Hi I just got my home assistant green this morning, and am trying my best to learn how to set it up.
I have a lot of hue lights with a hue bridge pro. Unfortunately they are connected to normal light switches, and this breaks the all day scenes from automatically updating or switching to the correct scene when turning them back on.
From what I can tell, when I turn them off at the switch they are still "on" within the hue and home assistant app, but they are "unreachable" or "unavailable".
Essentially I have a lot of dumb non-smart light switches (which I do not want to replace) and I want it so when the lights go from "unreachable" or "unavailable" to "reachable"/"available" it actives a specific all day scene (even with a delay) or activate lights that are continuously powered, but can only be turned on/off using the hue app.
I know Installing new light switches would be optimal, but very expensive as in Australia we need an electrician to install them. and we need a lot of light switches. So unfortunately smart switches is not something I am willing to do.
I understand that there is a way to do this using the device_tracker platform. However, I am so new to this I don't even know where to start.
You just need an automation that triggers when the state of your bulb go from unavailable to another state.
This part is easy.
The tricky part will be if you need different scenes depending in sun, time or other factor, but it is doable.
Regarding smart light switches, then battery-powered switches are quite common and if they are fruwnds-of-hue compatible, then they integrate directly into the Hue Bridge, but can still be catched in HA too, if needed.
These switches will not require an electrician.
Use Home Assistant state changes, not device_tracker. Hue lights become unavailable when switch is off. They become available again when power returns.
Create an automation in Home Assistant. Trigger on state change from unavailable. Add a short delay for stability. Then activate a scene or lighting preset. You can group multiple lights together. Use a helper group entity for simplicity. Avoid relying on device_tracker platforms. They are for phones and presence tracking.
Personally I use number helpers that hold the value of the brightness and color temperature and use those as a reference for when I have an automation Turn Lights On. I have other automations to change those number helpers depending on multiple factors like time of day. I also have a drop down helper for color name. I use "Other" to show no color is set. If it's not "Other" when a light turns on it'll change to that named color. All that to say I don't really like scene. For me it's easier to turn on lights using an Area because if I replace or add lights to that Area it is automatically added to that Turn Lights On automation for that Area but my understanding if I used Scenes I'd have to manually add it to the Scene. It's been a bit since I've played with Scenes, so I could be wrong. You can also use Labels to effect lights too. Hope all this helps. Have fun
