Just wanted to get a feel for what people think regarding the Hue Bridge. Was looking at getting a few Hue Bulbs and for not much more I could get bulbs and a bridge. Is it worth getting the Bridge? Current setup is Alexa, HA and a Nest
You will need the bridge to get the bulbs to work.
the emulated bridge will not work?
No. As I understand it, the emulated bridge just makes Alexa think that your Homeassistant Host is a Hue bridge so that you can give on/off commands to Alexa which will work through Homeassistant. Emulating the bridge just makes this happen natively on the Alexa side since support for the Hue bridge is already built in.
On the other hand, emulating the bridge does not equip your homeassistant host to control Hue lights. To do that, a real Hue bridge is needed to interface with the lights and your homeassistant host can interface with the bridge.
PS. I just dealt with this decision and while I don’t have everything working yet, I went with a z-wave usb stick for my host (~$45) and got a zwave switch. There just seemed like more zwave appliances I could add in later than to buy the Hue bridge for a similar price and just be able to control Hue lights with it.
I am also working on controlling cheap RF light relays like these that I’ve had in my house for a while. Also cheaper than hue but will take some doing to get it running.
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No, Hue lights work on the Zigbee protocol. At a minimum you would need a zigbee transceiver to work with the Hue lights. As packitout said the emulated hue bridge is just there to get things working with Alexa.
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Emulated Bridge is just for getting Alexa to see HA devices that aren’t already supported by a native Alexa skill.
You need a hub. Do yourself a favor and don’t rush to purchase - these are dropping and will drop more in price as the Christmas sales take hold of pricing strategies. Especially on starter kits (which include a hub and some lights).
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