Alexa cannot find emulated hue devices

Configuration
1

Hi all,

I’ve run into a strange problem with emulated hue and Alexa.
For several years I was able to expose my switches and lights via emulated hue to Alexa and control the lights via voice commands.

Starting last week, it was not possible anymore as the lights were not reachable. So I tried to delete the lights in the alexa app and re-add them but not the emulated hue bridge is not found in the alexa app and cannot be set up (using round bridge V1).
There were no changes to my network as far as I can recall. I did change from a RPI 3b to RPI4 a while ago, but even after that the lights worked.

What I tried to solve the problem so far:

  • Deleted all lights in the alexa app
  • Tried to add them again via search function (Bridge round V1)
  • Bridge is discovered in the Hue Legacy app but the app requests an update (which is obviously not possible)
  • Disabled and enables emulated hue in the config.yaml with restarts in between
  • Checked via a upnp app, if emulated hue can be discovered (yes it can)
  • Checked if /description.xml and /api/pi/lights/ are available (yes they are)

I have several Sonos devices with alexa enables at home and one Echot Dot 3rd Generation with SW Version: 6208508292

What else can I do in order to make emulated hue work with alexa again?

2

Start looking at your network settings. There have been recent threads with the same issues you are pointing out and the solution was to enable/disable settings in your router. I don’t remember them off the top of my head.

3

Thanks @petro !
I did a search with a combination of “emulated hue / hue / alexa / network” sorted by latest but I cannot seem to find the threads you are talking about. Maybe you can give me some more keywords in order to find them!

4
5

My issue was sorted when I setup Upnp integration which added my router. You can try adding your router with Upnp integration and try discovering emulated hue in alexa.

6

Thank you to both of you for the support.
My router was already added via UPnP but I deleted it and tried it again - unfortunately no luck. I discovered two devices via UPnP and added them both.
Alexa will still not discover the emulated hue bridge. I’m running out of ideas how to solve this issue.

7

Personally, I moved away from hue years ago towards Alexa Smart Home Skill. It’s been rock solid and the entity support beats emulated_hue in every single way. The issue is, it’s hard to set up and it requires a dns service with SSL (like duckdns) if you want to be secure.

1 Like
8

I had a look at Amazon Alexa Smart Home Skill - Home Assistant
If I cannot fix the emulated hue component anytime soon, I will try the Smart Home Skill. I have enough experience to set it up so this shouldn’t be an issue.

Yet I’m still hesitant as I don’t want to expose my Home Assistant Instance to the internet. Currently I manage everything via VPN and want to keep it this way (at the moment)

9

I completely understand. I can say that emulated hue’s life is limited. It’s just a matter of time before amazon and Philips Hue turn off gen 1 hue bridge compatibility.

1 Like
10

So after a couple of re-tries yesterday and a night of leaving the Echo Dot unplugged, which apparently is a soft reset, if you do it long enough (30 seconds did not help), it startet to detect all my devices again.
I did make changes to my network and did nothing special to my Home Assistant instance, except the stuff written above.

Thanks again @petro for your support!

11

Just for my own edification, you only have 1 gen 3 echo dot?

12

In total I have one Echo Dot Gen3 and two Sonos Alexa Devices.
I only unplugged the Echo Dot Gen3 over night, not the Sonos devices.

13

Thanks a lot for this tip. I am facing the same issue as the OP regarding emulated_hue. I was trying to add a new device, but Alexa discovery did not see this new device at all. Previously discovered devices continued to be re-discovered.

Till I read this comment, I did not realise that the Alexa Smart Home skill could be used as an alternative. All set up and working well now. Thanks!

(Just one issue: despite removing emulated_hue from the HA config, Alexa still continues to discover the previously discovered emulated_hue items)

14

I think I also figured out why Alexa continued to discover the old emulated_hue devices. In the “.storage” folder of Home Assistant, there was a file named “emulated_hue_ids”. This file had a list of my old devices which I had exposed via emulated_hue. I deleted this file and restarted HA. Then, Alexa stopped discovering these non-existent devices.

The one problem with using the Alexa Smart Home Skill to control HA devices from Alexa: network delay. emulated_hue used to work completely locally. But with the Alexa skill, the communication goes all the way to a Lambda function hosted on AWS and then back to the HA in my home. Between saying the command and actually seeing the lights turn on / off, there is at least a 3 second delay. And this is aggravated even more due to the limitation that the lambda function has to be hosted in EU (Ireland) despite me being located in India.

15

Had the same problem. Recently moved and I removed all my devices from my account with the Amazon alexa app. plugged in all my device and HA and all ports and ip’s where the same. So I scanned for device with the Alexa app serval times, nada didn’t find my emulated hue devices. I used my new alexa show 5 I had just got. scanned several times nada : (. Then I plugged in my old echo gen 2 and searched for new devices with that device (“Alexa find new devices”) and viola, it found them first try.

Also I found that I can use my Alexa Show to turn on and off the Emulated Hue devices on HA just fine as it should be. But interestingly enough is I unplug my echo dot gen2 and remove it from the network my emulated hue devices stop working from my Show and I get the (device not responding) plug the old echo dot gen 2 back in and now my emulated hue devices work again from any Alexa device (firetv, show5, dot, echo etc). Hope this helps someone

1 Like
16

Had the same issue , ended up disabling the AsusWRT integration, after that everything went smooth.
Also Upnp integration installed

17

Resurrecting the issue - just tried enabling “emulated hue”.

  1. Verified UPNP is enabled in my router
  2. Verified input boolean is advertised via http://192.168.xxx.82/api/v2/lights
{"input_boolean.main_rolladens":{"state":{"on":false,"reachable":true,"mode":"homeautomation"},"name":"Main Floor Rolladens","uniqueid":"00:f8:00:aa:d4:e0:46:2f-7d","manufacturername":"Home Assistant","swversion":"123","type":"On/Off light","productname":"On/Off light","modelid":"HASS321"}}
  1. Used Alexa app and the Echo to discover new devices - both report none.

What am I missing? Does the Echo model matter at all?

18

Are you running on core? Also, google home and amazon require port 80 now instead of 8300.

Secondly, I highly suggest you set up Alexa Smart Home Skill. You get way more features. Emulated hue only deals with on/off devices.

1 Like
19

I’m running on Home Assistant Yellow, 2024.3.1

here is my config.yml section

emulated_hue:
  type: alexa
  host_ip: 192.168.xxx.82
  listen_port: 80
  expose_by_default: true
  exposed_domains:
    - input_boolean
  entities:
    input_boolean.main_rolladens:
      name: "Main Floor Rolladens"
      hidden: false

Alexa Smart Home Skill? Is this Nabu Casa? Or is this the very detailed procedure with AWS/Lamda/etc?

20

Alexa Smart Home Skill requires AWS, Lamda, etc.

The functionality and outcome is identical to having a NabuCasa subscription (for alexa)