Phillips Hue Brightness Not Working Correctly

Hello,

I have a few automatons for my Hue lights. Sometimes they do what they are programmed to, while other times they don’t (turn on, correct brightness). If I were to use the Hue App, I never have this issue.

This automation turns the garage light on when I get home. Some of the time, the light does not get to 100% brightness and is super dim, other times it works.

- alias: Turn Garage Light On
  initial_state: true
  trigger:
    - platform: state
      entity_id: person.me
      from: 'not_home'
      to: 'home'
  condition:
    - condition: or
      conditions:
        - condition: sun
          after: sunset
        - condition: sun
          before: sunrise
  action:
    - service: light.turn_on
      data:
        rgb_color: [255,207,120]
        brightness_pct: 100
        entity_id:
          - light.garage

This automation occupationally misses one of the cabinet lights and it does not turn on. This happened this morning, and according to the history, the light was not unavailable.

  - alias: Kitchen Light Strips
    initial_state: true
    trigger:
      - platform: time
        at: '05:00'
    action:
      - service: light.turn_on
        data:
          entity_id:
            - light.cabinet_left
            - light.cabinet_center
            - light.cabinet_right
          xy_color: [0.4092,0.3935]
          brightness_pct: 100
          transition: 900

I’ve had this problem before as well and the reason was that the Hue hub throttled incoming traffic from HA. The way I got around it was to use Hue groups/zones instead of making calls to individual lights. So, instead of calling 3 lights, call 1 group. The other thing is that brightness_pct has always been flaky for me when dealing with Hue. I use brightness instead and set it to 255 for max brightness.

Thanks, this is helpful!

When I setup my Hue Bridge a long time ago, I created rooms which are identified in HA as light.<room_name>. Would you use those or would you create your own group in Home Assistant such as group.<room_name>

If you aren’t planning on mixing in other lights besides the Hues, I would just stick with light.*, but if you are going to mix-n-match, groups would be better. I mix and match my Zigbee lights hosted by HA along with my Hues, so I typically use groups and scenes for everything.

I tried using this and a light group and they worked fine some of the time, and the others only 1 light has the full brightness.

Did you include your Hue group (light.* from Hue) into your light group?

I’m dealing with the same issue. My front porch lights dim to 1% at midnight, go off at sunrise, and then at sunset are supposed to turn on at 80%. Sometimes they do, sometimes they turn on but only at 1%. I’m calling light.front_porch, a Hue group of 2 porch lights.

The same thing is happening in my son’s bedroom, where the light was 1% when it turned off overnight, and turns back on in the morning…sometimes at 100% as expected, sometimes at 1%. This time I’m calling an individual light. I don’t know why…

I’m using brightness (not brightness_pct) for both.

- id: '1607227520269'
  alias: 1 hr to Sunset
  description: ''
  trigger:
  - platform: sun
    event: sunset
    offset: -01:00:00
  condition: []
  action:
  - service: light.turn_on
    data:
      entity_id: light.front_porch
      brightness: 204

@rockon83 are you using Hue Hub to connect your lights to HA?
I used to get this a lot, not just with HA, but also SmartThings and Hubitat. In fact, it happened every 2 in 3 times when turning kitchen light strips on. Hue hub is just getting flooded and takes the turn on command but not the command to go to the set level you want.

The only sure way of this becoming a thing of the past is to switch to a new zigbee stick. I’m on a Deconz Conbee 2 and have never seen the problem since

1 Like

This can be solved using repeat which was launched in 0.113. After implementing it, I’ve never had any issues.

# Outside Lights - Evening
- id: outside_lights_evening
  alias: 'Outside Lights - Evening'
  initial_state: true
  trigger:
    - platform: sun
      event: sunset
      offset: "-00:20:00" # Fires 20 minutes prior to sunset
  action:
    repeat:
      count: 3
      sequence:
      - service: script.outside_lights_on
      - delay:
          seconds: 5

@MontyRisk I guess it depends on the use case. You have a potential window of 15 seconds without light at the right level. If the lights are for example in a hall way, 15 seconds could be far to slow to react to what you need. If its an outdoor light as in your example, 15 seconds delay isn’t such a biggie.
If its time critical for light to be on, then taking Hue off the hub to another zibgee service is definitely the way forward

@Townsmcp: Thanks! Yes, I am using the Hue hub. Any thoughts on why it would be getting flooded? Anything I can check to confirm or change to correct this?

@MontyRisk: I think I will try this. It doesn’t seem like the optimal solution, but if the brightness works most of the time, repeating it will increase the % of getting it right eventually :slight_smile: to @MontyRisk’s point, not a big deal if this kicks off 15 seconds later in my use case, but ultimately seems like a permanent band aid rather than healing.

Thanks for the replies!!

@rockon83 I spent 6 months looking into it but could only find that it was due to the hub protecting itself by not allow to many calls to be performed outside of itself

@Townsmcp - Upon my research, I presume you’re correct about the Hue Hub protecting itself. I have had the same issue whether or not I’ve used a Hue Group with a HA automation or a custom light group with several Hue lights in it through Home Assistant.

I took all of my Hue Groups and gave them a prefix, that way in HA, I can determine what is a custom group, vs a Hue group.

@rockon83 My issue was with outdoor lights not reaching the right brightness even though they are just a few feet from the hub.

In the example I gave, it will execute the turn on script 1 time every 5 seconds for 3 times. You can adjust this as you see fit.

Another idea of an automation:

  action:
  - service: light.turn_on
    data:
      entity_id: light.front_porch_1
      brightness: 204
 - delay: '00:00:02'
 - service: light.turn_on
    data:
      entity_id: light.front_porch_2
      brightness: 204

If light.front_porch is a Hue group made in the app, it makes one call, if it is a custom group with two lights, Hue interprets the turn on event as two separate calls.