I show every min or so my hue light bulbs switching to unavailable and back to available in the logs. Why?
I use the original hue hub. I have a docker install of HA
It’s a common problem. I found improvement by moving the Hub higher and away from electrical interference. The best I managed was one or two bulbs going unavailable a few times a day. If you sit in the Hue app on your phone, you should see them going unavailable there too, so the problem is not localised to HA.
Since last week for unknown reasons I’ve had no unavailability. The problem seems to have magically gone away despite not doing anything. I’m not sure if there was an update applied automatically somewhere, but I’m not complaining.
I have the same issue, see Hue: available in App, unavailable in HA
Did you solve this @HA_fanatic ?
The same issue started for me a couple of days ago. Before that it has been running without any issues for years, and I didn’t really make any changes that would from one day to the other affect the reception of just a single bulb that’s showing this behavior.
Yesterday I opened up the Hue app on my phone (which I never do because HASS is controlling the bulbs), applied the update that was offered, and at least today I didn’t have the problem anymore.
all my bulbs are up to date and I still have this. They work most of the time but still some times they get unavailable
grey lines here
I had the same problem. I disconnected every single bulb and did a factory reset to the bridge.
I reconfigured everything and until now it works.
where yours unavailable the whole time or like mine switching from unavail to avail?
They where switching. different bulbs, different times.
But not only bulbs, also switches and motion detectors.
ok thanks, and now all of them stay availabe`
Indeed. I did monitor it for a while but it didn’t occurred anymore.
I do not believe I ever had a day where at least not one of my 35 Hue devices showed as unavailable. But it is not really true. It is the Philips hue bridge that has not seen messages from the device. But the devices all work if you send commands to them. They turn on and off. They change intensity. All works, always.
You have to set the HA configuration for hue to allow_unreachable: true
In fact I do not understand why the possibility to not allow unreachable is there. It should be on always. The way Philips hue works having unreachable items is the normal. Not the exception. At least not when you have more than just a standard starter kit.
I have a number of Osram Zigbee switches on the Hue bridge. I do not remember that they have ever been shown anything else than unreachable. And yet, they always work. Same with several other non-Philips Zigbee devices.
@KennethLavrsen Thanks, great input, you saved me from re-pairing all those devices.
I totally missed that option. I agree this should be a default value, if it’s usual that they get unavailable.
So how does this work now. Will the entity still show up as unavailable but I’m still able to send an on or off command? This will leave the controlbutton where it should be (not there when unavailable till now).
Maybe you should put this to the devs as this might effect the experience of many users.
With the allow_unreachable: true all the hue lights will just appear normal and you can switch them on and off.
I have never seen any negative consequences of the setting. Without this in HA there are lights I can never control.
I have had this set for a long time and I still get problems… all go to unavailable at the same time and when they do, automatons don’t work…
when they all get unavailable, it’s likly your bridge is not connected to ha or the bridge itself has a connectivity issue.
If the hue bridge itself is not available then naturally nothing works and you have a severe connectivity problem.
I am talking about a few individual zigbee devices that are unavailable in the Philips hue app!! In my 35 or so lamp installation there is always 1 or 2 light bulbs that are unavailable. 10 minutes later they are available again and another one may be unavailable. And then there are my Osram sockets that are always shown as unavailable in the hue app. But they work! You can always turn them on and off. The Philips bridge sends the message and they turn on and off. And if they show unavailable in the Hue app then they are also unavailable in Home Assistant and unlike Philips HA disables control of an unavailable device. Unless you have allow_unreachable: true
So to me the only sain setting for he is allow_unreachable: true if you want a happy life with HA and hue together. This may not be the case in a small apartment where you have one Philips hue bridge and original Philips bulbs that all connect directly to the bridge. But in a larger house where devices are mixed from Philips, Ikea, Osram and other players something always shows unavailable and HA needs to ignore that and still turn the devices on and off. Somehow the Bridge seem to remember the on/off state so it all seems to work just fine.
But if your HA cannot connect to the Hue bridge then you have a network related problem that you need to sort out first.
What do you mean with that? Don’t you think it gets the new state when its back online?
I do not know how the Philips bridge handles it. I just checked now. 4 of my lamps are shown as unreachable (in the setup menu in the Philips app). All are not Philips. It is 3 Osram devices and a Chinese dimmer device. But the hue bridge show the correct state in the app where you turn light on off. And I can control then all 4. Both from Philips app and from HA. Even the dimming level is shown correctly. We have to remember that all the Zigbee devices on the hue bridge are controlled by the bridge and only the bridge. When HA sets lights it does it through the hue bridge API. So it could simply remember what it sent last and not need to get any status from the bulbs or switches. The fact is that it works and that it is wrong when the HA hue component disables control just because it gets an unreachable from the Hue bridge. I can only see that it creates problems for the users and I fail to see any significant advantages. Unless it is a matter of life and death that you know the lamp at the end is indeed turned on or off. There could be some examples where that is the case (hospitals etc) so the setting is OK. It should just in my view default to allow unreachable… to help new users.
agreed, what do the devs say about that.
About the last known state. Could be true that it saves the state in the bridge, if it sent the command successfully to a bulb (with response). If it only saves sent command (without knowing that the bulb received it it wouldn’t be reliable I would say.)
So maybe the bridge does it that way. Hope you understand what I mean.
Do the lights still get unavailable in ha when the above mentioned option is set true?
My devices seem to be online the whole time since I changed that. Or it doesn’t show it anymore.