New Hue delay

Also a weird thing:

Now when Hue is integrated into SmartThings again. Even though I am at home, when I launch the Android Hue app on my mobile it first shows me there is no connection (red bar) then changes to “Connecting…” (orange bar) and then to “Connected” (green bar) and then disappears.
This is a new behaviour. When I remove Hue from SmartThings the Android Hue app immediately shows “Connected” (green bar).

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I have been getting this with my iPhone too. Sad that the ST connection is even disrupting the native Hue app. I have 38 lights and just can’t stand to take them off ST. I have so many light automations it would just kill me.

I wonder if it could be a problem with your network. I’ve been told SmartThings polls Hue every 5 seconds so is it possible you’re getting packet drops that are causing the delay? I had similar problems with my network at one point and buying a newer router resolved my problem. Just my 2 cents.

Hue has been pretty stable for me since I bought hub v2.

For most people, it seems to be related to the number of devices attached to the hue bridge.

It looks like when they tested the change that went from polling the hue bridge every five minutes to polling every five seconds they tested with a bridge with about six devices connected. They definitely didn’t test with the Hue max of 50.

People start reporting problems between 15 and 25 devices. It just becomes too much message Traffic for The system to handle.

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Thanks @JDRoberts for pointing us at that thread, so we have a confirmed issue, a beta firmware that is out there and appears to resolve the issue but no one else can get on the beta program. I’ll keep my fingers crossed the release is available soon.

I’m not sure it’s exactly the same issue. As far as I can tell there are actually three separate Hue integration issues right now. Of course it’s entirely possible that a fix for one would fix the others as well, but they do three seem to have appeared at different times. Here’s the timeline as far as I can tell.

1) mid August. ST hub rebooting due to polling too many Hue devices. Platform change made a very significant change in how hue bulbs were polled. Essentially they went from updating status once every five minutes to once every five seconds. As soon as the platform change occurred, a number of people begin reporting that their smartthings hub would just reboot itself frequently. Removing the Hue bridge from the network would fix the problem.

After about a week of investigation, support determined that the problem is occurring for people with around 20 devices connected to the Hue bridge or more. Late in August they started a beta for a fix for that but it has not yet been released.

2) mid September, but possibly before the September 14 firmware update, some community members begin reporting seeing a significant delay in hue lights going on or off. No rebooting issues. It’s unclear whether this was associated with a recent hue bridge update or not. There were several platform hot fixes in September, and it’s also unclear if the problem was associated with any of those. The delay would occur even when using the native hue app. For some people, Powering off the SmartThings hub would remove the delay and powering it up again would bring the delay back. That’s this thread.

3) after the September 14 firmware update and the September 15 hot fix, A number of members reported that the network ID for their hue bridge was corrupted, causing multiple problems. There’s a workaround for that one which involves manually editing that hue bridge ID in the IDE, but this can result in your having what appeared to be two Hue bridges on the network and you may not be able to add any new bulbs to SmartThings after that. So it’s just a temporary workaround for total loss of control of the lights.

If you have any of these three problems, report them to support. I don’t know if they’re related or not.

@Aaron @Brad_ST

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I only have 6 bulbs on my hue bridge. The difference in delay is huge with my ST hub unplugged from the network. This just started happening over the last week it seems. With ST unplugged controlling lights from my harmony remote/app or the native hue app is instant. Plug it back in and I’m waiting 5 secs or more for stuff to happen, dimming is a joke with my harmony remote now. Thx ST

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Old network engineering joke:

if the solution to a problem is more polling, you’ve just created two new problems. :persevere::persevere:

(One for the device doing the polling, and one for the device being polled.)

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Is anyone else seeing responsive off requests to hue and huge delays when turning lights on?

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ive also got mega slow response to motion baised triggers . and using the hue app take sometime upto 8 seconds to turn off a light , been happing for the past 2-3 days
wierdly switching light from “my.meethue.com” is way quicker or even using the new home app on ios10 is instant on and off

@slagle I can see that you are closing others threads and pointing other people here.

Would you be able to give us an update on where you are with this? I’m sure you guys are focussed on identifying root cause. An update would be useful so I can manage SAF levels.

I’m also suffering from the excessive load from smartthings to hue. With my smartthings hub unplugged my hue responds well. When it is plugged in half of my lights will not even switch on or off. Even with the native hue app. Terrible. I’m not even at 50% of the maximum number of bulbs hue can handle!
This is a direct result of smartthings insisting on testing only in labs with no user piloting.

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I have this exact same problem. The last 2 years have been fantastic however in the last 2 days I’m seeing a delay of up to 5-6 seconds before the lights turn on. I haven’t changed a thing so I reckon it’s to do with the latest firmware update to smartthings hub. Is there a fix?

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No fix right now, I would encourage as many people as possible raise tickets to help prioritise the engineers so they put some focus on this.

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So it’s not just me then…my lights have been acting up as well. Is there a specific place that we notify ST, or is it just the “Support” email from the main page of ST?

The delay through Alexa is horrible, and the app is the same way.

In the US:

In the U.K.:

Sent…Cheers mate!

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The status page has been updated as well.
http://status.smartthings.com

I also got a support email back asking to me reboot all hubs and check that the firmware is up to date. If all else fails to remove and readd the hue connect app. I’ve already done the first before I contacted support and the latter Id rather not, thx but no thx.

Might be able to blame this one on Hue not entirely on ST. Seeing a major delay controlling Hue bulbs with even the Hue native app.