Philips Hue FAQ

Some new toys arrived today for the new holiday house in Lithuania..

Small Enrave White Ambience ceiling light for a downstairs bathroom, an outdoor Discover White & Colour Floodlight for a deck/back garden, and I’ve also a Medium Enrave White Ambience ceiling light arriving tomorrow, for the main bathroom upstairs..

I wired both up just to test them, and I have to say the Enrave is a very pretty light…

Hi Folks,

Will post this again here as because it's Hue related, might gain more traction in the Hue thread as opposed to the general chat thread;

Looking for tips or advice on a slightly IoT related topic.... Internet/Networking..

We are buying a holiday home, in Lithuania, and I've already a fair amount of Hue lights/bulbs for the house (like here, the whole house will be Hue'd up)

In the new house, we are probably only going to have a local mobile internet dongle that connects to local 3/4/5G network. We were over there during the summer and used her mothers one which seemed fine, and should suffice for our needs....

The issue is these dongles don't have any LAN ports on them, and only have a micro USB plug to power/charge them..... and with the Philips Hue Bridge, Obviously I need a LAN port to plug the bridge into..

Question is could I buy a simple plug in Wifi extender that comes with a built in LAN port, to connect wirelessly to the WiFi network my dongle will broadcast, and then use the LAN port to plug in the Hue Bridge? (And as a bonus I probably get to put out a stronger WiFi signal than the dongle would otherwise broadcast on it's own).

As a side note, will also have a WiFi controlled AC/heating system, as well as a RoboVac, but they should both just connect via WiFi so shouldn't be a concern. I'd maybe add a few IP cameras down the line too.

That’s very interesting, I didn’t even know they existed….

so I could get the local sim card, forego the dongle (though it probably comes with the sim card) and just pop the sim into one of these?

Just found out that Livarno (LIDL) GU10 bulbs are longer than standard ones and will not fit some enclosed fittings. Luckily I had some spare Hue bulbs, or I'd have been in trouble. Might help someone....

For background I was changing the fittings in the kitchen for fire rated ones.

I am a big fan of the Hue ecosystem, most of the lights in the house are controlled by them.

Two issues that I have with them are 1) the cost and 2) the "flimsy" feel of their four button lightswitches.

I bought a Sonoff Zigbee "ZBMINI" smart switch that could solve both issues. It was just 16e on Amazon.co.uk, and had the potential to replace both a Hue light and a Hue lightswitch in one go.

You wire it in behind your old light switch backplate. You can control the on/off of the module using your old light switch. You can pair the module to your Hue Hub for use in the Hue ecosystem. One gotcha is that you need a neutral wire behind your light switch, something that many older Irish households will not have.

I was surprised to find that everything worked! 🤗

Excited, I went out and bought their zigbee relay for another project:

Unfortunately, this did not even pair with the Hue hub :-(

I also bought their ZBMINI-L, which is supposed to be the same as their ZBMINI, but not require a neutral wire, making it much more compatible with Irish households.

This paired successfully with the Hue Hub and I was able to turn it on and off in the Hue App.

One issue I noticed that I had to be selective about the bulbs that I had on the same circuit as it. I happened to have an old Philips Hue bulb on the circuit which caused an issue: The light would turn off, but not back on when instructed. I assume this is due to the following: As the module has to neutral wire, it has to extract power parasitically from the live wire: i.e. the live wire has to have some power going through it, even when "off". I assume that the Hue had very little standby current. When I swapped out the bulb for a normal LED bulb it worked fine.

However, and strangely, I found a more serious issue. if I added it to a room in the App, I could not control it by turning on and off all the devices as a room. This meant that I could not control it from Google Home, making it worthless to me 😔

Lastly, i bought the Sonoff Socket relay for 13e.

This worked great with Philips Hue.

In summary, the Sonoff ZBMINI and Sonoff Zigbee socket is great for Philips Hue, but stay away from the relay and the ZBMINI-L.

yeah, not for me,

I've 2 strings totalling about 1,600 warm white LED fairly lights, and that's all I'll ever want or need. don't need colour, and don't need flashing/animated....

On a separate note, I've ordered 4 of the large globe filament white ambiance bulbs for a light fitting I just bought for a dining table light...

They were €35 each down from €45 (which is what the giant globes currently cost, but I'll be happy enough with the regular sized ones!

I have 6x GU10 colour spots for the main kitchen area, a light strip for over the top of the kitchen units, and now these 4 white ambience globes in this fitting above the dining table!!!

