Remove Hue hub while Keeping the lights

First post here!

I just came to know from couple other posts here that ST can talk to the Hue lights directly without the Hue hub. Currently, in my list of things, I see the lights as well as Hue hub. When I try to remove the Hub, it warns that the lights will be removed as well.

Is it possible to remove the Hue hub while keeping the lights? I am thinking of disconnecting the hub entirely as it’d save me an ethernet port on the router.

If no way to keep the lights without Hub, how would I connect directly to the lights from ST (Hue hub would not be in the picture)?

Thanks for any suggestions / pointers.

Welcome! :sunglasses:

I assume you mean the hue bridge, right? (There is no “hue hub.”)

The short answer is that most things will work better if you continue to have the Hue bulbs connected to the bridge and then use the official integration between the hue bridge and the SmartThings hub. There are a lot of technical reasons for that, including the fact that if you don’t have the bridge, your other zigbee devices might try to use your hue bulbs as repeaters and they tend to lose messages in that configuration. So you will think that your sensor is not reporting when in fact it is reporting, but the bulb is losing the message. :disappointed_relieved:

Also, if you do you connect your bulbs directly to the SmartThings hub without a bridge, they can get stuck so that you will have a hard time moving them again. For this reason, officially only the use of the hue bridge is supported. Smartthings support will not help you if you have your bulbs connected directly to the smartthings hub and you run into a problem. :disappointed_relieved:

https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/200848024-How-to-connect-Philips-Hue-devices

So there are a lot of reasons to continue to use the bridge. If your only reason for considering getting rid of it is that you’ve run out of ethernet ports There are inexpensive devices you can buy that let you add additional ports to your router: this is called an “ethernet Switch.” Here’s a good article about them:

And here’s a typical one, although there are lots of brands. They usually cost less than $15, sometimes right around $10.

https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-5-Port-Ethernet-100Mbps-Switch/dp/B00KFD0SNG/

If you really want to get rid of the hue bridge (although, again, there are a lot of reasons to keep it), you will have to remove everything, both the bridge and the bulbs, from your SmartThings account, and then you will add back one bulb at a time as a zigbee bulb. Here’s one thread discussing that:

Agree with JD. Keep the Hue Bridge

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Thanks JD - I already have a few switches in the house so that’s not a big deal. I thought the bridge was an unnecessary item wasting energy but sounds like it does help.

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