Brilliant Control - Claims It Will Work with SmartThings (But limited Integration)

I believe we do have it assigned to that room, it appears in that room We followed their steps for this. But the two finger gesture does nothing at all. Then, we go to the gestures settings shown above and it wants me to choose one device.

Would very much appreciate step by step screenshots of how you got it to work, controlling a room full of HUE lights with just gestures and no other integrations. That would solve all our problems. I too am curious if this doesn’t work on multi-slider switches.

So you can see all the frustration of the many ways we’re trying to get this light switch to control a room of lights.

Sorry for jumping all over the rep and the forum with the frustration, it simply comes from what we think is the very obvious main use for these - as switches. Sonos favorites and volume, talking to Alexa, all that is fun added bonuses. But in reality we have a million devices and gadgets and easier ways to do that already. What we really wanted and needed was light switch functionality and it doesn’t have it.

Yes, I will try that now. And to be super specific (sorry) where in those steps do you want me to press the button?

ie:

  1. Unplug Ethernet cable
  2. Wait 10 seconds
  3. Start discovery on SmartThings App
  4. Plug back in ethernet cable

(that seems to be the order you are describing, sorry, I want to be super specific, because we’ve tried everything, so not doing it exactly how you want is just further frustration, so we want to do every step exactly how you want it).

Where in 1 -4 above do you want us to press button on HUE? when you say “start discovery” do you mean adding a thing in SmartThings or pressing the button? There can be so many things that mean the same thing thats where this can get confusing.

@tracyghurst, at least some time after #4 and after all 3 LEDs on the Hue bridge are back on.

AFAIK, if you are using the classic app the above steps should trigger the message telling you to press the button. But, I think it still works if you press the button before you get the message, but haven’t personally verified that.

Edit: It might still take more than one attempt with those steps, but it should increase your chances quite a bit.

Thank you, trying again now, just as you suggest here:

  1. Unplug ethernet cable
  2. Wait 10 seconds
  3. Start discovery on SmartThings App
  4. Plug back in ethernet cable
  5. Wait until lights are back on Hue bridge
  6. Press button on HUE bridge

I think the most important thing to stress to you and @jody.albritton is that we never, even for a split second, ever see the SmartThings Classic app ask to press the HUE button.

We do this:
SmartThings Classic App

  1. Hit Add A Thing
  2. Hit Add Device Manually
  3. Select Light Bulbs
  4. Choose one of the Phillips Hue options listed (strange that you ask us to choose a bulb type when you are depending on HUE returning you the list, seems you should just ask us to add a HUE bridge to start with)…
  5. New screen appears with options and top one is “CONNECT NOW” which we choose, then it immediately goes into “adding devices” and never finds a HUE device, nor prompts to press HUE button.

All of your documentation says after 4 above, we should get a prompt to press the button on HUE. We never see this prompt, ever, even for a split second.

Is there the slightest chance the problem is with the app never giving us this prompt?

We’ve even deleted the app and reinstalled, all to same effect.

Ok, I’ve just done the above 4 times. Each time I left ethernet cable out even longer, 10, 20, 30, 40 seconds. Plugged back in. One one discovery the SmartThings app finally found a couple of GE Link bulbs that are in the garage that were never popping up before. But still no matter how many times we try, it won’t see anything HUE.

Just for fun I tried Alexa and Brilliant again connecting to HUE and after pressing button, they both immediately start seeing HUE bulbs.

Could our SmartThings hub be bad? (brand new, just bought it 2 days ago from Amazon for no other reason than the Brilliant workaround you see we have to try because of this thread). It’s a brand new v2 SmartThings hub. It sees Sonos speakers immediately every time. But that’s it.

That’s correct.

We know it’s a problem, and I know it can be confusing when you hit this issue in classic. The underlying issue has been there for years, but as far as I know people weren’t really hitting it until recently for some reason (I have a theory I will get to in a minute).

