Hue bulb without Hue Bridge?

Look around the forums for the correct device type handler, don’t know the correct one off the top of my head but it does exist!

I even started my own topic, but was redirect here by JDRoberts… I can’t seem to find what I need to get this working. From what I understand is that the bulb comes from factory to certain channel and needs to be reset to work with ST. But I’m not sure if this is only with bulbs that was already connected to hue hub, or if applies to new bulbs too.

Hi everyone!

Leandroestacio, I’m exactly as the same stage as you. Just bought smartthings hub and trying to setup the hue white bulb.

Currently looking for a device handler that might work…!

did you guys try this one?

1 Like

The Phillips hue bulbs originally use the ZLL (Zigbee light link) profile. They use this profile to communicate with the Hue bridge, which in turn can communicate with a SmartThings hub over the local area network. In this setup the hub does not speak directly to the bulbs. This is the only setup which is officially supported by SmartThings.

Most brands of zigbee bulbs can be individually reset through a “blink method” where you power the bulb on and off in a specific pattern, and then it will reset itself. Phillips chose not to offer that for their smart bulbs, perhaps because they were concerned about children playing with the light switch and accidentally resetting a bulb to factory specifications.

SmartThings does not use the ZLL profile. Instead, it uses the ZHA ( zigbee home automation) profile. Most ZLL devices, including the hue bulbs, can be paired to a ZHA coordinator like SmartThings and will then use the ZHA profile instead.

The problem comes when you decide you want to take that Hue Bulb off the SmartThings network and move it to a different one. Or reattach it to a hue bridge.

Because the hue bulbs cannot be individually reset on their own, you can end up with a situation where there is no way to move the bulb off of SmartThings without buying an additional device. (In the US, this is most commonly a Lutron connected bulb remote, $30 at Home Depot. Although it’s a different brand, it just happens to use exactly the right commands to reset A ZHA bulb.)

So this is why SmartThings support only recommends using the Hue bridge. Otherwise customers could end up with a bulb that they cannot move back from the SmartThings hub to a Phillips bridge, and Phillips would tell them that it was smartthings’ fault. :wink:

But as long as you’re willing to buy the additional device if you do want to move bulbs off of smartthings again, it will work fine. As long as you have selected an appropriate device handler.

We’ll pause briefly here so that those who have not previously worked with custom device handlers in SmartThings can read the following FAQ and catch up:

So, the officially supported way to use Hue bulbs with SmartThings is to have those bulbs controlled by a hue bridge. You then add that bridge to smartthings, and the setup wizard for it will automatically add device handlers for the individual bulbs that the bridge tells SmartThings about. Which means the official device handler for Hue bulbs assumes that there is also a Hue bridge in the picture.

If you want to add a Hue bulb directly to the SmartThings hub without a Hue bridge, you can, but you will need to use a different device handler, which recognizes that the bulb is not attached to a bridge. It is likely that there will be different ones for RGBW bulbs and plain white bulbs.

It’s possible you could just use a generic zigbee dimmer device handler type, I don’t know if anything extra is needed.

@Sticks18 or one of the other people who have written multiple Bulb device handlers should be able to point you to an appropriate one for a hue white bulb connected directly to the smartthings hub without a Hue bridge. :sunglasses:

10 Likes

I cant thank you enough for the time and effort you put into this well explained post. I’m still not able to find a handler for my white bulb, but I’m going to do some more digging to see if I can find anything that might make it work. @JDRoberts once again, Thank you very much for your help.

1 Like

I cant thank you enough, all of you. @dshokouhi @JDRoberts @Sticks18 you guys deserve all the best. The handler @dshokouhi linked made my light work without the hue hub. Thank you again for all the help.

2 Likes

Does the feature to change colors with Music work with Smarthings and Hue lights without the Hue Bridge?

