Philips Hue will force users to upload their data to Hue cloud

I was making an observation and sharing my experience. You can direct your outrage elsewhere. Thanks.

To make migrating away from the hue bridge to an open alternative a bit easier, here’s the full list of all scenes in the hue app scene gallery with their respective 5 x,y color values:

I’m looking forward to seeing a custom_component providing a service that takes a group of lights and applies a scene to those :slight_smile:

4 Likes

I have a slightly different perspective. I’ve used Hue lights for many years in a few different houses and during that time I received the dreaded ‘Your Hue Account had a problem and has been reset’ email. This basically meant that the hue hub was factory reset and no backup exists! In the past 18 months this happened three times in two different properties with different hub hardware.

I really complained to support that a product like this must include backup and recovery options. After the last time this happened I was just starting to implement HA and now have 80% of my Hue bulbs on ZHA where I manage and have verified the backup works.

If Hue putting data in the cloud means they can offer recovery, then that is at least progress - but too late for me.

it’s no outrage, I was simply stating a fact, a lot of people use the hue hub because is convenient, it’s easier to use, and local (until now, and still they didn’t remove the local API), so only few people bother to move lights under zha or z2m.

uhmm that sparks my interest, I will add the lights to my coordinator anyway, but I will try to integrate diyhue to use that app or anything that rely on hue (for example entertainment are using ambilight tv)

Through the power granted to me by chatGPT I now bring you: The thing I suggested 4 hours ago.

6 Likes

Nice @Hypfer, I saw that list you posted and thought “if nobody builds an extension for that then perhaps I will”. I have a suggestion for future improvement: changing scenes like Hue. I rarely use a static scene where the lights are set to specific colors/levels and stay there, generally I use the Hue’s various automated scenes that are constantly changing colors gradually.

I’m sure getting at those auto scene settings might be challenging given what it took to get the original static scene list, but it would be a cool addition!

Oh thanks, I got it wrong, they’re actually “ZLL” (Zigbee Light Link) remotes.
Gen 2 and 3 look like this and were used back in the days with “LivingColors”.


It’s amazing they still work (that’s why I loved hue), even with the new lights and without a hub (just like the other remotes). However, the first remote has significantly more functionality than any new remotes, offering full control, including color adjustments and single light selection.
They are encrypted, and while the master key was leaked a long time ago, it never got built in (afaik).

If anyone has more recent information about this, I would really appreciate it.

Looks like there’s an update: https://twitter.com/home_assistant/status/1707446505341128801

Good news! It looks like the noise you have all made has convinced

@tweethue

to reconsider. They will not force data sharing on user accounts, according to their response in this

@verge

article. We do await the exact changes to their policy.

That’s good that Hue is listening to the concerns of it’s users, but for me the damage is done - and I don’t trust that their opt out will really prevent them from selling data.

Like all companies they use a risk assessment model that says whichever path makes or saves the most money wins, meaning sell the data against your permission until the trouble from that costs more than they make from the data. Every big company pushes up to and over that red line. Porn sites will allow rape/revenge/unauthorized videos until lawsuits cost more than that content brings in as revenue. Selling data and privacy is huge business, it’s not going to stop just because they say it will.

Now, I know that’s a pessimistic view, but many of us are on HA because we want control over our privacy and I, for one, don’t trust any company with my data. I could be wrong about Hue and perhaps they are honorable and will do the right thing, in which case I’ll eat my statement, but since they tried to force this down our throats in the first place (like Facebook, Microsoft and Google did) makes me more than skeptical about the company in general.

Besides, if we have learned anything from this thread it’s that you can easily move Hue to be 100% local as Zigbee without any trouble or loss of too much function except the fun bells and whistles - so why not do that regardless?

6 Likes

Still they clearly won’t revert on mandatory cloud account to setup the thing and use the app.
For me it is still an unacceptable for something important like lights, so I still will move them on my z2m coordinator, and maybe try diyhue and hue essentials for compatibility with entertainment areas

4 Likes

Yeah statisitcs show over 16% of users have the Philips Hue Hub, and my guess is that loads of people get started with just the Philips Hue Hub and then keep it even if they have outgrown it instead of migrating their device a other solution like the ZHA integration because it does not quite yet offer feature parity (i.e. lack of Philips Hue OTA firmware updates, similar easy feature to use some custom and default predefined scenes, and Zigbee Green Power device support) → Integrations | Home Assistant Analytics

1 Like

Lots of people dont want send the data to Philips Cloud. But this link show what we all use in HA :slight_smile:
I know you can disable it in HA so the data is not 100% what it is in real :slight_smile:

It’s a shame really, it could have sparked development within HA or custom components to provide those features that makes people stick with the Hue hub. Dynamic lighting scenes etc.

A curse in disguise, in lack of a better term.

The only reason I never bothered to try migrating was the dynamic scenes. For just color ZHA is fine but if you want a scene that changes colors over time that is harder to achieve and I’ve gotten used to a few particular scenes that I like to have going during certain things like playing a movie or when guests are over.

But you are right, I got my Hue long before HA and it has just been a part of all my various home automation systems and, frankly, I didn’t know it was Zigbee until a few years ago but didn’t start actively using Zigbee as a protocol elsewhere until last year.

1 Like

Was this posted already?
Hue security plans: Home security plans | Philips Hue US

1 Like

Wait, what!?

So when they refer to security, it’s not about providing an apparently secure service, but rather about security applications (like using their service for home security).

This whole thing just got a whole lot weirder — and ambiguous…

1 Like

Done. I’ve just updated the custom_component with a few additional services that simulate just that or at least something somewhat similar that is good enough for me.
The implementation is pretty basic as all it does is manage a timer that applies the scene periodically with shuffled colors and a rather long transition.

This isn’t how hue implements the feature, as there it’s happening on the zigbee level and to my knowledge only requires a single call to the bulb, but I doubt that you will overload your zigbee network by changing colors every 5 minutes or so.
The upside of this approach is that it will work with all light entities and not just hue zigbee lights.

3 Likes

Pretty cool, rebooting my HA now to see how it works! Did you have ChatGPT do that as well or is that all you? Personally I’m gobsmacked that ChatGPT could crank out an integration like that at all.

UPDATE: I just installed the new version and while it’s not quite as smooth as the Hue dynamic scenes this is the last thing I was holding on to my hub for so this weekend I’m moving all my Hue’s to ZHA! Thank you @Hypfer for taking the initiative on this and I look forward to you hopefully turning this new extension into an awesome one that everyone latches onto (and yes, I’ve already tried it with my Inovelli bulbs and it works well there too!).

ChatGPT mostly fills in my lack of experience in python and python-isms. It’s impressive what it can do, but you still need to build the concept in your head and then only ask it for small slices of it.
It also didn’t save me from looking up a few details in the HA code and some other custom_components.

It’s basically like a coworker with a wildly fluctuating skill level that won’t get tired of you asking them stuff.

Nice! Happy to hear that it brings value to you :slight_smile:

3 Likes