Emulated hue configuration step

aristosv · June 27, 2019, 7:25am

In this video the guy says that I need to have the Philips Hue skill enabled in the alexa app. I tried that but the skill can’t be enabled because it cannot find any hue devices on my network. Which doesn’t make sence because HA is running the emulated_hue which should broadcast as a bridge gen1.

Also, I don’t know if this was required but I had no alexa: entry in my configuration.yaml so I added it, but still no luck.

To recap

I reinstalled HA v0.95.0 from scratch
UNPN is working on my edgerouter x
http://IP:8300/api/pi/lights & http://IP:8300/description.xml are OK
I have only one entity exposed so no issue with entity limits
I “forgot all” devices in alexa
I have no skills enabled in the alexa app
I added alexa: in my configuration.yaml
I followed this

Go to devices
Click plus to add device
Select brand (phillips hue).
Select bridge type (Gen 1)
Discover devices

But still no devices are found.
Any suggestions would help.
Thanks

petro · June 27, 2019, 11:53am

There’s so much miss information around here. And that is 100% incorrect (Unless you have 2 hue bridges), then one would be done through normal discovery and the second would be done through the phillips hue skill.

That should be all you need. It’s all I have. You could turn on debug in logging and view the HA logs during discovery. Not sure if that will help. Unfortunately, this seems like you’d need to debug it on alexa’s side.

So this leads me to believe that your router is doing something on your network that is blocking the communication.

And just to clarify, this communication between emulated hue and alexa is 100% local. It does not go to the cloud and back.

petro · June 27, 2019, 2:38pm

Check out what this guy posted. Might be your problem

aristosv · June 27, 2019, 3:02pm

What he is saying doesn’t make any sense…

I could see my echo was on the right wifi network so I ran my echo (gen 1) through the setup process again to reconnect it to the same wifi network and it finally worked

If he means that he simply re-run the setup wizard for alexa, I’ve already done that. Reset to factory defaults, de-register from the alexa app, and re-register again. Nothing.

aristosv · June 27, 2019, 3:04pm

What doesn’t make sense to me is, why doesn’t the Hue skill in Alexa, find the emulated_hue as a gen1 device? Even if this step is not needed, the Hue skill should still detect the emulated_hue presence on my network.

Larry_Symms · June 27, 2019, 3:07pm

yes that’s what I did. Reset the echo

petro · June 27, 2019, 3:22pm

Not sure. It should find it but it’s not. I’d be willing to bet that the actual hue hardware would have the same issue on your network. If i was in your shoes, I would be trying to debug the alexa / network side of this issue. Your emulated hue setup is good.

aristosv · June 27, 2019, 4:30pm

So I went through the whole process of setting up haaska, with a successful test at the end of the guide. Alexa still can’t find any devices

2019-06-27%2019_27_56-

The thing is, I am running a lot of services on this network and I have never had any problems whatsoever. I don’t know what’s so special about the alexa setup.

Anyway, I’m giving up, at least for now.

petro · June 27, 2019, 5:19pm

For what it’s worth, I running most of that stuff too but also running emulated hue. We have a similar router. At this point its a big shrug from me.

Larry_Symms · June 27, 2019, 6:11pm

In that other thread petro mentioned NOT explicitly searching for hue and I’ve also seen others mention using voice control on the specific echo that is gen 1 or gen 2 (I believe I did the former however I was so excited to get it working again that I promptly forgot what did the trick ). Anyway here’s the discovery procedure from the other thread:

Select devices
Select all devices
Select the plus in the upper left corner
Select add device
DO NOT SELECT HUE.
Scroll to Other, select other.
Select discover devices.

Larry_Symms · June 27, 2019, 6:16pm

if you have a spare wireless router with basic settings you could try eliminating your router as the culprit…

petro · June 27, 2019, 6:27pm

They change so frequently with the alexa app its hard to keep track of the do’s and don’ts.

