Philips Hue Groups Missing

Configuration
1

Hi everyone!

I’m very new to Home Assistant and just need some help setting up my Philips Hues.
I have setup HA and let it auto discover my Hue Bridge 2.
It did this and was able to show me all my lights.
However, none of my lights have names as I used groups on the hue app and homekit.

After reading the instruction I thought philips hue groups would automatically appear somehow but I can’t seem to see them…

I thought I would try to add the hue in my configuration.yaml:
light:

  • platform: hue
    host: x.x.x.x
    filename: phue.conf
    allow_unreachable: true
    allow_in_emulated_hue: false
    allow_hue_groups: true

I tried both true and false for allow_hue_groups but I still had no success.

Will my philips groups appear or should I just start creating HA groups?

2

Make your own groups.

I know mine(groups) didn’t show up but the names of the lights did.

Honestly, once you set up your lights you won’t even go back to the Hue app. Doesn’t really serve a purpose outside of HA and is just a duplication of service.

3

Thanks for the quick response.

Are there any performance issues doing it this way? I’ve read that a command sent to a hue group only needs one instruction but a command to a ha group sends an instruction for each of the lights. Is that noticeable?

4

it’s rather instantaneous, only limited to time it takes to issue the command and send it to the hub.

You won’t notice any difference either way.

5

Forsquirel, you’re amazing.
I was hesitant to set it up incorrectly but I’ve taken the plunge and made HA groups.

They’re very quick. I can turn 6 lights on and off in less than a second.
I think I’m ready to get started with the rest of my config now.

Thanks for your help.

6

It is still sort of an issue though. Mine do show up thankfully, but if you were to use your own custom groups with emulated hue you can only turn on/off at least when I tried it. With the hue groups I can turn on/off, change brightness, and change colors (additional code needed for that which someone on the github is working on, not out yet) with my google home.

7

Good point! That sounds ideal. How did you get your groups working then? Did you have to do anything or did it work with discovery enabled?

8

This ended up working after disabling discovery and only using the light option.
It seems like discovery wouldn’t do this for me.
Now I have groups from my philips hue appearing on my HA.

Thanks for the help everyone.

9

I can definitely notice a difference between using Hue groups and HA created groups. I have 7 lights in one group and 7 in another. They turn on and off at exactly the same time using Hue groups while HA groups are like playing a ruff on a drum. The Hue groups turn on slightly more quickly, too. The differences are fractions of a second, but noticeable. So far it seems to have solved the problem where a light will sometimes not turn on or will dim rather than turn off.

It’s also working without removing discovery:
Documented here: