I’ve now got three bulbs and a hub, mainly because our house is gloomy as hell even in the daytime and I want to have daylight coloured lights in the daytime and warm in the evening. I think I can set this up automatically with some kind of skill/app whatever they are called, linked to sunrise. But I’d quite like a bit more daylight than 4pm in the middle of winter.

What do you lot use Hue for and how do you have it set up? Who’s gone for alternative light switches?

We’ve got a few hue bulbs and a couple of led strips.

I use the Alexa app to plan the on/off routines as I find that the easiest to programme and change when I need to. So lights come on as it goes dark in an evening and go off after bed time.

Have the upstairs lights doing sunset routines (these are the led strips) for a bit of colour.

The toilet light is on a motion sensor so it comes on when someone goes in. Turns on very dim blue light in the middle of the night.

Have a hue Edison style bulb in a lamp in the hall way which looks pretty cool.

Also got a virtual button on my phone which dims down the lamps in the living room for when we’re ready to settle in and watch something on tv.

Our kitchen is dark all the time so we have led strips on top and underneath all the kitchen cupboards. These are non hue ones though which we switch on and leave on all day so there’s no point me replacing them.

It’s all a bit pointless, but also a bit of fun at the same time.

Most of our lighting is hue, I’ve got mostly their dimmer switches then a couple of the round switches as well for bedside lights.

The only colour thing we have is the lightstrip behind the TV, the rest are a mix of ambient and plain white – the ambient bulbs go dimmer than the white ones so are better for kids nightlights, we also have one in the hall thats on automatically dusk to dawn.

In my office I’ve also got one of their 100w bulbs, which is way brighter than the standard stuff. Recommend it fully

Have a few Hue bulbs as it was my first foray into “smart” stuff. Actually – only the GU10s in the bedroom are Hue, the others are compatibles (£20 vs £50 though!!) which I use for the patio lighting. They’re all colour-changing ones, which are fun even though I don’t really use them like that very often! The Hue app is a bit limited but there are various (paid) third-party apps that let you set up disco-lighting effects, etc! Never played around with the Hue automations at all though tbh, so at the moment I only control them via voice or smartphone app, etc.

They’re great for “mood lighting” etc but are not that bright. Not tried the more powerful bulbs they’ve come out with recently (as mentioned above) but that would be much better I suspect for something like a reading lamp.

The main problems with all smart-bulb systems is a) the expense (can be lessened obviously with compatible bulbs e.g. IKEA which are cheaper but still good) and b) The Lightswitch Problem which IMO makes them all a bit of a bodge really, kind of like an unwieldy first-gen solution.

I’m now in the process of retro-fitting all my light switches with Shelly relays which is a much cheaper and more elegant solution (you can use your existing switches & bulbs). Might pick up a couple of the external Hue PIRs though if I see them on offer for BF as they’re supposed to be pretty good.

Have quite a lot of hue…

Their PIR sensors are good – have one outside for the outside downlights and one in the garage for the workbench lightstrip (which is enough to put a bike away to).

Have a dimmer switch in the study and a tap in the kitchen programmed for our favourite settings, but mostly controlled by alexa nowadays.

Alexa can handle the sunrise/sunset stuff, and you can also put an offset in for your routines – it’s pretty dark 20 mins before sunset somedays so I have the lights come on 20 mins before hand.

Watching with interest, I just got a starter kit with 2 bulbs and a hub.

Main reason was I wanted one of those sunrise bedside lamps and this was about the same price, although it’s taken me a little while to find a sunrise feature that is based on time rather than the real sunrise time. Ended up finding it in Hue Labs, it was staying red in the morning but changed s setting last night and I think it worked this morning, starting dim red and ending with bright golden light (I say think, as I blinking woke up at 4:30 and got up at 5!

Is anyone else using 3rd party apps for timed sunrise? I think Google Home is meant to do it by asking it to do a ‘gentle wake-up’ but it doesn’t seem to be using the smart bulb.

I’ve been tempted for ages, but the switch issue has held me back. So @zilog6128 can you tell us about the shelly relays? How do they stop it being like a bodge?

Hmm, I’m also liking the look of those Shelly relays. Looks a much cheaper option.

@savoyad Because you retro-fit them to your existing light switches, it has what home-automation geeks sexist-ly call the “Wife Acceptance Factor”. Switch still operates as normal; on the face of it nothing has changed (still works if you lose internet or even home wifi) yet it gives you the smart functionality. Obviously you have to be happy to rewire your lighting (or get someone to do it!) IMO pretty much ALL smart light switches look a bit tacky, this way you can use any regular switch.

Ideally you’ll have neutral wiring in your light switches, but they have a couple of solutions which work even if you don’t (by effectively leaving the bulbs on but dimmed to 0% all the time). Don’t think there’s anything else comparable on the market at the moment. They’re bringing out new products quite frequently right now too, including their own motion sensor which I’ll probably fit in every room, plus an ultra-compact unit (Shelly Uni) which you can theoretically use to convert any existing device into a smart device (you’d have to take it apart & rewire it so that’s one for the geeks… I have a load on order 🤣)

The fact that one relay will control every light on the circuit makes it way cheaper than smart bulbs – the only thing you can’t do in that scenario is control individual lights on a circuit on/off.

Lots of hue here linked to 2 Hubs covering the house. All are colour changing apart from 8 GU10s which are just the white ambience.

To be honest we love it and plays with scenes a lot. Looking to get an hdmi box at Christmas.

Biggest pain is Alexa only seems to know one hub at a time so we have to switch her between the 2 hubs depending on the room we are in or just use the app.

Looking to get an hdmi box at Christmas.

yeah that does look cool. Have been considering a DIY solution but if there’s a decent offer for BF I’ll probably get one!

Lots of hue here linked to 2 Hubs covering the house… Biggest pain is Alexa only seems to know one hub at a time

What on earth are you using two hubs for? The bulbs and hubs are Wi-Fi devices, you don’t need “coverage” from anything other than your router / wireless access points. They’re all just on the network.

Maybe he has a LOT of bulbs… there is a max of 63 per hub 😃

First thing you need to do is get the other people in the house on board with the idea. Otherwise your lights are going to be switched off at the switches each time because the switch is the easiest way to switch a light on and off. And then it doesn’t matter what routines or automations or even sensors are hooked up as your light is not powered on.

So my recommendation is to spend the time to get the hue lights working like normal lights for people who aren’t interested in smart systems first of all. The colour temperatures and times of day can come later.

Otherwise your lights are going to be switched off at the switches

I fixed this by taping the switches down with masking tape. A better solution would be to take the switch off the wall and join the wires, but I couldn’t be bothered.

Whereabouts in the Hue Labs is the sunrise routine that starts with a deep red? The only one I can see (Personal Wake Up) just gives me brightness and fade-in time as options, I can’t see anywhere that shows the colour changing? I find the basic fade-in one is too bright on it’s normal colour even at 1%. I guess I can set the default on state to 1% red but that might be annoying at other times. (my bedroom bulb is correctly recognised as a Hue colour one).

Otherwise your lights are going to be switched off at the switches each time because the switch is the easiest way to switch a light on and off.

It’s not necessarily a problem. TBH I don’t really want to be asking Alexa to turn stuff on and off all the time, nor do I want to be digging my phone out. I wanted them to come on and off as normal with the switch but I want the colour to be right for the time of day. And TBH that’s working quite nicely in my ‘office’ currently – definitely perking up the room.

You can get light switch covers that hold the Hue remote – can still get to the switches underneath if you needed to (changing a bulb etc) but it stops people flipping switches rather than using the remote.

Ours is for grouping things and timers. House has an extended open-plan bit at the back with a mess of old and new switching, so we have one remote doing several lights to save going around to each in turn. In our bedroom we have a remote each stuck on the back of the headboard so we can do all the lights at once (and avoid getting out of bed to turn off the big light!). Porch has a bulb on timer, kids reading lights go dim if they get left on well past bedtime, and we use the timers all over the place to make the house look occupied when we’re away.

You can get light switch covers that hold the Hue remote – can still get to the switches underneath if you needed to (changing a bulb etc) but it stops people flipping switches rather than using the remote.

yep, I 3d printed some but you can buy them quite cheaply! Much less confusing than having a smart & normal switch both visible.

