Cannot Control Hue Lights with ST

I couldn’t find anyone talking about this so I figured I would ask… I recently purchased a gen 2 ST hub with a gen 2 Hue Bridge. I have 12 Hue lights (gen 2 & 3) connected to my bridge and can control them fine thought the hue app. Once I add them to ST I can see them, but once I try to control them they go offline. The Hue bridge itself is still showing as online on ST, only the lights are offline. If I try to turn a light that was on when it was connected off it will display Turning Off in the app forever.

Is it normal to have ST prompt me to press the button to re-link the bridge every time I try to add a new light? Whenever I go through the adding process after I select my hue bridge it displays:

The current Hue username is invalid.
Please press the button on your Hue Bridge to re-link.

I have been in contact with support on this issue, but I feel as though I have stumped him. I can’t be the only one with this problem, right?

Yeah I’m having this problem too. Hope I don’t have to go back to my old Hue bridge but I probably will. I setup the v2 Hue bridge and then tried to discover it in the Smart things app and it gave me the relink error and pressing the auth button on the Hue bridge did nothing. I removed all Hue devices and readded/connected the bridge in Smart things and it worked great… For a couple hours, then it lost connection too all the lights. I’ve tied multiple times to reconnect the bridge being prompted with the relink error, but the lights won’t come back. I really don’t want to delete the lights again. This is certainly an auth bug on Smartthings side. Google home, Amazon Echo, and Logitech Harmony all work well. Again Samsung you’ve dropped the ball.

Put in a ticket to support. The latest Hue hub update broke it again. I had to LOL when I got the email from support telling me Hue integration had been fixed just a couple hours after Hue pushed another update that broke it again.

Did this issue get sorted for OP etc.?

I am currently having these exact issues. Removing/adding the Hue doesn’t help and it works fine in Alexa etc.

My Hues have been " behaving" if a little ( lot) slow. Got a notice in Hue app last night to install another hub update. So we’ll have to wait and see if they screwed the pooch yet again.

Sorry everyone. The holidays got pretty crazy around here and I never got around to posting my update. Support was unfortunately unable to figure out what was wrong but I did find a fix.
I logged into my smartthings via the website (https://graph.api.smartthings.com/login/auth)
Brought up the hue hub and clicked ‘force delete’.
It told me I wasn’t authorized to preform the action but it did remove it. I went through the steps to add it again and it worked this time. It’s been about 2-3 weeks of working perfectly.

Thanks for your update.

I contacted support and they recommended me allowing them to delete the Hue Hub for me (I’ve tried deleting it myself through the SmartThings App already of course but to no avail).

Maybe when they delete it it’s done in the same or similar way to how you solved it.

Well, this is making me feel great. I just started getting into this smart home thing and had been trying to decide on which system to get. I finally decided on the Samsung hub because it appeared to be compatible with many devices. I looked on the website for compatible bulbs and the Hue was listed so I purchased three, only to discover that I couldn’t make them work with the ST hub and I would also need to buy the Philips hub. I remember it saying they “required hub”, but just thought that meant the ST hub.

It seems ridiculous that you would need a hub to control a hub to control a device. Am I going to need a hub for every brand of device I want to use with ST? If so, this doesn’t seem very “smart”.

And now it appears that these hubs may not even work together. I don’t really want a hundred different apps to do this. I thought this hub thing was a way to consolidate all these apps into one neat package.

BTW, I’m using Alexa for the front end.

In the interest of accuracy, it’s actually a Philips “bridge”… not a hub. As it’s name implies, it provides the communication bridge between the ST hub and all of the connected lights.

Just sayin’ is all. :slight_smile:

Thanks. Most places and articles are calling it a hub.

So, is this rather specific to the Philips system? Does it mean that I won’t likely have to purchase other bridges/hubs to have products work?

I also have a TP-Link smart outlet that works with the Kasa app and Alexa. Will the ST hub control it or will I just have to leave it as it is?

I have also ordered a Honeywell Lyric (new model). I read it works well with ST. Hope I won’t need a Honeywell hub :slight_smile:

And for some reason, I can’t login to these forums from my PC, only via tablet, and I know I’m using the correct credentials.

I thought the same thing when I first started this a few months ago. I had several hue bulbs before I got the bridge. In hindsight I wish I would’ve went with the crew bulbs that talk directly to smartthings.
You would have to check to see if that plug works with smartthings.
The Honeywell should work fine, my older wifi Honeywell works great. You will still want to use the Honeywell app to set it up and program it’s normal schedule, the smartthings app (maybe along with ifttt) will control it the rest of the way.

It is a Bridge in the best sense of the word. As it is something that takes IP based requests and sends those out ZLL. The thing about Hue is that it is ROCK solid. When someone asks me how to do lighting at home that is the very first suggestion. It just works. And the integration with other systems makes it pretty nice. The control is local, so its fast and resilient to internet outage.

As for needing other hubs to have things work with ST. Yes and no. For the most part no. Things like switches, motion sensors, open close sensors that are all using an open protocol like zwave or zigbee another hub isnt needed. Hue is using zigbee light link, which is a subset of zigbee. But zigbee isnt ‘open open’. Its a standard but each vendor can change it and Phillips did. So while you can pair a hue bulb directly to ST, you lose a whole lot of its benefits from running on ZLL on the Hue bridge. But then add in something like Arlo cameras, yes you need another hub.

In the end…I’ve never seen why some get so worked up over ‘omg another hub’. Network switches are cheap to add ports…and most of these devices are tiny. Its not like asking you to put another fridge in your house.

Haha! You don’t know my network. I already have a 5-port router and an 8-port switch and nine ports used. Aside from the ST, that is all computer stuff, so I have 4 free. I just don’t like the idea of having to keep stacking more modules on my desk and trying to find outlets to plug them in.