1 Like
I have my HUE lights connected to 2 HUE bridges because we love playing/switching between the Hue scene gallery predefined scenes in the HUE app on the phone. Can these be imported / used in HA in a similar way? I have about 50 full colour GU10 lamps in the house, wouldn’t like to lose functionality to use the colours. They even have some nice scenes for Halloween, I guess they will have others for Diwali etc. Would be nice to collect them all and import into HA
The Hue scenes can be activated from HA with service calls.
HA has its own scene routines too.
Hi all. I would love to get rid off hue bridge and have all purely on home assistant, however I would loose hue entertainment bit I guess? I’m talking about integration with TV screen, disco lights etc?
Please let me that I’m wrong 
Thanks for response but not exactly. Hue sync needs a box which I don’t have. Having hue bridge and lights you can set the hue entertainment rooms, then use them to play disco lights or follow the colours from TV screen (android TV).
I would love to get rid off bridge to be able to use all lights as ZigBee mesh, however don’t want to lose this entertainment feature. So the question is if there’s something which would prevent hue bridge and would allow to make those entertainment rooms?
I am not totally sure but I think that most of the effects, automations and scenes for philips hue systems are stored directly to the hue bridge so I don’t think there is a way to get a feature that is saved in the bridge you want to remove. I think a Hue Sync Box and the integration suggested by @Harry-1976 is your best option here.
1 Like
There is also a difference between operation of scenes by Hue vs Home Assistant: Home Assistant Philips Hue scenes
I’ve had a read over this, and I am one of those techy nerds that would put everything in Home Assistant and use a Zigbee co-ordinator and not extra bridges.
I have recently made the decision to go back to the Hue Bridge though. It may seems silly, but since migrating to Home Assistant Yellow, the Hue devices, in particular battery devices like motion sensors and dimmer switches, have been very unreliable in ZHA. I’ve kept ZHA for the Aqara stuff, so yes I am using two Zigbee networks, but the Hue branded stuff I have put back on the Hue bridge. I may try ZHA again for Hue products at a later date, but for me I needed reliability and the Hue Bridge just gave me that. I am happy to create scenes for my self in Home Assistant and stuff like that, it was purely the reliability factor that made me move back to the Hue bridge in my particular circumstances.
If you can pair to a single co-ordinator and use it within Home Assistant withotu the Hue Bridge, this would be a better solution as havign less Zigbee networks and not being locked into only Hue products is a beter way to do things, but in my case I had to do the less than ideal solution (in my mind) for reliability.
2 Likes
I have to agree with that - I moved to zha, then back to hue after a frustrating few days, then decided to try z2m and ended up back with Hue. Similarly, it was the motion sensors and dimmer switches that broke me, I just couldn’t rely on them just working as they do under Hue. It’s a shame. I still have z2m for some other sensors, so I would love to be back on just one zigbee network but I have to live with it!
1 Like
@brendan @nuadha - I’m interested to read your posts. I’m in the “reading everything” phase before I move from Hue to Home Assistant. What I thought I might do is this:
- Install Hue integration on HA
- Re-use my Hue Dimmer Switches via HA so I can control Hue and non-Hue lights as a product agnostic group of lights - dim/brighten, change colours, off/on.
Based on your experience with Hue switches only being reliable on Hue Hub does this sound like a bad plan? I can always buy alternative switches that will do the same thing.
I believe your plan should work. Hue switches send events that can be used to trigger automations to do virtually anything you can dream of. Just make sure they are not controlling lights in the Hue app and just use the events sent to Home Assistant.
The event type is hue_event.
2 Likes
@nuadha and @brendan Are you running multiple Hue Bridges though?
I am in the middle of planning a large Hue installation with about 200 Hue lights and accessories. I have 5 Hue hubs ready to install and I have a Home Assistant setup already.
I was thinking of dividing the house into 5 geographical zones and setting everything up natively in Hue and spreading the lights and accessories roughly evenly across the 5 zones/hubs.
I was then thinking of putting Home Assistant over the top and using that for out of home control/anything that Hue can’t do natively.
Is this a bad plan? Is there a better way of doing it? I need to make sure that reliability and performance are the number 1 and 2 priorities as this setup will be used by 3 other people who are not particularly techy and they need to operate it the same as they would a traditional lighting system.
Thanks!
If you plan 200 lights, you definitely need multiple hubs in the Hue ecosystem.
Why does the house need to be 5 geographical zones? Wouldn’t you just use areas even in Hue?
What you plan will work out and the Hue ecosystem can handle it, but you will find that automations in Home Assistant can be created to do a lot more and it might be best just to use Home Assistant for your automations from the start and integrate other devices as needed. If you got Z-Wave or Matter devices that don’t connect to the Hue bridges in the future, you could easily create automations to integrate them with hue devices.
Personally, I think keeping Hue products on the Hue bridges is fine. They do work with ZHA, but you won’t get firmware updates from Hue easily via ZHA. Hue Scenes can be activated via Home Assistant automations also. I would really look seriously at using Home Assistant as your automation platform though and keep Hue purely as the bridge to pull the devices into Home Assistant.
Also, is there a reason you want 200 Hue Lights instead of other brands? The advantage of Home Assistant is being brand agnostic, meaning you can mix and match.
That’s my thoughts. You do what is easiest for you in the end as it is your home and you have to maintain it. I have done both ways and just found the automations in Home Assistant so much more powerful and they can all be done via the GUI now so I just use the Hue Bridge just as the name says. A bridge to pull devices into Home Assistant, while retaining the ability to update firmware.
I use several Hue Scenes and they are all called from Home Assistant scripts or automations.
Edit: Just as a thought here. Keeping automations in one place is definitely easier, so if you feel in the future you may have window openers, thermostats or blind controls that don’t go into Hue, but want to automate them, you’d then be looking after automations in the Hue app as well as in Home Assistant. Just another thing to think of regarding maintenance 
The way you want to maintain it will be the biggest deciding factor
Thanks for the quick response!
By “5 geographical zones” I meant I will need to have the 5 Hue Hubs managing a ~5th of the Hue devices so I was going to divide it up based on areas and have one Hue Hub in each of those areas (e.g front lower floor, rear lower floor, front upper floor, rear upper floor, back yard).
I think you’re right. I was thinking of doing all but a couple of super basic automations in HA.
The reason they’re all Hue is because I’ve purchased them all already 
and I was trying to minimise the number of different brands I am integrating - I tried to strategically choose brands based on how comprehensive and stable their product lines are. For example I’m using only Hue for my lights and smart plugs, only Ecowitt for my environmental sensors, only Unifi for my networking etc.
Thank you for the advice, it is fantastic!!!
What are you using for light switches and dimmer switches?
A mix of mostly Hue Dimmer Switches with some tap dials.
I’m going to ask the electrician to push the actual light switches into the wall cavity, leaving them in the on position and then stick the Hue switch over the hole. Not sure if that is compliant where I live but that will be something I need to discuss with the electrician.
What wasn’t working for you with the dimmer switches? Did you have them bound directly to zigbee groups of lights or were you handling their events via automations/blueprints? I have RWL022 dimmer switches bound directly to lighting groups and the response seems to be fast and reliable. The problem is that the switch’s on/off button sends alternating on and off commands, instead of a toggle command, so if the button last sent ON then it will next send OFF even if all the lights are already off, which makes the user think that the button press was ignored or lost. When using the Hue Hub, the behaviour matches as if the dimmer switch was sending toggle.
That sounds expensive. You could set up 200 dumb lights and smart in-wall switches for the fraction of the cost.
I could have done that, yes.
I could also walk everywhere and only ever drink water to save money.