Hue bulb without Hue Bridge?

Any news on this? I’d love to ditch the Hue hub…

I still think it’s a bad idea for now.

Hue Bridge has so many apps, and is supported by Amazon Echo.

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And IFTTT and Harmony and Beecon+, all of which can also be used with SmartThings. :blush:

In addition, it’s likely that the Hue bridge will continue to be useful as a “man in the middle” utilizing The Big Switch as long as the polling delay is acceptable for the use case, perhaps even with HomeKit devices.

The idea here is that one side turns a hue bridge-controlled bulb on/off, then the other side recognizes the state change and acts on it.

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Understood!

Thanks guys!

All my bulbs are directly joined to the my SmartThings hub and I cant say I would recommend it unless you need to extend your ZigBee HA network. If you do this you will be at the mercy of SmartThings cloud automation and things like turn on at sunset off at sunrise are not reliable to the bulbs for some reason. I have other applications that turn the bulbs on and off not dependent on SmartThings so its not a problem for me.

Another thing to keep in mind since your bulbs have joined a Light Link network is they will have to be reset back to factory condition before they can join a ZigBee HA network (SmartThings Hub).

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Just posted how to reset hue bulbs elsewhere, as someone mentioned above, keep the functionality with the hue bulbs simple: Dr. Hue is in and the Bulbs are back (Reset Hue bulbs to factory)

actual reply:
You should be able to unpair/reset bulbs by following their method of powering on and off repeatedly, I have successfully done it a few times. Power on for 5 seconds, then power off for 5 seconds, repeat and after around the 5th time it turns on, it will blink, indicating it has reset. You will likely have to re-pair the bulb (although i think I didn’t need to on one occasion) to the hub, and reassigning any SmartApps

correction: this was for the GE link bulbs

Plain and simple suggestion is to use the ST integration via the hue hub. As such there is so much hassles with this integration, do not add another one to it where you have to reclaim back your hues. Keep your option open with hue native, echo and other third party apps which work superb with hues.

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Blink resets work with many brands, but not with Hue bulbs. Perhaps you’re using a GE bulb?

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you are right, i forgot i got rid of my hue bulbs and went to GE, i corrected above

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While I agree with @tgauchat I have been using hue bulbs and ge bulbs on my ST for almost a year now with no issues.

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I pair about half my Hue bulbs to ST and half via the bridge. They both have their benefits and drawbacks.

Its a lot easier to debug what’s going on via the ST Hub. Also, communicating from ST directly to the bulb is a lot lower latency than ST->Hue Connect->Bulb. Getting your bulb off the ST hub is actually quite hard, and its especially dependent on what Zigbee channel your hub is assigned to.

But the big thing is you lose the apps. I have something called a Hyperion – which is edge projection of a TV onto LEDs. ST can’t process as many requests as it would take to keep that functionality, and I would have to write the code anyway. That is pretty bad.

I write an improved Zigbee Hue bulb device, but please use it at your own peril. I find that it sometimes steals bulbs that are on the Hue bridge. I have no clue why that happens.

Kristopher

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@Kristopher, when you say “I write an improved Zigbee Hue Bulb device” do you mean you have written a new Hue Bulb device type for SmartThings? If so does it support polling of the bulbs? If it does I would like to give it a try.

The current Hue device type is, well not that great. I would like to see so much more and have often thought about writing one but my other projects always take priority.

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So just to confirm my new hue bulbs (which I love) and are on sale on Amazon (until August 15th) at 2 for 100$ – now that I have paired them with my ST hub, I CANNOT go get a Phillips hub and pair them with it?

Without going thru buying a bunch of extra hardware? It’s zigbee on both ends. Why can’t I reset them?

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@JohnR explains in post 3 above of this thread.

There are two separate things going on.

  1. The Zigbee Home Automation protocol, which ST uses, allows for more zigbee channels than the Zigbee Light Link protocol, which the Hue bridge uses. The Zigbee channel your particular ST hub uses is selected randomly at the time of manufacture, and cannot be changed afterwards.

  2. while some Zigbee bulbs can be reset to factory settings by blinking the bulb on and off, Philips Hues cannot. They can only be reset by a separate device. But that device has to be communicating on the Zigbee channel that the bulb is currently set to.

What this all means is that if, by random chance, your ST hub used a channel not used by Hue bridges, there’s no way to reset the bulb to ZLL factory specs using ST or Hue equipment. They’re both Zigbee, but one is using the HA profile and one is using ZLL. This is why ST currently recommends using the Hue Bridge rather than trying to connect the bulbs directly.

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/200848024-Connecting-Philips-hue-to-SmartThings

There are some devices that can transmit on all Zigbee channels AND can reset a Bulb to the ZLL specifications. But it’s a technical process and most people don’t have that equipment.

The ZigBee HA (SmartThings) public profile and the ZigBee Light Link (hue Hub) public profile have unique security requirements and don’t communicate with each other even though they are both ZigBee. It just happens that the Hub Bulb can join either profile but not both at the same time. Once a Hue bulb has joined a ZigBee HA profile it has to be reset to factory condition before it can change to the Light Link profile. To reset a Hue Bulb to factory condition you need a Light Link Remote to do it.

If you need to reset your bulbs I will be happy to help you can mail them to me and I will zap them back to factory condition and send them back. Just send me a PM. Bottom line if your bulbs are not responding I bet I can get them back for you.

By the way this non communications between different ZigBee profiles is a big black eye for ZigBee but it has been addressed in the new ZigBee 3.0 spec. Profiles go away!!

Ok one more question. If I buy the Phillips hue lux starter kit - will this function with the hue bulbs?

I own approximately 10 different ST items, and I have only held off on the hue bulbs because I thought they were overpriced — so I was excited to see this promotion, and to learn I could use them Independently of the hub – but if I add in the cost of even the lux – I’m at the 199 already.

What I do know is the hue lights are very neutered without the hub. :frowning:

My understanding is the Light Link Remote only works on ZLL channels, though, right? If your ST Hub happens to be on zigbee 14, which is ZHA but not ZLL, it won’t hear the Light Link Remote.

That’s the same Philips Hue Bridge. It will work fine once you get the Hues reset to ZLL. But you have the same reset problem for any bulbs you connected directly to the ST bridge, so you do have to get the bulbs reset before you use them with the bridge.

Yes that is true if your using Phillips Light Link Remote but not the case if you us the solution from dresden-elektronik. There solution will work on all channels. I had to buy the dresden-elektronik solution to reset my 10 bulbs I lost communications with last year over Christmas. https://www.dresden-elektronik.de/funktechnik/solutions/wireless-light-control/raspbee-gateway/?L=1

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Holy cow batman! That thing isn’t cheap! I’m just going to return them to Amazon as defective and buy the starter kit with the hub — is there any functionality you loose by using the hub instead of connecting them directly to ST?