Hue not updating correctly with HA

Configuration
1

Hello!

I am using Hue lights with HA that I discovered and setup today. After tinkering with the automation aspect of HA I came across an immediate problem.

So my first automation is to turn a light off, if it is turned on during the day. This works when I turn the light on from HA, but if the light comes on from ANY other source, the automation does not work at all. Furthermore, when the task runs and I can see the light turn off in front of me, the light switch in HA stays ON and doesn’t update to OFF state. For testing purposes, it’s set to after dark, as it’s after dark here right now!

# Turn off lights when everybody leaves the house
  - alias: 'Rule 2 - Away Mode'
    trigger:
      platform: state
      entity_id: light.entrance
      to: 'on'
    condition:
      condition: state
      entity_id: sun.sun
      state: 'below_horizon'
    action:
      service: light.turn_off
      entity_id: light.entrance
2

According to: https://home-assistant.io/docs/configuration/state_object/

“If you overwrite a state via the states dev tool or the API, it will not impact the actual device. If the device state is being polled, it will overwrite the state in the state machine the next polling.”

This is how my hue light is turned on at sunset:
First I created a group with my lights I want to control outside.

group:
  Outside: light.garage, light.something, light.another

Then under Automation:

  - alias: DrivewayOn
    trigger:
      platform: sun
      event: sunset
    action:
      service: homeassistant.turn_on
      entity_id: group.outside

Good Luck,
Scott

Edit: I just reread the original post. Ok… Under trigger, have you added the
from: ‘off’

Also, make sure that your rooms and lights in philips hue are different. (I add the word area to all my rooms). this will avoid which toggle I’m looking at in Home Assistant.

My home assistant updates the hue light status regardless of how it is turned on. Sorry if I couldn’t help after all.
Scott

3

Hey Scott,

Thanks for replying to my post, I appreciate it. Have you tried adding an offset to your sunset trigger or do you find the weather service you use is quite accurate?

I did try adding the “from: off” like you suggested to no avail and I don’t quite understand what you mean by making sure that rooms and lights are different than phillips hue.

Mine will still not update correctly. I wonder if there’s a way to change the polling time.

Edit: Wow, so I did a cleanup of my hue bridge which I found as a solution to a similar problem by googling around and while that didn’t make things amazing, I can definitely see a light toggled on or off by another device… after about a minute. There’s a lot of UI lag in between. Is this common? How do I address this?

Edit2: scan_interval: 10 seemed to help, is there any downside to this? is there a way to update it automatically, faster?

4

I just started with the philips hue two weeks ago. I use the philips hue phone app to add my lights and name them. In the app you can name the rooms and name the lights. I kept getting confused because HA adds both the rooms and the lights. So I had to add “area” to the room names. I also found it easier to put

light:
  platform: hue
  host: 192.168.***.***

in my config rather than relying on the auto-discovery. Probably my imagination, but I haven’t experienced that much lag.

Oh, as for sunset/sunrise… I had to add elevation to make it more accurate. Seems to be perfect for my outside lights. I think I found my elevation in google maps?..

sun:
  elevation: 177

For my inside lights, I found a hour and a half offset before sundown works the best for me.

In your automation, you turn off the light, I was curious if you could also set the state to off as an action… I have yet to see an example of this yet.
Scott

5

State of the “Switch” in HA you mean? I haven’t seen that done either.

I found some nifty things… so apparently you can poll Hue every 2 seconds and the bridge doesn’t mess up, atleast that’s what I’ve read from other people experiencing issues with the same thing.

light:
  platform: hue
  host: 192.168.x.x
  allow_hue_groups: false
  allow_unreachable: true
  scan_interval: 2

The above solved my problems with response time. I believe it might also solve your issue with Hue groups displaying!

Hue is pretty good I find but I regret living in a rental space, I would have loved like zwave switches or something cheaper to use

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