We do have instructions to do exactly the step you spelled out above in the new app:

(That doesn’t say anything about the button pop up because we don’t have the ability to display that in the new app.)

Also, re-installing the app won’t have any affect in this case. The issue here is how the Hue bridge handles discovery. Like most LAN-connected things we use something called SSDP (Simple Service Discovery Protocol) to discover that you have a Hue bridge on your network. The way this works is we send out a special network packet that goes to any device on your local network that has said they want to receive these. Then each device that receives this message, parses it and checks if it’s a request looking for the “service” it supports. If it is, the device then sends a standard (unicast) message back to us to tell us it exists. And importantly is has to do this within a limit that is specified in the request. We set that limit to the maximum allowable 5 seconds and we actually allow them to come back for 6. (And just to note a second on a local network is an eternity.)

This process usually works really well. Unfortunately Hue bridges don’t behave very well. As far as I’ve been able to tell, they skip the step of deciding if they support the service that is being asked for and instead opt to just respond with every service they support any time they receive any SSDP request. Then because the Hue bridge is built to be inexpensive it must have a rather low-powered CPU or network interface. The end result is that on a network with more than a tiny amount of SSDP traffic it ends up DoS’ing itself. Some times it does respond, but it is doing so up to a minute too late so we never even see the response.

Hue does now support a different discovery method called mDNS. We have some work in progress to get that supported, but it’s needs work across a lot of different areas. It’s not finished and some higher priority things are in front of it as far as getting some one to work on it more, so I don’t have any idea when or if it might be finished.

The only other (really shitty, I’ll admit) suggestion I can make is to (edit: temporarily) either remove other devices that use SSDP (also called UPnP depending on context) from your network or set it up on an isolated network. Although if you’re going to go through all that effort I would also highly suggest you setup either a static DHCP reservation or manually configure a static IP address for the Hue bridge because I can only assume you’re not going to want to go through this more than once.

Edit: To your latest post, Sonos uses exactly the same discovery mechanism so your hub isn’t broken.

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Hey Patrick,

I appreciate that very detailed and thorough explanation, and it all makes a lot of sense, and could be the issue. What doesn’t make sense to me is that other devices, when searching (as I mentioned, when put into discovery mode, Alexa and Brilliant instantly see HUE bridge and lights) so if the HUE is misbehaving, why can these other devices/hubs/integrations see HUE but SmartThings can’t?

I guess I’ll keep trying these workarounds and steps and hope it eventually sees it, or possibly try them on their own independent network for a second without traffic - do you think if I tried isolating them that way and then moved back to the live home network the config would stay? I really can’t fathom the task of starting over with Hue. We have 40+ bulbs in a live work loft with rooms configured and everything. And everything works beautifully. The only reason we’re having to go through this SmartThings task is a workaround for Brilliant switches that can’t control a room of lights natively so we’re hoping they can through SmartThings. A lot of work for a workaround. Not to beat a dead horse but HUE is pretty much the defecto standard now that has stayed around as others vanish, everyone is integrating with it, and SmartThings is supposed to be pretty up to date and a standard as well. It’s crazy in 2018 that these two devices have this much trouble seeing each other.

New note - just for fun (think I mentioned this earlier, we’ve always been a wink house only because that is what we started with at the beginning) - and we all know Wink has been unreliable, and I’m on an old hub (so no new technology there). Just asked it to go find HUE and latest bulbs in a new room. Wink immediately found the HUE bridge and new bulbs.

So with everything else immediately seeing HUE when asked, you can imagine our frustration and skepticism that the issue is what you say - with HUE, and traffic - it seems to be responding to everyone else, why isn’t it responding to your requests?

Here’s how you get the two-finger gesture to work. The room I am using is called Cafe. I have two lights it actuates at the same time. One called Kitchen Lights and one called Dining Room Lights.

