Emulated Hue suddenly stopped working with Echo Dot V2

From what I have read, only port 80 works now.

I am using it at the moment on port 80.

Just wanted to throw this out there for anyone having trouble… my emulated hue worked fine for most of these recent issues other than random re-discovery issues… where deleting and re-adding solved my problems.

Today, I moved and renamed a couple old devices that I have used since day one with emulated hue. In the course of my troubleshooting I ended up deleting devices and suddenly tons of my devices wouldn’t be re-discovered…
I noticed that one switch out of a few similar was working… I had a template light made for that one.
So… creating template lights and changing the emulated_hue entry to include only the ‘light.’ domain version, and removing the ‘switch.’ domain one (that had always worked previously) … Alexa is now discovering all of these devices without issue.

I’m not sure if it’s from another recent change or something that is being fixed, but just wanted to save anyone a little trouble if they run into the issue in the mean-time.

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Can you please share what do you mean port 80? You open this port for alexa? Or you add 80 to your yaml file?

It is a reference to the listen port - see the example in a post a few earlier in the thread.
Seems that a firmware update on Alexa devices some months ago meant that the default listen port in Emulated Hue was no good any more for discovery of new devices by Alexa.

Good news. Changing the port to 80 and removing my old “emulated_hue_ids.json” file fixed my issue. My Alexa can now control my light again. The problem I’m having is my Alexa says, “Sorry, XXXXX light does not appear to be working” even though it updates and the light does what I asked.

Anyone have a solution for this?

I have the same issue with Echo Dot V3. Somebody believes there is a chance that this will be fixed in the future?

I’m 85% sure you need a v2 echo or lower on your network to interface with emulated hue.

That is correct. I also have a V1 Echo Dot. If the emulated hue devices are controlled through the V1 device then everything works. But it should be possible to use a single V2 or V3 echo dot to control emulated hue devices without receiving those “light does not appear to be working” responses.
Thx, Rob

The limitation is on amazon side, not home assistant side. Which is why a v2 or v1 is required. I.e. you can’t have all v3’s because they only talk to gen 2 hue bridges. v2 or v1’s only talk with gen 1 hue bridges.

Hmm, confused. I have a V2 bridge and a V3 and a V1 dot. V1 dot with V2 bridge works fine. V3 dot and V2 bridge also works, except receiving “light does not appear to be working” messages. Using both, V1 & V3 dot with V2 bridge works without issues when emulated hue devices are controlled through the V1 dot.
My understanding from all that is that emulated hue does not support the V3 (or V2) echo devices protocol.
Thx, Rob

You have it reversed. Emulated hue emulates the hue bridge gen 1. V2 and V1 echos support gen 1 hue and gen 2. V3 echos do not support gen 1 hue.

Just a side note for anyone interested - as an alternative to control your smart devices using Alexa, you can integrate Alexa directly to Home Assistant by creating a smart home skill - no Home Assistant cloud subscription required.

I’ve been monitoring this thread since the “x does not appear to be working” issue came up for me, and recently I’ve started to look for alternatives, because to be honest, a smart home isn’t very smart if it has issues like this for a prolonged period (almost half a year now?).

That’s how I’ve found this on the Home Assistant instruction, which actually lists the Emulated Hue solution as an alternative to creating a smart home skill:

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/alexa.smart_home/

I’ve done this setup and successfully replaced the Emulated Hue bridge with all it’s issues, although a fair warning - this setup is somewhat lengthy and “takes considerable effort to configure” - as the site mentions.

Thanks petro, now everything makes sense. For me an emulated hue V2 would be the perfect solution but it seems that this is not going to be developed.

Thanks also to Justin_Case. I didn’t know about that. What I don’t like so much about this solution is that it requires home assistant to be accessible from the internet.

I also tried the nabu casa cloud once, but I was not happy either with they way I had to phrase my Alexa commands to control the devices so I went back to emulated hue.

I’ll probably just connect my V1 echo back to the network to fix this.

Could you give an example? What was the difference?

Sorry, I did this sometime last year and I can’t really remember the details but I think it was just much easier to get what I wanted using emulated hue and save the $5/month considering that I did not use any other cloud features anyway.

From what I’ve read, it’s not possible to emulate the V2 bridge. Otherwise it would have been done.

I also tried it once and I also remember that I wasn’t very happy with it too. I don’t know for sure but I think you had (or have) to say something like “Alexa, tell home assistant to turn on …”.
@petro do you know if that’s true, because I also remember that I read somewhere that haaska and nabucasa do the same and with haaska I don’t have to tell Alexa that my questions is about a home assistant entity (like in my example above).

BTW haaska is another (very similiar) option that was discussed in this thread before.

Edit: Looks like I remembered this. That option needs an invocation name (home assistant) and I didn’t like that.

A quick addendum - if you integrate Alexa manually by following the link I gave you, you will be able to control your devices like you would with the Emulated Hue Bridge, so for instance, saying “Alexa, turn off the bedroom light”.

It’s worth checking out the supported platforms part of the instruction:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/alexa.smart_home/#supported-platforms

I followed the guide and had no issues, but for some reason Alexa does not find any of my scripts. Also made a new post of my issue: Alexa integration does not find devices?

Any update? Alexa back to work with Emulated Hue?
Or only cloud?