"Couldn't find Hue Bridge", Emulated Hue Help w/ Google Home Device

Configuration
40

so you mean use the old APK/VM to register it, and then can use the app, or i can never use the google home app on my phone?

41

Yes. You’d only need to use the VM once. Just don’t remove the setup or you’ll just have to spin up the VM again.

42

For Google Home you need to confirm both these urls are accessible at port 80. i.e. -

  • http://<HA IP Address>:80/description.xml
  • http://<HA IP Address>:80/api/pi/lights

For me, this required explicitly setting listen_port: 80 in the configuration.yaml

I added a PR to be more clear with the documentation - Documentation tweaks for Google Home support by wagnerbenh · Pull Request #2753 · home-assistant/home-assistant.io · GitHub

43

Can you post or send a link to a valid apk? I tried numerous times (from different sources) to install it on my Samsung Galaxy S8 but it allways fails somehow (“The package appears to be corrupt”).

44

Good news!
I just managed to pair my Google Home with emulated hue and “com.google.android.apps.chromecast.app_1.19.26-10190260_minAPI15(nodpi)_apkmirror.com.apk” installed. :slight_smile:

45

Negative result here–with a HA setup that worked fine before I foolishly disassociated the emulated hue yesterday, I get the “Couldn’t find Hue Bridge” message consistently when trying to add the Hue.

I’ve tried both 1.19.29 and 1.19.26 APKs with no luck.

Confirmed that both URLs are available via a web browser.

46

Same situation here. I managed to install the old apk on an old Android device. But the option to add devices isn’t there…

47

Sorry, I actually had a different problem. Because HA runs inside a docker container for me, after updating I needed to add the “advertise_ip” and “advertise_port”. Must be a UPNP discovery issue. After adding these fields, I was able to pair using the old APK (1.19.26).

Here is my full config for reference:

  emulated_hue:
    type: google_home
    host_ip: 192.168.1.11
    advertise_ip: 192.168.1.11
    # Must be 80 for Google Home to see it.
    listen_port: 80
    advertise_port: 80
    exposed_domains:
      - light
      - switch
      - fan
      - group
48

I got it to work the other day after lots of effort. Even with the 1.19.29 apk installed, I also had to install the google app. (this was on a amazon fire with the play store and google services installed. I think I went under the Discover tab, and found the card, that was “control xxxx in your home” and tapped that, and it installed the requirement, and then my Emulated Hue showed up. I ended up not using it my Hue lights are better supported with the native hue control, and the handful of other device I can get working with IFTTT.

49

Let me provide some details.
I have it working with Google Home and Alexa using latest HA and latest Google/Alexa app on Android devices.
I had it added some time back but still it’s working and no issue.
But, last week I did setup for a friend like below and I was able to make it work:

  1. Latest HA on Raspberry Pi3
  2. Built-in emulated hue bride with port 80 and type Google Home in HA config
  3. Google Home and Android device both running latest software version from Google
    Just went to Google Home app and from menu Home Control added Philips hue and every thing from HA was working in Google Home in few seconds.
    Just to note: Platform was Raspberry Pi and NOT any kind of VM, Docker or Windows.
    My own setup is Ubuntu based and serving 3 Google Home and 1 Amazon Echo.

Is that any of them having issue is running HA under Linux not any kind of VM or Windows?
Hope this helps.

50

Having the same issue…

Urls work fine…

  • http://:80/description.xml
  • http://:80/api/pi/lights

but keep getting “Couldnt find Hue Bridge”.

Is the VM/old APK the only way to get this to work? If so, can someone update the emulated_hue docs with instructions on how one might do this? For instance, I’ve never run Android in VirtualBox but I’ve used VBox. So I guess I just need to know where to get the right OS and APK.

51

Old APK is the only way to get this working.

As far as the right VM, just use one from RemixOS for VirtualBox.

I actually think the emulated_hue component docs should not change to prevent fragmentation. Emulated_hue is working exactly as it should. It’s just that Google themselves have changed the app likely due to pressure of Philips.

The old APK pulls up Hue’s legacy site that allowed the app to looks for local hue lights, ie. the first gen bulbs. If they don’t care to support their legacy bulbs, they can disable the https://hue-adapter.appspot.com/client/ site and that would prevent the old APK’s from working as well.