First. Under Settings → Light Settings. Put the control in the Room you want it to control all the lights for with the 2-finger swipe.
IMG_0169

Exit out of Settings and go to Home. Go to the same Room. Make sure all the lights you want to control are in this room.
IMG_0170

Now when you 2-finger swipe, all those lights will turn on/off.
IMG_0172

Note this has NOTHING to do with what is assigned to the slider, or 1-finger swipe. I have this controller set to control a light in a totally different room with the normal swipe.
IMG_0171

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Wow, I’m guessing that the switches with sliders on the side don’t work the same way as your one gang display only switch. I did exactly as you said above - Settings - Light Settings, and the device is assigned to the right room. I go back to HOME - then the room, and all I get is a list of the devices assigned to the room. I don’t ever get to (unless you can tell me how) a screen that says “interaction settings” like your last screenshot above. And I can’t get one finger or two fingers to do anything at all on the display.

@gaurav_brilliant - can you help explain if gestures (one & two finger) work the same or differently on switches that have sliders? The guides and FAQ’s on Brilliant website do little to explain the differences between the two types of switches.

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Humm… I wonder if screen gestures are disabled for the 2 and 3 gang units. Hopefully they add that if so, and also add a way for the sliders to control rooms, in addition to supporting Hue groups of course. Baby steps.

At a minimum the auth you get from pressing the button and the DNI (the mac address in this case) would stay. If you don’t set it up with a static IP address, the IP may change when you bring it back to your network, but the hub should pick up on that eventually. We also use SSDP to figure out what devices’ IP addresses have changed to. While this is still unreliable for the Hue bridge, in my experience the fact that this is something that is continuously on-going means that just due to the sheer number of attempts one eventually works and we’re able to get the proper IP.

I do get that this seems totally crazy from your position, but there’s a couple of things I need to stress: 1) You are one of three customers I’ve talked to that have had this issue at all. 2) You’re the first I’ve heard of where the trick of disconnecting the Ethernet (or just the power) from the Hue bridge hasn’t gotten it to work.

I can only assume the other apps/hubs are using a different method of discovering the bridge. I know that Hue has their own cloud API that they use for their own app that lists the LAN IP of any device on the network where the request is coming from. We don’t use that though because we try to avoid, if at all possible, making requests out to the internet via your hub except to our own services.

All that said, I’m going to push on getting the mDNS discovery work going again now that I know our workaround isn’t cutting it for everyone anymore. I can’t promise when it’ll be done, but I’ll do what I can.

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So, good news… both the HUE and the SmartThings hubs were attached to the same 5 port switch which was then attached to an Orbi WiFi Mesh router (to one of its 5 ports). I unplugged them both and attached them directly to the Orbi router ports instead of through the switch. For whatever reason, that worked, it immediately saw the HUB.

So maybe add that to your internal list of troubleshooting - to have people try and move around the configuration, hooking both to same router, etc.

Thanks for all the help!

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I installed the 2 switch device. I want to like this product but here are some initial issues:

  1. It finds some of my SmartThings devices but oddly will not find the bulk of them. It will not pick up any of my Lutron Caseta switches from within SmartThings. It finds Hue lights and smart outlets. That’s it. But I can link to Hue directly anyway. Disappointed.

  2. I cannot seem to find out how to change the color of hue lights. Can’t set scenes with Hue colors either. We already know it does not support Hue groups.

  3. No Nest support.

I’m probably scaling back on this project and returning all of the devices I ordered except one of them so I can monitor if the software improves (I had ordered 5, perhaps prematurely). Sonos integration is nice. The device itself is beautiful. I’m sure it will improve and I am not yelling and screaming but this software so far is severely crippled like others said. I was able to control a Hue group via SmartThings like I posted a few posts above but too much lag that way.

I so badly want to love it and maybe down the road when it’s fully baked I’ll retry it.

Hey @AdamHLG, thanks for posting your review and notes after installing and trying yourself. I’ve actually been coming back to the forum hoping to get your update and see if you miraculously figured out anything I couldn’t. Unfortunately it sounds like you didn’t.

