Dear SmartThings community,
I’m here to ask for your help. I purchased ST for one primary reason (knowing that I could explore its other functions later): I wanted a simple solution for automating my Philips Hue scenes.
I have about 45 Hue bulbs/strips. The Philips Hue software manages to change all the bulbs’ settings/levels immediately and simultaneously, whether using its app, or using its physical switches.
I’ve tried so many smartapps on ST and none have been able to replicate that. They have two flaws - least troublesome is that It takes significant time for them all to respond (5-15 seconds). More troublesome, several will always be left out, either not responding at all (not turning on when told to, or off when told to) or not responding fully (ie. a bulb will come on to the right color, but the level will stay dim, or vice versa). It’s not always the same bulbs. It’s sometimes just one or two, more often, it’s more.
Does anyone know of a way around this? Is there a way to have SmartThings just send a command to the Philips Hue hub and say to it, “Hey, turn on that Scene 001 you have on file,” and allow it to do its processing since it’s so good at it? (I tried Hue (Re)Connect for that, but it snarled my system.) Alternatively, is there a way to get SmartThings to reliably handle a request to manage 45 different bulbs where each one has its own individual settings (different colors/levels)?
I’ve spent a full month tinkering with this almost every day, and I feel at a loss. Is it a fool’s errand? Or does anyone have a brilliant stroke of genius for what might work?
Thank you all,
-Sebastian
p.s. - a huge shout out to Michael S., who has made the incredible Alexa Helper. He wrote a super simple code for me, as I hoped that the more stripped down it was, the more reliable it would be. He’s been great, and I was glad that I could help a bit with his Alexa Helper documentation in return for his generosity, but it still suffers from the same issues with this many lights.