What on earth are you using two hubs for? The bulbs and hubs are Wi-Fi devices, you don’t need “coverage” from anything other than your router / wireless access points. They’re all just on the network.

the bulbs aren’t wifi, they run on zigbee. other zigbee devices can act as repeaters for zigbee (so one bulb can send it to the next, and so on till it reaches the hub) – but I don’t know if this is the case with Hue.

Whereabouts in the Hue Labs is the sunrise routine that starts with a deep red? The only one I can see (Personal Wake Up) just gives me brightness and fade-in time as options,

So when you set up the Personal Wake-up, you can choose from energise or relax, or pick a scene. I picked Savannah Sunset which starts off nice and dim red, but just stays red and gets brighter. I think I put it on a different mode this morning and when looked on the bedroom (as I got up early) it seemed to be nice and dim as it started.

Not perfect though, hopefully there is a paid app or otherwise that will allow me to set the start and finish colours and brightness.

the bulbs aren’t wifi, they run on zigbee. other zigbee devices can act as repeaters for zigbee (so one bulb can send it to the next, and so on till it reaches the hub) – but I don’t know if this is the case with Hue.

It is. Hue bulbs are zigbee devices.

the bulbs aren’t wifi, they run on zigbee. other zigbee devices can act as repeaters for zigbee (so one bulb can send it to the next, and so on till it reaches the hub) – but I don’t know if this is the case with Hue.

Ah. I knew they were Zigbee but thought that was the ‘language’ they talked to each other using rather than being a wholly separate protocol. I need to go do some reading I think.

… right. Yes, you’re correct, it’s basically a low-power mesh network.

Point stands though, you have one master controller and everything else relays as you say; if db is using a second hub for Zigbee coverage reasons he’d be better served by replacing it with some form of client device like another bulb. Alexa talks to Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi talks to the Zigbee (Hue) bridge, the bridge talks to a bulb which talks to a bulb which talks to a bulb which…

As Dire Straits once sang, “two men say they’re Jesus… one of them must be wrong.”

Sunrises don’t start red though, they start blue then go white or blue then yellowy white if the sky’s clear.

It is. Hue bulbs are zigbee devices.

sorry, what I meant was I don’t know if the hue bulbs act as repeaters (apparently zigbee devices can either do this or not). Given its in their interest to have a stable network, one would hope that they do.

5lab and Cougar – I have learnt something – thank you

The point of 2 bridges WAS coverage as lights in front of house would not ‘connect’ to bridge at back of house.

BUT we do still use mechanical switches on some of the lights particularly some of hall lights in the middle of the house. I have been playing whilst ‘working from home’ and IF I leave the lights in the middle of house with power the front of house lights DO connect to the hub meaning I could connect all to one hub.

We are getting close to the hub limit but in the short term all is working. (and I hope Alexa gets updated to handle multiple hubs or the number of lights connecting to a single hub increases).

This makes me happy!

I don’t know the answer to that canonically, but from what I’ve just read that’s how Zigbee works so they should? If they can’t then that rather breaks the standard, the whole point is it’s an ad-hoc PAN. And for the price of the bloody things you’d rather hope that they did!

The point of 2 bridges WAS coverage as lights in front of house would not ‘connect’ to bridge at back of house.

sometimes to get the bulbs to connect for the first time they have to be quite close to the hub… either get a really long network cable and take the hub near the bulb, or just plug the bulb into a different light fitting nearer the hub until it has registered, then put it where it actually needs to be.

IF I leave the lights in the middle of house with power the front of house lights DO connect to the hub meaning I could connect all to one hub.

Boom. What a team.

We are getting close to the hub limit but in the short term all is working. (and I hope Alexa gets updated to handle multiple hubs or the number of lights connecting to a single hub increases).

Purely “thinking out loud” based on what I know about computers generally plus knowledge I acquired an hour ago on 5lab’s pointing me in the right direction,

63 bulbs is likely a physical limit, assuming each device has its own ID then 63+1 (the hub) = 64 which is 2^6 or six bits of storage. Increasing this would likely require a “Pro Hub” (which I’ve just made up).

I wonder though… that’s presumably a hub limitation on a mesh network. Does this device limit actually apply to total devices, or devices connecting directly to the hub? Could you in fact keep daisy-chaining until you reach the moon?

Hm. Time to do some more reading.

