Philips Hue Bridge?

[Scott2ya (Scott S.)]

I don’t have my smart things hub yet, it’ll be here Thursday along with a Sylvania br30 color tunable bulb for my front door entry, please forgive my noob questions below. I have a 5 camera Arlo system I got about a month ago, and an ecobee thermostat last week. My plan is to have my Arlo turn the light on when motion is detected at the front door.

I want to get several more lights eventually (several more a lot of things actually), some that will trigger from my Arlo cameras built in motion sensors and am curious about Phillip Hues. Is it necessary to have the hub or will the bulbs work directly with ST? And if it does require the hub is there any compelling reason to use Phillip Hues?

Thanks
Scott

[JDRoberts]

Welcome!

It’s best to get the hue bridge as well. See the following FAQ (this is a clickable link)

FAQ: Do I need the Hue Bridge/Hub to Use a Hue Bulb with SmartThings?

Yes. The only officially recommended way to use Hue devices with SmartThings is by using a Hue bridge. There are several reasons to use the bridge. Other Integrations There will be a number of other integrations available to you which you may want to take advantage of. Use of Hue Scenes you will be able to activate scenes created with the official Hue app, which at the present time offer many features not available in the smartthings scenes feature. Even just the ability to blink the lights. The easiest way to access scenes from the Hue app is through the following custom edge driver or IFTTT, but there are other ways as well. [ST Edge] Philips Hue LAN [BETA] (3rd Party Driver, Not ST Native) Not using the Bridge can mess up your zigbee network the most important really is …

[Scott2ya (Scott S.)]

Thanks for the very informative reply. On this note… I’d like to ask another noob question.

Are there any compelling reasons to purchase any of the other hubs/gateways/bridges such as the Z-Wave gateway or zigbee?

[JDRoberts]

@Scott2ya

Thanks for the very informative reply. On this note… I’d like to ask another noob question.

Are there any compelling reasons to purchase any of the other hubs/gateways/bridges such as the Z-Wave gateway or zigbee?

A zwave or zigbee home automation device can only belong to one primary controller, and that will be your smartthings hub.

There are some community members with strong technical backgrounds who have sometimes added an additional secondary controller for some very specific purposes, but if you have one of those needs you’ll know it.

So the oversimplified answer is that no, you won’t use the other ones because you are using the SmartThings hub.