OK, it sounds like you have to reset the hue bulbs. They may have previously been connected to a different hue bridge.
The first easiest way is just to try connecting the new color bulbs to your hue bridge. I know you don’t want to use them that way, but just see if the bridge can find them. If not, try adding them manually to your hue bridge.
There are three different method you can use to reset them so they can then be paired to the SmartThings hub. Note, however, that pairing directly is not officially approved by either smartthings or Phillips Hue, so you can’t get support from either.
https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/200848024-How-to-connect-Philips-Hue-devices
There are two separate reasons why connecting a Hue bulb directly to the smartthings hub is not recommended.
First, the smartthings hub uses zigbee channels which are not used by hue bridge. Consequently, after you connect a bulb to a smartthings hub, you may have quite a difficult time getting it reset to work with the bridge again.
Second, most zigbee bulbs, including Hue bulbs, do just fine repeating for each other. But when connected to a ZHA coordinator like the smartthings hub, They can sometimes get into a sort of buffer overflow condition where other zigbee devices like sensors will send them a message to be repeated along the network but the bulbs will drop the message and not repeat it. This can cause it to appear as though the sensors are having a problem when in fact it’s that the bulb didn’t repeat the message.
OK, having said all of that, there are some members who do use the hue bulbs connected directly to the SmartThings hub. So, if you want to do that, there are three different ways to reset them.
- The laptop method.
- Hue dimmer Switch. Or if you happen to have a Hue dimmer switch, you can use that to very easily reset the hue bulbs once they have been added to a hue bridge (again, any hue bridge).
- finally, there is a device called the “Lutron connected bulb remote” (LCBR) which should be able to reset any functional hue bulb regardless of whether it had been joined to a hue bridge or smartthings hub previously. It looks similar to a Lutron pico but it is not the pico – – you have to get this specific device. It can reset bulbs which the first two methods cannot.
https://www.amazon.com/Lutron-LZL-4B-WH-L01-Connected-Bulb-Remote/dp/B014STZASK
Speaking just for myself, I would not connect Hue bulbs directly to the smartthings hub because of the dropped message issue. But is long as you’re aware of the potential problems, obviously it’s your choice.