Note, you say “I was able to control a Hue group via SmartThings like I posted a few posts above” - I can’t find a post from you about this. Can you tell me how you actually did it? I see you say there is lag (which I was afraid there would be going through a 3rd party integration) but I’d still like to try it.

After days of fuss we finally got the SmartThings hub working with help from @psbarrett but, just like with the Hue integration, it only sees all the Hue bulbs individually, so I’m still at a loss how to control a group or room of lights.

Unfortunately sounds like you’ve come to the same conclusion as us - it IS a beautiful product, BUT it has some serious software limitations that are crippling. And all of those limitations would be easy to overlook if it could do one basic thing - control a room/group of lights easily. Still shake my head in disbelief that a product could get this far along, be this beautiful, and not do that one basic thing. There simply shouldn’t have to be talk of workarounds and 3rd party integrations and “try this” and try a “virtual switch” and then this will control that in 2018 with a product like this that is a light switch form factor designed primarily to control lights.

And you’re probably right, I scared off @gaurav_brilliant and he’s not coming back to tell us if this is going to be fixed or any kind of ETA, and without that, I’m like you, I can’t invest all this $ and energy in a product that doesn’t do that one basic thing. Did you find the returns URL? I have it if you need it.

So frustrating, this WAS supposed to be the switch that finally tamed them all. :frowning:

Tracy,

To get the group of Hues to work, I downloaded Hue Pro from the Android app store (I have Android so not sure what app you’ll need to use if you have iPhone), but in that app you can create Hue groups and upload those groups to the Hue Bridge. So I created a group called “Bathroom Hues” and, under Manage Presets in the Hue Pro app, you click on it and select “upload to Bridge”. This part is then done. Test the group in the Hue Pro app and make sure all your lights respond together.

Next, go into the SmartThings app. I am using Hue Advanced (Connect). I am pretty sure I installed that through the SmartThings IDE developer portal (which you’ll need to learn eventually as its very powerful and where the magic happens), but I suspect you can do this part via other means, but what you want to do it tell SmartThings to search your Hue Bridge again for new devices. It will find the group you uploaded as a new Hue device. Once it does this, this new device will be in SmartThings and you can test it from SmartThings app to make sure it responds, i.e., on/off/color controls in the SmartThings should control the group.

Next, go into Brilliant and add a device to a room. A note here. This is a bug (I think). I cannot just add another device from SmartThings to Brilliant after I already did it once. It wont show up. I needed to get back to the part where I linked SmartThings the first time so I could select the new device. So I factory reset my Brilliant and started from scratch. Once you get to the part to link SmartThings, this new device, representing the name of the group you made in Hue Pro, will show up.

Once it shows up, the rest is pretty intuitive. I added it to the room in Brilliant and then assigned a slider. Keep in mind, however, that this integration path means you go from touch to Brilliant to SmartThings to Hue Bridge for control. There is a lag - its not too bad but its there - but it works.

But what you cannot do - disappointedly - is change the colors of the group or set a scene with colors.

As for timeslines to get things fixed, I will be contacting Brilliant support with a very thorough e-mail and asking timeline questions. If I can arrange a deal whereby I get an extended date to return my 5 switches while I wait for the software to improve, I would consider keeping them and waiting it out. If not, I will probably return 4 of them and keep one to see how it goes. I would then repurchase the others down the road if the software catches up.

Good luck!

Thank you! Will try that. And good luck with your email to Brilliant. Frustratingly, we did the same as you are about to, we’ve sent two emails with notes and questions to support over the past two weeks and have received no response to either. Not a good sign. @gaurav_brilliant

To add ST additional devices to Brilliant, you just go to the Brilliant Control ST SmartApp, and then add additional devices. The Brilliant will then discover them a few minutes later.

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Addendum to my previous review above HERE, now that I have received and installed another two units.