52

Not sure what else I can be doing wrong…

I have emulator_hue working so that I can browse both:
http://192.168.1.124/description.xml
and
http://192.168.1.124/api/pi/lights

  1. and tried with with and without specifying ‘exposed_domains’ setting to ‘light’ and then ‘group’

  2. Downloaded and installed Google Home APK 1.19.26 on my android phone.

I still get the same “Couldn’t Find Hue Bridge” page only this time it does indeed go to ‘https://hue-adapter.appspot.com/client/’

So thats it. I’m not sure what else to try to get this working…I also can’t seem to get the same working with the Echo either.

UPDATE –
I eventually got it working with the Google Home by simply using the AiO RPi version (+Old version of Home android app), rather then the dockerized one.
Likely to do with all the networking hoops. I will eventually want to get it working with Docker as well though.

1 Like
53

I have successfully connected Google Home and Alexa on my Hass.io running on a RPI3, I was only able to pair it with Google Home using apk version 1.19.26 and after that I updated the apk and everything keeps working as expected, Google Home keeps updating all my devices as I make changes on Hass.

I had some trouble again connecting Google Home and Alexa at the same time this is how it worked for me in the end on my config:

emulated_hue:
  type: google_home
  host_ip: xxx.xxx.x.xxx
  listen_port: 80

emulated_hue 1:
  type: alexa
54

Thought I would share my experience as an iPhone user with no Android devices in the house. I got my Google Home connected with emulated_hue after some effort.

  • Tried RemixOS in a Virtual Box on my Macbook Pro. The mouse was too slow/unresponsive, so I gave up out of frustration.
  • Resized a partition on my Windows machine and installed RemixOS.
  • Downloaded 1.19.26 APK, but it still didn’t work (I didn’t have the “Home Control” and other extended options in the hamburger menu of Google Home)
  • Downgraded the Google app to an APK version from a similar time frame (~ Nov 2016). It said the install failed, but it seemed to help somehow.
  • Somehow ended up in what seemed like Google Play settings where I had to signin to my Google account again.
  • Finally got the Home Control and other options in Google Home.

At some point, I had the options in Google Home but clicking them had no effect (it would do nothing and remain with the menu open and a dark screen on the right side). I think that is when I decided to try downgrading the Google app, I’ve no idea if it actually helped though, since it said the install failed.

I will also add, as an Australian Google Home user, I had huge frustrations trying to get anything to work in the iPhone Google Home app until I switched my iPhone to the United States region. Then all the options showed up straight away.

55

Just want to add to the thread. Received a google home the other day. Changed emulated_hue to port 80. Alexa and google home can use the emulated_hue just fine. Did not specific type. Used the latest google home app to get it paired to the bridge.

56

Incredible! Nice work. My Raspberry Pi is a useless brick. Since then I bought a device from www.iotathome.com which promised to connect Siri, Alexa, and Google to my Broadlink devices, but it also failed. Then I bought a Android tablet just to run as a bridge with Tasker and that only worked for Alexa. Then Broadlink released a new app to connect Alexa, but it doesn’t work with Siri or Google Home device. Terrible mess. I have so many devices now and still cant use voice control to reliably turn on/off Broadlink SP3 devices and RM Pro devices from voice.

Come to my house and help me!

57

@HendrixHunter Try this config on your Pi:

emulated_hue:
  type: google_home
  listen_port: 8300
  advertise_port: 80

Then execute this from SSH:

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 8300

I use this setup since Google Home only likes port 80, but port 80 has restrictions I can’t be bothered to bypass so I’ve remapped anything coming to port 80 to hit port 8300. This setup works flawlessly for me, give it a shot.

If you get an error that iptables doesn’t exist, just apt-get install iptables it.

Hope this helps.

4 Likes
58

Also the only way I could get it to work that I didn’t see mentioned here but find on a GitHub discussion were the following steps

  • factory reset Google Home by pressing mic button for 15 secs
  • launch 1.20.x Home app on android and reset up Google Home
  • re-add emulated_hue via Hue connector in 1.20.x Home App
  • Home should detect huebridge at this point. If not, keep trying to add
    via hue connector. If not, try rebooting home and restart HA and clearing
    data of Home App in android device.
  • Test a hue device. If doesnt work, try rebooting HA and Home and repeat steps
59

Can anyone post the correct apk? I’m using an Android S7 Nougat device and don’t have a google home device