I’ve gotten no where with Philips technical support, so I thought I’d check here to see if anyone has experienced the same…
2 days ago, suddenly, my 18 Philips Hue bulbs & lightstrips went unreachable. Red circled exclamation mark in the Hue app.
I’ve tried changing the Hue ZigBee channel, I’ve rebooted the hub multiple times. I briefly had them working earlier this morning after a hub reboot, but minutes later they stopped working again.
Anyone have any similar experiences, or ideas for a solution?
Everything has been working fine for the last few weeks to a month since I installed everything (and rewired all the switches to be always on so control would be smoother)…so it’s not like there was a recent change that would impact this.
I did, on the same day, setup an LED light for a fish tank, and it is controlled wirelessly (it’s own remote, not ZigBee/Z-Wave etc.), but I unplugged it and rebooted the Hue hub and changed ZigBee channels…with no fix, so I doubt it’s the LED light.
I had this happen to me except the bulbs were actually still responding. I just had the exclamation next to them that said they ‘may not respond’. To fix this I turned the power to the bulb off (or unscrewed the bulb), waited 5 seconds or so and then turned it back on. Everything went back to normal after that.
Thanks. Mine are totally unresponsive and flipping the power hasn’t changed anything. Given that every bulb is acting/flagged the same way my guess is that it’s something at the hub…or maybe related to something a neighbor has done.
Have you tried moving the hue hub away from your wireless router? Sometime a wireless router will interfere with the ZigBee signal (I know changing the ZigBee channel should have alleviated it but it’s worth a shot).
It’s 1-2 feet away right now…I keep all hubs etc. centralized in a computer room. How much distance are you suggesting? Can’t move things too far as they won’t be able to reach the UPSs.
Nothing crazy, just 3-4 feet should help. I don’t know if this will actually work or not but it’s worth a shot. It’s kind of weird that things would randomly stop reporting all at once like that.
Bummer. I installed my hue about 9 months ago and haven’t touched it since so I’m not sure where to go from there. Definitely sounds like a hue problem.
I’ve only had mine since the end of January. Too long ago to return anything. I went to a lot of trouble rewiring each of the Z-Wave switches so that we’d have both manual and automated control. Right now, I’m looking like an idiot.
Yes, the connection to SmartThings is still good through Hue (Connect). All my testing has been using the Philips Hue app directly, to avoid any ancillary issues.
I did change the Philips Hue hub from DHCP to a static IP (as at this point, random changes is all I have left), and the Hue (Connect) SmartApp “detected” the change without me doing anything…so that was nice.
I tried a “hail Mary” yesterday, and replaced the old Hue hub with the newer version hub. The transition was smooth, and so far, the new Hue hub hasn’t lost/complained about connectivity with the lights.
Is anyone else having problems with the Hue app updating or not updating? I update the Hue app on my iPad & 5 minutes later it shows there’s an update available. I’ve done the update function 5 times in the last 2 weeks.
Have 6 Philips Hue lights in play in my double story house, 3 at the bottom & 3 at the top. Each bulb is in their own room and I am using the default Android App, which seems to be fine. Does what I need it to do.
Decided to get two dimmers because lets face it, one can’t use phone app for every instance. I don’t carry my phone with me 24/7. Anyway got the two dimmers, noticed immediately that when it was connected to the Hue Bridge I could only have 2 bulbs or 2 rooms enabled per dimmer switch. (Bummer). Philips confirmed this was true. On the box it says up to 10 bulbs, but that is only if the Hue Bridge is not used. It is just a matter of pairing the light to the dimmer switch, so I have 3 on one dimmer switch and 3 on the other. All works great!
Except I notice all my lights downstairs now say “Unreachable”. First time I have ever seen this and as a result I am unable to control the lights with my app. Dimmer Switch is working though (but it turns them all on).
I’ve not experienced this exact situation, however, I have run into the situation where suddenly all lights were “unreachable.”
In my situation, it was something to do with the v1 Philips Hue hub (it came with one of the bundle of lightstrip starter packs). Once I upgraded to a v2 Philips Hub hub, all was good (at least, the problem hasn’t reoccurred.)
I don’t use any dimmer switches (I lie, I have one, but we almost never use it), dimming is controlled via Alexa (Amazon Echo) or the Android SmartThings app. I don’t directly use the Philips Hue app at all. I have the Alexa service control the Philips Hue bulbs & lightstrips via the SmartThings device reference rather than via the Philips Hue hub directly (so that I know everything is in proper sync.)
I have latest software on the new square Philips Hue Bridge. I will take a look at the Android SmartThings App. I have kind of figured out the problem. I had to delete the lights that were unreachable, and then searched for them, which didn’t. They don’t seem to be discoverable anymore. The only way possible was to add the serial number and they were found and added. After that I added them to the room. I then turned them off and went with the Dimmer switch and paired them one by one. Turned them all on, used the app to turn them off. It worked. Either option now works great!
The Amazon Echo - given they are quite pricey (as are the lights = expensive home automation hobby), how good is the Echo? How does it work across multiple rooms? What if Echo is in lounge, how well does it work if I am in the bedroom upstairs? Would I have to shout my lungs off to get it to react?
Glad you got your problem with the Hue lights sorted. I had tried everything before I broke down and bought the v2 hub in a last ditch effort.
We’ve (family of 3, though I’m the one at home the most as I’m a telecommuter) all been happy with the Echo. We have it in the living room, so we do need to pause/mute the TV/music if we have a question or command. Our kitchen and dining room are close (no walls between) so commands work just as well from there as well. It effectively covers everything but bedrooms and bathrooms.
We could buy more to cover those rooms, but you’re right, they ain’t cheap…but we’re also not in those other rooms as much. Some WAF involved too.
The music quality is good considering it’s a single source, and it leverages Prime Music well…again, not perfect…I’ve found one of my songs that it just won’t play triggered from a voice command, but you can always use the web or phone app as a supplement.
We use the Shopping List a lot, as we can easily just say what needs to be added to the list from the kitchen. I’m doing calorie tracking at the moment, so I use the ToDo list to track the weights of the food I’m preparing, then I work from that list to manually update MyFitnessPal…but at least I don’t need to write everything down while I’m making the food.
I’ve even written code that runs on Alexa (Skills they’re called), and so have some experience on the other side of things.
The worse part of Alexa is that it falls back on Bing for searches…this sucks and hardly ever gets a result let alone a good one, so I fall back to using Google Now (always listening on my phone) for more general searches.
Thanks for explanation Chris. Wow! I did a search on the smart thing app and it dawned on me (way too late), that this website and many interesting pages and the app you mentioned were all part of the same thing, Samsung smart thing hub and accessories. Ah motion sensors, just what I was thinking we need…
Gosh this is an exciting, expensive, era that we are getting involved in, with the Philips Hue lights, dlink PTZ cameras, Chromecast, smartphones being the first part of the mighty puzzle.
The smart thing hub, is that the only thing I need to connect everything and future gadgets together? What happens to the Philips Hue bridge? I am conscious of the price of Smartthings, but with the hub and app could I control everything going forward?
The Echo looks amazing but given I am fully invested into Samsung devices, Android OS and apps, it seems pertinent to wait for Google Home. I use “Ok Google” all the time, even got it working for the lights which is great, so good practice for the home device when our eventually arrives.
What really pleases me is to see the great list of compatible devices working on the Zwave and Zigbee protocols. The future home looks fantastic.
Ah motion sensors, just what I was thinking we need…