Hue bulbs as motion sensor device driver?

I got both Hue bulbs and hue motion sensor, but the hue motion sensor unless paired direct to ST cannot be used as a motion sensor. So I was thinking, is it possible to create a new device driver that detects a hue bulb being switched on, or group of, and if so, triggering the ‘simulated’ or ‘virtual’ motion sensor. Has anyone done anything like this?

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I’m a little bit confused about what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s easy to use a Hue light coming on as a trigger in smartthings. But SmartThings cannot communicate with the Hue motion sensor Unless you have directly paired it to the SmartThings hub.

You could certainly do something with a virtual motion sensor when the hue light comes on, but there wouldn’t be any way to then communicate on to the actual Hue motion sensor unless, again, that hue motion sensor was directly paired to the smart things hub, in which case you wouldn’t need the virtual.

What exactly is it that you’re trying to accomplish with the virtual motion sensor?

Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, there is one other possibility, Mike Maxwell has a very cool universal device type translator which can have a switch report as a motion sensor. And a bulb can be treated as a switch. Normally, you probably wouldn’t need that but if, for example, you are trying to get a Hue motion sensor to work with smart home monitor (which doesn’t respond to a light coming on) you could set up something like this:

  1. have a Hue motion sensor connected to the hue bridge, not the smartthings hub. Also have a Hue Bulb connected to that bridge.

Two) set up the integration between that hue bridge and SmartThings. Smartthings will be able to see the bulb, but not the motion sensor.

Three) have the motion sensor turn on the bulb using the Hue bridge.

Four) use the universal device type handler and have the bulb Report as a motion sensor.

Five) now smart home monitor can respond to that bulb coming on, and since the bulb is coming on because the Hue motion sensor is coming on, smart home monitor is now responding to the Hue motion sensor.

Obviously, this is a lot of work, so the only reason to do this would be if you also wanted to use the Hue motion sensor with the hue bridge for other purposes. Otherwise, you should just connect the motion sensor directly to the smartthings hub

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Thanks very much. I find ST not as responsive as the Hue bridge, so I did not want to connect Hue motion sensor to ST. Instead I wanted to create a virtual motion sensor, I used the excellent uDTH as you suggested, and trigger it whenever one of the Hue bulbs was switched on. Nice and simple. Appreciate that this will not work if Lux levels are set etc. but this is good enough for.

I wrote a simple app : https://github.com/batlinal/smartthings/blob/master/bulb-motion-sensor.src/bulb-motion-sensor.groovy. First create a uDHT device, enabled it as a switch input and motion sensor output. Install the app, select the bulbs you care about and the created uDHT device. Then on Smart Home Monitor create a custom rule to sound alarm etc. based on the uDHT motion sensor.

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Reviving an old post, but you can sort of get these to work using automations in ST without adding the motion sensor in ST itself. You can setup the hue motion sensor to set a specific color temperature or color in the bulbs. Then in ST, use an automation triggered by that specific color value. Your bulb gives you a large number of values you can communicate back to ST, based on conditions in Hue.