So I am pretty new to homeassistant and setting up my new home. And I’m wondering where is the best place to configure the rooms, especially for individual Hue lights and groups of lights? I keep going back and forth between HomeAssistant, the Phillips Hue app and the Google Home app. (I also have some other devices like a SHIELD, and Sonos)
They are called Areas in home assistant.
I know. I’m just wondering where is the best place to set them up so that they propagate best through the different systems 
Right now I haven’t set any rooms in Hue, but I created the light groups (for lamps with multiple bulbs, for example i have one lamp with 5 bulbs). In HomeAssistant all the individual lights are set in the Areas, but not the groups since i don’t see them in the Devices list, and in Google Home the light groups are set in Rooms, and the individual lights are left on the side, so it feels like a mess
This can become an issue. The problem is, a light geoup created in Home Assistant for e.g. 5 bulbs, will send 5 commands to the Hue bridge, when you turn the light on/off. Because the Hue bridge is limited in how many requests it can process, this can lead to delays or lights not turning on/off. Therefore it is better to create the room in Hue and import it in HA. This way, when you send a command zo turn the lights off, it will only send one command to the Hue bridge and the command will automatically propagated to the individual lights.
Sorry for hijacking the post here, @krad23. But that’s really interesting info here.
Like many others I also use Hue bulbs but so far I haven’t had the need for installation of the (iOS) Hue app. What would be the right approach to create groups in HA to avoid the limit in the bridge?
You can’t create these kind of groups in HA, you can only do it through the app. If you use DeCONZ, ZigBee2MQTT or ZHA it’s a different story.
How did you connect the bulbs to the bridge and configure them without the app?
The Hue bridge is unreliable for a number of reasons, but this particular one is the worst imo, and one of the best reasons to ditch the Hue hub and use your own controller.
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It’s interesting just how dramatically different people’s experiences with the Hue bridge are. I’ve been using one for almost four years with no issues. I actually prefer keeping my lights on the hue bridge so that when my server is down my lighting is unaffected.
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Where’s your sense of adventure? 
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