I just got my first Philips Hue light; one of the Friends of Hue: Iris fixtures.
I don’t have a hub/bridge yet (it’s just connected directly; and I know about the reset needing a remote, etc), and I have some related questions…

  • Is there both a Hub and a Bridge, or are these just two words for the same thing?

  • Which Gen Hub?
    I could buy a Gen1 hub from a guy I know for cheap. Why or why not to buy it?

  • Wimpy Purple?
    Has anyone else noticed that purple is so wimpy on these things, or did I get a dud?

  • ST Mobile App Doesn’t Save Last State
    Every time I go away fro this device in the ST mobile app, and come back, at least two of the settings for the device in the app change. First off, with it connected directly to ST (no hub/bridge), in the ST Mobile App there are 4 things I can adjust…

  1. On/Off
  2. Brightness
  3. Color Hue
  4. Color Saturation

When I leave and come back, it appears as though the ST mobile app saves the state of the first two settings, but not the other two. So, if I want to adjust the other two, I need to change them to something else first, and then change it back to what I had it set to previously and make adjustments from there.

Is this just because of the fact that I have it connected directly to ST, and is this accounted for and taken care of while using them with an actual Hue hub/bridge?

Continuing the discussion from Hue Iris Bulbs on clearance at HD:

I had the same question, and found the following comments from @JDRoberts from earlier in this thread very helpful…

Philips calls it a Bridge, most people see it as a hub. Distinction w/o a difference, really. The Gen 2 “bridge” supports HomeKit. Otherwise identical to the Gen 1 device, AFAIK. Purple is a blended color (red, green, and blue are the colors of the LEDs in the bulb), so it’s not as saturated as those.

I don’t have any experience with hue bulbs connected to the ST hub, so I can’t comment on the rest. Sorry.

1 Like

Awesome! Thanks a lot for this info. I know it’s probably really simpleton stuff to most peeps around here, but I appreciate it. :slight_smile:

i have the same thing pop up. how do you correct this?

You ha e to install it as a device, not an app.

can someone please go over the steps to reset the Hue bulb with the Lutron remote?

I tried to reset and after it blinks, I am still unable to discover the bulb with ST APP ( I go to connect new device under things section frm marketplace and wait to find it but device is nt discovered)-this is the direct connect method to ST hub that I am trying to do. Thank yu

can someone please walk me through the steps to disconnect the bulbs from the hue bridge and connect them t the ST hub directly? I have 12 bulbs that have been useless since the Hue bridge decided to get disconnected from the ST hub and I am unable to reconnect
I purchased the Lutron remote and yet unable to connect to the ST HUb. Please help thank you guys

1 Like

I’m contemplating picking up a couple Hue A19s but am still uncertain how the setup will go with my STv2 hub… I’m assuming the same issue exists where if you link to the ST hub, the bulbs will be unrecoverable other than by using that Lutron dimmer to reset them?

If I just buy a couple Hue A19 bulbs (not part of any kit, etc) do I need to do anything special before attempting to set them up on the ST bridge? Sounds like I need to use the device handler mentioned somewhere up the thread previously to get things going with these?

We’ve done a lot of work recently to improve the Hue integration via the Bridge, and we continue to recommend pairing your Hue bulbs to SmartThings via the Hue Bridge. There’s a lot of cool stuff you can do with the Hue App that you can’t do via SmartThings, so it’d be a shame to lose out on all of that!

It works pretty well. Thanks for the great job!

Can you name a few of those things that I would be losing out on if I did NOT use the official Hue app? I know the network detaching problem but that only seems like a small annoyance.

For me, the most important aspect would be interoperability, and I’m ready to develop code for the smart bits. From reading this forum, it looks like going with the Hue bridge would mean that my Hue bulbs wouldn’t mesh with other ZHA/ZLL devices, which is a great downside.

I’m still planning to buy bulbs, and I’m having second thoughts. Is this Philips’ fault that we have the aforementioned limitations? Do other ZLL bulbs work better with SmartThings than Hue? Or is it a problem with ZLL in general and I should look for ZHA bulbs instead?