).

like I said, you may already know all of that, but I did want to lay it out for others reading along. :sunglasses:

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I tend to visit the Edge drivers repository daily. Things had been quiet on the Hue front all this year but they have burst into life recently with a refactoring of the driver code and the introduction of a number of new devices. I don’t think the changes are in beta yet.

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Have they added any of the green power devices yet? Particularly the “friends of Hue“ switches like Senic and Vimar?

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Thanks all - appreciate your responses and going into detail for me.

I setup the community driver from blue yeti awhile ago and it has been working well apart from a few changes made by ST as you mentioned.

I didn’t realize a few things have been updated and when I added lights again a few more features were brought across such as dimming and color control to individual lights which makes it all work a lot better.

Thanks again!

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Thanks for the endorsement. This has the most functionality and covers just about everything you can do with Hue. The only way to get more control is to use something beside SmartThings (HomeAssistant or Hue itself). It is also faster than the stock version because of its ability to control groups. This limits the network traffic and eliminates the popcorn effect.

As for the platform issue, I suspect that will always be the case. ST doesn’t communicate with developers at all, so changes just happen and then we all scramble to update. In some cases, an update isn’t possible.

However, I do watch the ST drivers in their repo to get some amount of insight into what’s changing on the hub itself. Not much else we can do until they setup a system for collaborating with the community.

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