Thanks for the URL suggestion @Wayne_Myers. I can’t believe I had so many old/stale connections.
Connected services I have
ST-DTH
ST-Edge Driver
Alexa-Cloud
Hue iOS App
IFTTT-Cloud
Google-Cloud
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Hi,
Thanks for the excellent driver which works way better than the official one.
I recently bought the standalone gradient light strip, which supports multiple zones. The driver doesn’t seem to support it yet, is it possible to even include that? I have no idea what the UI allows. In the official Hue app there’s only 3 zones, which appears as child bulbs when selecting colors. Apparently it supports 5 zones though API (7 with entertainment area) when I looked into it a bit.
I can be alpha tester for that if you want, though for me this is quite low-priority as I can create scene with the colors I want in the hue app and then just play it as favourite. It’s the additional zones which I would like to have and possible custom effects (if the API supports that one day, I think it doesn’t currently) to spice up TTRPG nights. My other option is PowerShell and learning the entertainment API x)
I’m also rather new ST user, bought Aeotec hub about a month ago.
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Is the hue runs locally?
The gradient light strip is supported as a light device. That is how the Hue api presents it. They do include some additional gradient data, but I’m not aware of a ST control that would be a good fit for it. When you say it isn’t supported, do mean that it doesn’t work at all, or that it doesn’t allow gradient control? If you mean gradient control, then that is true.
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Yeah, I meant the gradient control - sorry for not being clear enough.
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Why TF does the hue API not fully support gradient? They’ve been around years!
The API does support the gradient. There aren’t any UI controls in ST that would be a good fit for a gradient.
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That’s what I feared. Oh well. Thank you for the info anyway, at least the Hue scenes triggered as favourites from ST is viable (and working) option.
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@blueyetisoftware I have one Hue button that went offline in ST some time back I think about the time I had to change its battery. It never came back online yet continues to work and report in the Hue app okay. I have tried deleting the ST device then a pull down/refresh on the Hue bridge device in ST but it’s not discovering it again.
Any suggestions?
For a single device to be marked offline, rather than the entire hub and its children, it would have to be one of the follow:
- Hub no longer reports back that this device exists
- Device is reporting back ‘disconnected’
- Device is reporting back ‘connectivity_issue’
Even with it reporting offline, does the button work to trigger automations in ST? If so, that at least rules out #1
Unfortunately I had not tried before deleting it from ST.
EDIT: Okay so something isn’t quite right with the button. It is working just fine and there’s no error in the Hue app however it flashes red when activated when it should be green. Red does indeed mean communication error. But again, it is working.
I can update the status in the driver on the next release. I classified the connectivity issue as offline. I can limit that to disconnected only.
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Does this driver support “friends of hue” devices, especially ZLL devices not supported by Smartthings but indeed supported by Hue?
If you can connect it to the Hue hub, it should be supported. Motion sensors and switches can currently be imported, but do not yet trigger events in ST. There was a version that was recently published with that support, but has since been rolled back. It will be reintroduced soon after testing with a smaller alpha group.
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My story line is a bit complex. It conflicts a bit with your statement: Will Smartthings ever support ZGP "friends of Hue" devices?
I don’t see an issue based on that thread. The driver doesn’t do anything at the zigbee level. It talks to the Hue hub over LAN, so if the Hue hub says it has a device, the driver will import it. The devices are interrogated and controlled based on their LAN schema. Support is based on the reported capabilities of the device, and there isn’t special logic at this point in time at the ‘model’ level. This keeps the driver flexible and compatible with new devices as they are introduced.
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This driver should definitely be an option for people who have a smartthings/Aeotec hub. However, at this point over 90% of smartthings customers don’t, but many of them do have a Philips hue bridge. (that’s probably the main reason smartthings offers two different official integrations with hue).
It looks like the driver in this thread will be the most feature-rich integration, but for people who don’t have a smartthings hub, Alexa routines may be useful as an intermediary for partial integration. And in the future, there may be some additional integration available with matter, we will just have to wait and see. 
I expect matter to expose “industry standard” functionality like motion sensors and switches, but I don’t see a pathway for Hue specific functionality like alerts, effects, scenes, etc. Rooms/Zones may make their way into the matter standard as well.
Matter will end up supporting universal lighting standards, but a specific driver will be needed to make it a fully formed Hue lighting integration.
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All true, but Zigbee greenpower devices, like Friends of Hue switches, are by their nature pretty basic. Since they are batteryfree and operate on kinetic energy, they can only send two bytes at a time. Basically a momentary button. You can fake an on/off state by putting two buttons in one case, which is what most of these do. And maybe get double click. And maybe dimming with a long press. But that’s about it. So matter may cover those at least.
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Well the existing implementation of ZLL devices through Hue in ST v3 hub i have - doesn’t work as of jan 2023.
I’ll give the beta a go…