I don’t know if the hue bulbs act as repeaters

Apparently the rule of thumb is that if it’s mains-powered it’s a repeater, if it’s battery then it’s only an endpoint.

So when you set up the Personal Wake-up, you can choose from energise or relax, or pick a scene. I picked Savannah Sunset which starts off nice and dim red, but just stays red and gets brighter.

Cheers, I had wondered that but like you say figured it would just vary the brightness of the single colour the scene used. That said I still think I’ll give it a go as even it stays a red or orange it’s better than the normal warm white colour when it comes on (and I can leave my behaviour when switched on setting to warm white rather than Savannah which is better in the evening)

I wonder though… that’s presumably a hub limitation on a mesh network. Does this device limit actually apply to total devices, or devices connecting directly to the hub? Could you in fact keep daisy-chaining until you reach the moon?

Seems my hunch was right. From the SmartThings FAQ:

“The HubV2 currently only supports 32 directly connected end devices. If you were to first connect 32 end devices (for example the sengled bulbs) you wouldn’t be able to connect a 33rd device until you join a router to the network. However the routers don’t count against the 32 end device limit and you can add as many routers as you want/need. Each router will support a limited number of end devices and that number will vary by model.”

(“Router” in this context being what we’ve been calling repeaters.)

https://community.smartthings.com/t/faq-32-zigbee-direct-connection-device-limit/108960/8

@Cougar that is talking about the SmartThings hub though, which is something else… although I believe it can seamlessly deal with multiple Hue bridges (as can Home Assistant).

Yeah, you’d expect that in the SmartThings FAQ. (-:

Point is, it’s describing a Zigbee hub and the Zigbee protocol. Functionality may differ from the Hue in terms of things like number of connected devices, but that’s surely an irrelevance to the rest of the network.

Using a HP switch instead of a Cisco one might give you more switchports but it doesn’t fundamentally change how Ethernet / TCP/IP works.

I see. No idea what point you were trying to make then!! You can connect 63 devices (bulbs, switches) etc per Hue hub/bridge thingy. The 32 devices they mention is a limitation of the SmartThings hub, it’s got nothing to do with any Zigbee AFAIK… they’re talking about directly connecting certain Zigbee devices to said hub (which also AFAIK you can’t even do with the Hue bulbs anyway, even though they are Zigbee…)

No idea what point you were trying to make then!!

db said:

“We are getting close to the hub limit but in the short term all is working. (and I hope Alexa gets updated to handle multiple hubs or the number of lights connecting to a single hub increases).”

They’re getting close to the hub limit and talking about needing $somethingElse to increase the capacity. I was suggesting that this may not be the case because I was theorising that the limit is only for devices directly connected to the hub. If you max out the hub you can still continue to add bulbs that are connected parent/child to other bulbs (so long as you can make space for the initial pairing setup). Even if each bulb only supports one child and that child is a dead end, you’ve just doubled your total capacity.

which also AFAIK you can’t even do with the Hue bulbs anyway, even though they are Zigbee…

Huh? How’s that work then, you’ll have to connect at least one directly surely? I don’t follow, sorry.

oh right 😃 No, you can’t daisy-chain extra Hue bulbs to each other, if you want more bulbs than your bridge supports you need to get a 2nd bridge!

https://www.smarthomepoint.com/hue-bridge-50-bulb-limit/

Huh? How’s that work then, you’ll have to connect at least one directly surely? I don’t follow, sorry.

apparently you can’t directly connect Hue bulbs to the SmartThings hub… although you can with certain OTHER Zigbee bulbs apparently… I think that FAQ you found was talking about a specific hub and a specific type of bulb, not about Hue or Zigbee in general. Don’t think the SmartThings hub is that popular or even a particularly good solution so it’s not something I’d really worry about!!

It’s a bloody minefield is this, isn’t it.

I’ve got 2 ally-way outside lights on Hue (just plain white bulbs) which are linked to IFTTT geolocation so when you arrive home they’re on and when you leave they turn off (or you can turn off with a widget). I’ve also bought a couple of zigbee plugs which will work with hue and Octopus energy Agile tariff, so when the 1/2hr leccy prices cross a certain price a dehumidifier turns on and off. I should also be able to use it with a tumble dryer etc.