Phillips Hue Dimmer Switch Integration?

[ConnorFood (Connor Jakes)]

So I understand that the Hue Dimmer Switch doesn’t act the way ST wants it to, but it connects fine to the Hue Bridge, and ST connects fine to the Hue Bridge, why won’t ST recognize when I use the Dimmer to turn on or off a light. The light reacts, but ST thinks the light is still in whatever state IT previously put it in. Why doesn’t the Hue Bridge update ST on the current state of the bulb? Is there a way we could integrate this in with a smart app?

[JDRoberts]

@ConnorFood

So I understand that the Hue Dimmer Switch doesn’t act the way ST wants it to, but it connects fine to the Hue Bridge, and ST connects fine to the Hue Bridge, why won’t ST recognize when I use the Dimmer to turn on or off a light. The light reacts, but ST thinks the light is still in whatever state IT previously put it in. Why doesn’t the Hue Bridge update ST on the current state of the bulb? Is there a way we could integrate this in with a smart app?

Good question, and one frequently discussed in the forums.

SmartThings does poll the Hue bridge every five minutes or so, and so it will update the bulb status at that time. So while it doesn’t know what the dimmer switch did, the statuses in the app should be updated fairly soon after the dimmer switch was used.

Whether that meets your particular needs or not just comes down to the details.

We use it as a parallel means of control, mostly in the guestroom where it’s a very intuitive switch for guests to use. It works fine that way for us. We don’t need an immediate status update for those particular lights.

I also have one on my refrigerator which my service dog can use, and again, in those circumstances I don’t care whether the SmartThings app doesn’t update status immediately as long as it gets there pretty soon.

There are other devices which can give you immediate update if you prefer that. So it just depends what you need.

FAQ: Philips Hue and Other Smart Bulbs - What sort of light switches to use with them? (Long FAQ)

Thinking on a big move to Hue lights, the real question is - what switches to use with them? If they’re all automatable via ST and other devices, do I really want to put them all on controllable switches too? There’s the advantage that I can arrange to ensure those switches are on so that the the Hue bulbs would be too…but it also leaves open the ability for folks to just turn them off and leave them off. Hmm. Thoughts?

There are some community members have been attempting to use the hue dimmer switch as a “button controller” so SmartThings would be aware of the button presses, but so far they have not been able to get it to work. The following thread discusses that project:

Hue Dimmer Switch Connected to ST

Continuing the discussion from New Philips HUE devices: Creating a new topic to see if the community can help draw up ideas to configure this remote directly connected to ST. It’s similar to the Lutron Connected Bulb Remote, but doesn’t have the ZLL commissioning built in and I can’t get it to pair with any bulbs. Unreliable integration: I have been able to get it to send responses back to the hub, so it can emulate a button controller; but it frequently loses its connection to ST and requires re-pairing. Below is a link to the custom device type and info on connecting to ST, but please manage expectations until I can report that the connection is more solid. If this is your first time using custom code with ST, please see the following thread on how to get started in the IDE. This cod…

[ConnorFood (Connor Jakes)]

I found that it would never update. Even when I used the hue app to change the status of the lights, half an hour later the status still would not change on ST. I did manage to find a work around, for which I used a smart app (Hue Lights and Groups and Scenes[OH MY]) to re add the hue bridge, and lights, to ST, then used Pollster to poll the individual lights every minute, as just polling the bridge didn’t seem to get the job done.

All in all, it works, even if it is heavy on the usage side, its really just polling between the bridges, which are both powered from the wall, so it doesn’t matter.