Hi Tony, so I have just tried again with your app and initially I got the same results. The lights would respond for a few minutes then stop responding. Going to the AP Hue Bridge and pressing refresh sometimes gave me control again.
Now this time I went back to the app where the the bridge is selected and I noticed the IP address was wrong. It had changed to the IP address of a Dlink camera that I have. So I changed the Dlink IP settings (gave it a static IP different to what it was on). Went back your app and the bridge now shows the new IP of the camera.
I have a non-official Dlink Smartapp for my camera that I found on here somewhere. I have removed this for now and so far I haven’t lost control of my Hues. I will monitor it for now - maybe after its been stable for a couple of weeks I might try to add the Dlink app again and see what happens. Thanks for your time & the app.
Edit: After a couple of hours of stable use the app is showing the Hue bridge with the wrong IP again.so no control from ST.
My Hue Bridge has a static IP, I don’t know of a way to change the ST hub to static. i will give it a reservation in the DHCP range so it shouldn’t change in future. The problem was after the Hue Bridge has been found the app somehow starts looking for the IP of the camera instead. I had removed the camera as a device but hadn’t removed the device handler. Not sure if this can cause any problems but I will remove that and try again…
I’ve started using groups instead of individual bulbs but for some reason most of my groups will show up as scenes (they are NOT scenes). I have one group that works however. I seem to recall reading something about different versions of groups/etc. The group that shows up was created a while ago, the ones that do not are recent if that helps.
EDIT: So I selected the incorrectly identified Scene and went into the API and changed the device handler to hue group and all is well.
Does someone have some screenshots of how the interface looks, including the user-defined transition section? I’m curious if I would be able to set an “alarm” in which the lights turn on at 5 a.m. from deep orange to bright white for 30 min., and maybe some colors in between.
I don’t want to do installs for the device handlers until I can better visual idea.
By “static” IP I mean something other than the IP address doesn’t seem to change. If you look up the manual for your router, you should be able to find where you can assign a static/fixed IP address for each of the devices on your LAN (instead of having your router choose) .
It’s good practice to do this, regardless of whether you are having trouble.
Hi Tony, yes I did this for my Hue and Harmony hub a couple of months ago. The smart app would find the hue bridge ok but after a while it appeared to switch to the ip of my dlink camera. I have since tried the Reconnect app. This worked fine for a few hours then became very slow to respond but not sure if this is related to the ongoing ST issues. About to go away for a couple of weeks so will try again after that. Maybe ST will be stable again.
@infofiend I just got done uninstalling my original Hue SmartApp and gave yours a whirl. When it asked me to pick groups, I saw the few groups I have…AND something called “Dimmer 2.” I was confused as I don’t remember making that group and so I added it to see what it does. Lo’ and behold, it appears that may very well be controlling my Hue Dimmer Switch. I only have one dimmer that controls a group of lights and surely when I controlled the “Dimmer 2” via the SA, it turned off the same group of lights.
I wonder if Phillips creates a group for the Dimmer Switch to control and that’s what it was seeing? If that’s the case then, technically, your app CAN control the dimmer switch!
I saw the dimmer 2 group as well. I suspect that it will allow you to control the same group of bulbs that the dimmer does but not allow connection with the dimmer. I am not sure anyone has had success in that departmnent.
At this point, I don’t know if there is really any reason to want to communicate with the dimmer directly. Since the dimmer is a momentary switch, there is no state for us to follow. The state is in the bulbs themselves. Therefore, controlling the group the dimmer makes is more-or-less the same thing
I agree. I don’t see any point in communicating with the dimmer. I don’t see any benefit in having a device handler for the dimmer either. Gradual dimming with a button press would be frustrating with the current level of latency in ST, and having the dimmer remote gives you pretty much local processing (communicates directly with hub or possibly even the bulbs). Only thing that would be affected would be updating the state of the bulbs.
It could be handy if you wanted to use it to trigger actions in Rule Machine. You could, for example, have it turn on or dim a Z-Wave switch or something. That is, if you can capture the on/off & dim/bright events from the dimmer. I don’t have one so I don’t know if that’s possible. Would be worth a try.
For that purpose the minimote is superior. I have several different types of button devices (SC7s, Hue Dimmers, Lutron Connected, etc) but the ones that interact with the ST hub all suffer from latency that is frustrating. The Hue dimmer works instantly, dims precisely, and has the highest WAF.
Why couldn’t you still do this with Rule Machine? I may be misunderstanding but the main point to the dimmer is to turn on single or group of bulbs. If you wanted the dimmer to trigger something, then just use the bulbs instead. When the dimmer is pressed, the bulbs turn on, which triggers your rule.
As it is right now, a single press of a button on any of my SC7s may or may not do anything. Another press might work, or the first press was finally processed and the lights go on and then off. You can set up a button to dim to a certain level (I do that), but if you want to adjust it gradually good luck with anything other than direct control with the Hue dimmer remote.
I meant if you wanted to use the dimmer but not have it control Hue bulbs. Those switches are wall-mounted, battery operated, single units that cost less than $30. Very attractive if they can be used for whatever you want. Say you want to mount one next to your bed to operate your ceiling fan. There would be no Hue bulbs involved.
All of this assumes that you have a Hue Bridge, but you could use theses handy, inexpensive switches for anything you want, if you can leverage the events as triggers in Rule Machine.
The Lutron Pico remote is another cheap option for use as a dimmer. It has the benefit of being able to fit into a multiple gang box unlike the Hue dimmer. Not sure if there is a device handler for the Pico though.
