Context:
The majority of my smart lighting is Philips Hue and I control all of it through Smartthings (no hub). I then have Alexa connected to Smartthings, with no direct connection to Hue. I have some other linked services including meross, Kasa, Ring and Nest.
The issue:
Recently, any routines I activate through Alexa have been “flakey” at best. Where they are dealing with multiple services (e.g. some Hue spots and a Kasa smart plug), the non-Hue devices work fine, but most, if not all, Hue devices fail to respond.
This was a real head scratcher for a while - through the Hue app, everything can be controlled perfectly but looking into Smartthings, most Hue devices appear offline.
I then discovered the option in the Smartthings app: Menu > Settings > Linked services. As soon as I tap on Philips Hue here, some sort of magic refresh seems to happen and all of the Hue devices come back online.
This is now happening approximately every 24 hours. Once the refresh happens, everything will play nicely for the day. Next day, most devices are back offline.
The really weird thing is that often some Hue devices will work - for example, I’ve just tried to turn on my office lights and one spot out of six came on. I would have thought that if ST has an issue communicating with Hue, nothing would work?!
Has anyone experienced this before and if so, any solutions?
I’m loathe to unlink the Philips Hue service as I assume I will lose all devices and will have to re-add them into rooms and routines (I’ve maxed out the bridge at 50 lights).
Hmmmm…ok, there have been a bunch of people reporting recent issues with SmartThings hub—>Hue , but I know you don’t have a smartthings hub, so that’s not what’s affecting you.
Have you opened a ticket with the official SmartThings support yet? (This forum was set up years ago so customers can help other customers, but official support can see things that we can’t.)
The first people you get will be general Samsung employees working off a script who may not know much about smartthings, but if you hang in there, eventually it will get escalated to an engineer.
I have a similar setup where I connect one hue hub to ST via cloud connection and my other Hue Hub direct to Alexa, I then connect ST to Alexa and able to see all my hue lights - around 70 thus the two hubs. As you were saying, and this has started in the last few months, routines in Alexa are not completing and only switching off some lights. On investigation the light left on are Offline in ST. If I link ST with Hue, they return to online and everything works for a day or two. It’s almost as if ST times the device out and only a full refresh resets the device in ST. Is there a timer in ST I can change to link once every 24hrs ?
I’m running everything through Alexa, (ST, hive, somfy, ring, smart plugs, twinkle lights and hue) so a bit reluctant to buy yet another hub for ST to make a LAN connection. Annoyingly I have to use ST as Alexa will not support two Hue Hubs!
