I just added a Hue Bridge with Three Gen3 Color Bulbs.
I want to be able to Voice Control them with Echo Dots.
Here is what I currently want to be able to do.
Is it possible to map colors to voice control ?
Do I need to integrate with ST somehow to make this work or can I to it straight out of the box ?
You can make this work with echo, but only by using predefined scenes or the IFTTT channel.
using Hue scenes with echo
This is a recently added echo feature. you have to set up a scene in the native hue app that turns the bulb red and give it a name you can remember, maybe “Crimson.”
Do you have to do a one time step to enable the Phillips hue “skill” in the Alexa app.
Then you have echo discover the scenes, which it will do just like a regular device.
After that, you will be able to say “Alexa, turn on scene crimson” and it will tell the hue bridge to execute that scene, so turn that light red.
The full instructions are on the Phillips site under support/partners.
Using IFTTT
You can also do it through IFTTT because both echo and hue have IFTTT channels. You can create a recipe for either an individual bulb or for a scene. But you would would have to use the voice control format of “Alexa, trigger red lights” ( or whatever you wanted to call it).
@JDRoberts thanks I read the cnet article but folks on Reddit say it doesn’t work and I couldn’t get it to work. I created a scene called “Night” and another called “white”
Discovery finds my bulbs Hall, Lamp Top and Lamp Bottom but the scenes do not show up as devices.
Saying Alexa, turn on Night" results in sorry message.
Have you made the native scene discovery work ?
Guess I till try IFTTT tomorrow.
Edit: Figured it out. You have to enable the Philips Hue Skill in Alexa app. Without it Echo only discovers the lights. With it you get your scenes. It added two extra scenes. “Colorloop in Master” and “All Hue Lights” Color loop is weird, just keeps changing the colors of all my lights. Don’t know why it creates that one. All Hue Lights makes sense I guess but I would rather make my own Echo groups.
But it did create what I wanted. I now have “Night in Master” and “White in Master”. So Alexa turn on Night in Master now makes all my lights Red 40% and White in Master makes them white at 100%.
I have to say Philips Hue is working very well and the app is so much faster than ST.
Update: Jinxed it, now when I ask Alexa “Turn on Night in Master” it says “Sorry the device is not responding” after a long pause. Rediscovery fixed it I hope it sticks.
Same here.
I’m very pleased with Philips Hue, they work perfectly every time - unlike Smartthings, which fails almost daily with something or other.
The Alexa integration with the Hue’s is great too.
Being able to set colours with voice commands is very useful and lots of fun.
It’s such a shame that Smartthings is so slow and unreliable.
Do you mean using scenes or are you able to adjust colors some other way ?
Yea, It’s a shame that ST has been so problematic. I used to think they would get their act together but not so much anymore.
Glad you figured it out! The instructions are on the Phillips site:
I had it set up before the scenes option was available, so I use IFTTT. At my house IFTTT lag is a pretty consistent eight seconds, but that’s OK for my purposes. I did test the scene option and it was faster, but since we already have the other one set up and it was working fine we stayed with it.
I’ve updated my first post above to include the support links with the full instructions. 
There is a delay from Alexa with my Hue lights and Scenes also. Lights usually within a few seconds, scenes sometimes take longer and a few times it said OK but didn’t actually do it. Actually that happens with ST lights also sometimes. It makes me wonder what the Echo actually did sometimes 
Another option, which I use, is STRINGIFY
But if you are really wanting to have some fun… go here… go ahead… you know you want to. It’s good for you… just take a little peak.
I am interested but don’t have the time to read the instructions 
Also afraid it will go the way of Rule Machine…
As the author of this, I know it will not go away. In addition, its license allows someone to pick up where I left off if something happens to me.
As for the instructions, it does take some work, but it is worth it when it gets installed and is working…
Good luck if you plan to go for it.
I made groups in the Alexa app and put hue scenes in the groups so I can say to Alexa; “turn on savanna sunset in the living room”.
This works reliably enough to be useful and fun.
By making custom scenes it’s possible to have a nice range of colours that Alexa can control.
I’ve seen the ‘ask alexa’ app too, but I don’t really have time to get into it right now.
I’ve stuck with the official supported smart apps and devices and I have more than enough problems already.
If Smartthings was more reliable, I’d feel more confident in trying some of the very useful looking community apps, but I don’t want to add more uncertainties into an already broken setup.