Larry_Symms · June 28, 2019, 3:14am

And tonight it got hosed again but just mostly. I can do “Alexa, turn off/on all the lights and it works.” 3 of my 10 lights work and there appears to be no rhyme or reason for why some work and not others. My WAF is like the Hindenburg. Resetting the echo did the trick again and lost all the reminders on that device again

kanga_who · June 28, 2019, 4:28am

emulated_hue:
 host_ip: 192.168.1.35
 off_maps_to_on_domains:
 - script
 - scene
 expose_by_default: false
 exposed_domains:
 - script
 entities:
  script.boomeranghd:
   name: "BOOMERANG HD"
   hidden: false

Are you getting any errors relating to emulated_hue when starting HA? If this is exactly how you have your config in the yaml file, then your spacing is wrong. You need two spaces like;

emulated_hue:
  host_ip: 192.168.1.35
  off_maps_to_on_domains:
    - script
    - scene

petro · June 28, 2019, 1:39pm

Eh, that shouldn’t matter because the -'s represent a list. The indentation after the - is considered an indentation in this regard. People just like the look of the double space better.

Larry_Symms · June 28, 2019, 3:09pm

Couldn’t be more basic. No errors in the log
2019-06-27 22:52:45 INFO (SyncWorker_16) [homeassistant.loader] Loaded hue from homeassistant.components.hue

emulated_hue:
listen_port: 8300
host_ip: 192.168.1.18
expose_by_default: true

I tried doing expose_by_default: false but 1: there are only 9 devices listed in api/pi/lights

kanga_who · June 28, 2019, 10:41pm

The - might not matter, but the 1 space indentation of host_ip: and everything else below that probably does.

Unless something has changed, 2 spaces are required.

petro · June 28, 2019, 11:51pm

yaml has never required 2 spaces. Yaml is indent driven. As long as there is an indent and everything is on the correct indent level, it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t look pretty.

This:

emulated_hue:
 host_ip: 192.168.1.35
 off_maps_to_on_domains:
 - script
 - scene
 expose_by_default: false
 exposed_domains:
 - script
 entities:
  script.boomeranghd:
   name: "BOOMERANG HD"
   hidden: false

is identical to this

emulated_hue:
  host_ip: 192.168.1.35
  off_maps_to_on_domains:
    - script
    - scene
  expose_by_default: false
  exposed_domains:
    - script
  entities:
    script.boomeranghd:
      name: "BOOMERANG HD"
      hidden: false

and both are valid.

One just is more readable than the other.

Copy and paste both into the yaml checker, you’ll notice that they are both valid

http://www.yamllint.com/

kanga_who · June 29, 2019, 2:11am

Well, there you go. I’ve learned something today!

I guess I am so used to seeing every bit of YAML in the HA docs with 2 spaces and seeing others being told YAML is indent sensitive, I assumed 2 spaces were required.

aristosv · June 29, 2019, 8:27am

Just an FYI for everyone who contributed to this discussion. Today I reset my edgerouter x to it’s factory defaults and everything worked just fine. No idea how or why.

I did not enable UPNP on edgerouter x, nor did I put alexa: in my configuration.yaml. I didn’t even tell alexa to scan for specifically gen1 of the hue bridge. I just clicked the Discover button in alexa. Basically, this is the whole thing.

configuration.yaml
emulated_hue: !include emulated_hue.yaml

emulated_hue.yaml

host_ip: 192.168.1.35
listen_port: 8300
off_maps_to_on_domains:
 - script
 - scene
expose_by_default: false
exposed_domains:
 - light
 - script
entities:
 script.boomeranghd:
  name: "Boomerang"
  hidden: false
 script.disneyjunior:
  name: "Disney Junior"
  hidden: false
 light.kitchen_light_1:
  name: "Kitchen Light 1"
  hidden: false
 light.kitchen_light_2:
  name: "Kitchen Light 2"
  hidden: false
 light.kitchen_light_3:
  name: "Kitchen Light 3"
  hidden: false

I haven’t created any routines yet, cause the kids are watching TV right now, but since alexa can see the entities in Home Assistant, I can only assume it will work.

Thanks everyone for your help, greatly appreciated!