Fcuk Me fitting out 1 house was expensive enough, but fitting out a second one!!!!

Also, has hue sync stopped working for most things for anyone else?

Rte player and netflix aren't causing my.entertainment area to interact anymore. YouTube, games and local files working fine

Brilliant - glad it worked out 👍🏻

That’s the starter kit you want as you get the bridge, and 3 of the colour bulbs which are the top of the range bulbs. You also get the button switch with it. Once you get this kit all you need to grow your system is additional bulbs or additional switches & sensors.

this is the starter pack I’d recommend.

the various styles of Hue bulbs come in 3 grades;

White = warm white standard type bulb

White Ambience = warm to cold whites and everything in between

White & Colour Ambience = like the white ambience above but with the addition of colour

best place is still Amazon but always be watching for deals (2 colour e27 bulbs were €56 last week but normally over €100 for a pair)

Suffice to say it’s all worked out quite well…

I’m in Lithuania at the moment and signed up to a 4G data plan yesterday (€11.39pm for 24 months with unlimited data), All I needed was my passport and an email address and I was out the door with the SIM card in 5 minutes!!

back to the house and plugged in the router and BANG!! Up and running in 30 seconds… and pretty impressive speeds too

Set up the Philips Hue Bridge and added it to my app and started linking up the lights I’d already installed, as well as throwing in some various bulbs here and there… to just get some automation going…

These are the 2 Enrave Hue While Ambience lights in the bathrooms, small & medium size..

Happy Days!!

I got my first hue starter set 9 years ago and yeah it’s a very nice to have, but I couldn’t live without the automation of it all at this stage… all in I’ve probably bought about 150+ various Hue bulbs over the years..

As I posted above I’ve just started fitting out a holiday home we bought in Lithuania with Hue and I put a few bulbs in on Thursday after I got internet hooked up…. And found it a pain in the hole having to get the phone out to adjust lights…. By the time i flew home on Sunday night I’d already set up 2 dimmer switches and a sensor, and have since added a basic routine to turn a few lights on/off every day.

regarding sensors, for me they are by far the best aspect of the hue system…. I have one in the kitchen, bathroom, en-suite and my office (and now in the bathroom in the holiday house, and I need at least 2 more for there). They are in the rooms that aren’t controlled by any routine as they are lights that only need to come on when those rooms are in use….

overall for me the best thing about the system is the lack of user input that’s needed on a day to day basis…. I still have dimmer switches everywhere if I ever need to change a room to a brighter/dimmer scene or turn a light on/off outside of its scheduled time, but those times are few and far between example: I’ve 11 dimmer switches at least 3 years now and have only ever changed the battery on 2 of them..

id still wire the house up as normal as if you ever do leave it…. You’ll want to take your very expensive smart lighting system with you…… I reckon I must be in for over €10k with it all at this stage!!

Thanks. Yes I'm planning Ethernet to all rooms and POE circuit to specific spots for my Ubiquiti APs, all back to a single location.

When you say rewire to a home smart system, what do you mean?

Quick question

I have a Sonoff 3.0 Zigbee hub connected to home assistant, I presume I can use this instead of the Philips Hue Hub to connect any Hue lights I put in...

Thanks

I've some IKEA switches controlling hue lights (and IKEA lights running on hue) at home. The switches don't show in hue, there was a third party android app I had to download and then you had to pair the switch with each light your want it to work with. Was a pain to do for downloghters but on working, had been faultless

Anyone know how to turn on a hue smart plug automatically? I have a couple of Lidk smart plugs that I want to turn on at specific times. They are recognised by ypthe hue app and I can turn them on/off from the app. However I cannot find and way of turning them on from a routine. The on,y options I can find is turn it off or set it to a certain brightness. Am I missing something?

Philips don't actually own hue anymore. Signify took over a few years ago.

Any one ever experience the motion sensor always triggering their lights no matter what the light level sensitivity is set to?

Happening in my kitchen now and it's annoying.

Anyone thinking of getting the Philips cameras?

I see the app now let's you use your motion detectors to notify you if there's movement.

I think I'll get two for outside. One to cover the back and one for the front, possibly a third for inside but I'll only be buying when they're reduced like all my hue gear 😁

Have 2 white and colour light bulbs in kitchen. When I turn them on one lighter white than other even though same setting. Then after a while they flicker to match

Anyone experience this?

It's definitely possible, have most of the lights in my house setup with it for a couple of years now.