I know I’m going to get shot down for this but I thought I’d give it a go anyway…
I’ve recently decided to try and remove as many hubs from my home network as possible and have successfully removed the Phillips Hue bridge and a Samsung WAM250 for the speakers, replacing with a single Aeotech/SmartThings hub. This has however; now rendered the Phillips Hue HDMI Sync box pretty useless…
Has anyone by any chance discovered a way to get the sync box working with a non-Hue hub? I’ve found this forum real useful to get the Hue dimer switches and motion sensors working like a charm, so I’m remaining hopeful!
The only truly reliable way to control a Hue product is with the Hue bridge, definitely not direct Smartthings integration or any other hub for that matter. Haven said that, the sync box will never work “as intended” on smartthing with the Hue bridge
The hue synch box is an unusual device, its only purpose is to grab the color signals off the wires from your TV and send those commands over to a Hue bridge. I don’t think there’s any way to bypass the bridge. But there are other devices that do the same thing, albeit not quite as well, that people use with laptop software.
The real question is what are you trying to achieve?
static bias lighting
dynamic bias lighting that changes color as the colors on the screen change?
special effects lighting that can work with your other existing lights, not just the bias lighting? This is usually used for disco effects, but can be combined with bias lighting.
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Is what the Hue synch is designed for. If your goal is to bring in other lights to match effects with your bias lighting, just go with the hue system. Anything else is going to have latency that spoils the effect.
If you want option two, bias lighting but without tying in other effects, then there are some other alternatives. Govee is popular but weird. ( it uses a little camera to determine what colors are on the screen.) integration would be through Alexa routines.
If you want to go full out maker mode, it wouldn’t be impossible to rig some kind of camera similar to what the Govi uses and then use that to drive special effects, but pretty much everybody who’s ever attempted one of those as found there’s just too much latency to keep up with what’s on the screen. Which, again, is why hue was able to release their product, it really is a unique approach.
Looks like they’ll be a Phillips Hue Sync box going cheap on eBay soon in that case! Whilst I like the bias lighting, it’s not enough of a pull to warrant me stopping the bridge replacement project.
Just saw that Phillips also launched a new range of TVs with bias lighting built in. Might have to give them a scout instead.