My first review was based on a 1-gang screen-only unit. I purchased another 1-gang screen-only unit to use in my basement, and a 2-gang unit with two sliders to use in my upstairs hallway. Since ST still cannot control a loads attached to these, I am using them as scene controllers to control loads attached to ST. For the basement unit, I installed a new gang box. For the upstairs hallway I had the 3-way remote of a GE Z-Wave dimmer (not the unit with the load), and a Cooper LED nightlight, so it was easy enough to remove both of those, since Brilliant can control the Z-Wave dimmer remotely over ST, and function the same as the GE 3-way remote switch.

Installation of the hardware was a breeze again. On the 2-gang unit, if you are not controlling a load, or only controlling one load, you need to connect the hot wire to common terminal on a particular side of the unit. If I had read the instructions, I would have known that. So one more install and we were set.

Joining the new controllers is as easy as entering your WiFi password and then entering a confirmation PIN that is displayed on your existing Brilliant’s. You still have to login to Amazon again since the Alexa API creates a new Alexa device for each unit, but you do not have to reauthenticate to ST, Ring, ecobee, or Sonos. This was a huge timesaver. All of your Rooms, Scenes, and wallpaper photos are also shared among devices.

My upstairs unit is my first experience with the physical sliders. The sliders are awesome. So much easier to control your lights than swiping on the screen. In the 2-gang unit, you can program it to control different lights with each slider, and an additional one with the screen swipe. The two-finger screen swipe still actuates all of the lights in the same Room you have that control assigned to. In my application I have it controlling the Z-Wave dimmer on ST the 3-way switch was previously controlling, and my living room lights down the stairs with the two sliders. I didn’t bother setting up something to control with the screen. They definitely should have included a slider in the 1-gang unit. It exponentially increases the WAF / GAF (guest).

Most of my other observations from my original review continue to hold true. I have noticed that the firmware version has increased numerous times since my original install. I’m glad they are being agile with their releases, and this makes me hopeful that the software shortcomings are addressed sooner rather than later.

Beyond that, my only additional observations…

Ambient Light and Screen Brightness - My new upstairs unit is by a window. I hope to god this is just a software fix and their is in fact an ambient light sensor. If there isn’t a dedicated sensor, hopefully they can use the camera for this. At a brightness that is reasonable at night, the display can not be seen at all during morning sun.

Alexa - In my other rooms I have dedicated Echo’s, so I never fully tested the microphones / Alexa functionality. These are not far-field microphones. You basically have to talk to the unit like you are using the intercom for Alex to work. At that point the Echo’s in my master bedroom and guest room could still hear me better, so like my other two units, I disabled Alexa.

Intercom - Cool, but gimmicky. I’m still more likely to use the Echo Communications feature.

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I have grown to like my 2 gang switch despite the software shortcomings. More importantly, teh wife is not complaining about the sliders and I find them to work very well. I will not be cancelling my 3 gang switches that have now shipped. I will ride this out and hope to see the platform grow and get updated.

One comment I will add. The switch has a 300 watt limit and will disable the load switch if 300 watts is exceeded as a safety measure. I freaked out at first because one of my loads connected to the Brilliant is 3 wall sconces and the bulb wattage was 60 watt X 3. So that is 180 watts. But then I realized that each sconce has 2 bulbs! So that is 360 watts. This was simple enough to fix by replacing the bulbs with 40 watt bulbs so 40 X 6 = 240 watts. So just know about this - or get LED bulbs.

This thread will be my go-to discussion forum moving forward. If anyone notices a major firmware or software upgrade please post in case someone misses it. Would be nice if the app had notices of upgrades with release notes (as it would be annoying for the switch to have pop-ups).

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@swamplynx How do you find the Brilliant as a scene controller? Previously you had a keypad scene controller and would simply press a button. Is using the 1 gang Brilliant as easy? Are the scenes always easily accessible or do you have to navigate a bunch of menus to get to them?