Philips Hue bulbs

Huh. Then what does the Hue Bridge do that the Echo Plus’s “built-in hub” doesn’t?

Echo Plus is a simple way to start your smart home. It has a built-in ZigBee smart home hub, which allows for simple and direct setup of compatible ZigBee lights, locks, plugs, and in-wall switches from brands like Philips Hue, GE, and Yale. No additional hub required.

i was under the impression the hue hub is always needed (you know, to pair, with the button on top of it) and its zigbee radio then is controlled by the one in the echo plus. the echo plus can’t control the hue bulbs directly on an ad hoc basis.

you can try setting them up without the hue hub.

Only had time to set the new Echo Plus & new Echo Dot up on the network tonight and haven’t had time yet to connect the Plus to the lights, but based on what I’ve read it should suffice for everything lighting minus scenes, which I don’t currently use despite owning a Lightstrip. It supposedly only falls short if you want to use it for scenes and for non-bulb devices.

Amazon’s launch of the Echo Plus realises this position with new hardware, effectively providing a way to cut out those third-party companies and work directly with their compatible products. You’ll no longer have to use Alexa skills and importantly, you wouldn’t necessarily need the hub or bridge for that product.
[…]
What you won’t need is the Hue Bridge (£50) and you won’t need to buy the Philips Hue starter kit which is normally how you’d get into the system.
[…]
However, the experience you get from the Echo Plus isn’t the full experience that Philips Hue offers, which the company is quick to point out. Adding the Hue Bridge will unlock the full potential that the system offers, including compatibility with many more sensors, the ability to automate and set scenes, as well as get system updates over the air and future features.

Will spend more time with it tomorrow. I may end up just keeping the Bridge, but I’ll make that decision after I’ve played around with the Plus sans Bridge.

Damn it, now my Hue Bridge is acting up. Almost as if it went into a big sulk after the arrival of the Echo Plus. Which it almost literally has done, as the Hue app says it can’t find the Bridge when it searches.

I reset the Bridge to factory defaults and uninstalled/reinstalled the Hue app on my phone, to no avail. Currently the Bridge is connected to a network switch; tonight I guess I’ll connect it directly to the router and see if anything changes. I can’t imagine the problem is network related, as the network indicator light is a solid green. Worried that the Bridge is just no longer interested in being a team player. And here I was thinking I might not get rid of it after all!

Meanwhile, it’s looking like connecting the Echo Plus to a bunch of Hue bulbs requires adding the Hue Alexa skill, and adding that skill requires linking the Echo Plus to the Hue cloud, and that in turn requires, apparently, on the Hue side, having a Bridge that works. Which is really strange, considering the Echo Plus marketing stuff explicitly highlights this advantage of not strictly requiring owning a Bridge.

Anyway for the time being, I’m back in the dark ages and fumbling for physical light switches like a dirty pleb. I haven’t had to touch light switches in my home for almost two years!

Yeah adding hue cloud requires the hub for sure.

Okay, I managed to resolve the above Hub issue by directing my phone to forget my wifi network and reconnecting to wifi again, as recommended by Hue Bridge Connectivity Issues (huetips .com).

I really don’t know if the Hub is required for the Echo Plus or not. It certainly seems that way based on my experience thus far, but there was enough weirdness with the Hub not being accessible for awhile and the meethue.com website, which the Alexa app directed me to in order to get started on its hub functions, saying that it required that I turn on a Hue Hub, all of which make me think that something is really off with Amazon’s product description saying “No additional hub required”.

In order for me to actually get to the bottom of this, I would have to spend yet another hour or two restoring devices to factory defaults and rediscovering bulbs and renaming them and recreating room groups all over again, which I don’t have the energy to deal with right now. So I’ll just stick with things as they are.

So, as for the Echo Plus, it’s just a more expensive Echo in my opinion, although it does have a 0.8" tweeter versus the 0.6" tweeter on the standard Echo. I have heard people say that it also sacrifices bass for treble, but I don’t blast my music and am not noticing that yet and may not ever notice it.

I have heard of issues with Alexa/Echo and Hue, mainly caused by the setup in each app being inconsistent. If you ever have issues finding your bridge (but were able to connect to it previously), that’s likely the reason. Disconnect it as a device under the Alexa/Echo app and restart with just the Hue.

I’m a Hue fanatic. I got a few color ones and a bridge thrown in for fun when I bought a TV at best buy - I loved them so much (and love them for seasonal decorations especially) that I ended up buying 33 more (all color - make sure you buy the latest versions (3rd E) as the earlier versions have issues with Green colors being less dark, but otherwise are identical), including a couple of lightstrips, GU-10s for my spot lighting, etc., replacing all the lights in my house. I mainly control them through Google home these days, and have managed to get a few of my friends to jump onboard with Hue after seeing the effect they can have.

Yeah, that’s what I ended up doing along the way, but went a little further and basically started over with the same Bridge.

Now the Hue app on my phone is stuck trying to update all my bulbs. I have read that this process can take up to 24 hours (or twice the amount of lights), but I started this particular update about 4 hours ago, and it’s still stuck. Not a single bulb is listed as having been updated. Plus, the app appears to suspend itself whenever the phone screen goes to sleep, and that (I believe) halts the update.

Hoping I’m not going to have to wipe my Bridge firmware and app and start this all over again to fix another problem. Love the lights but their software sucks.

Bulbs finished updating overnight, except for one. Hue app can’t update bulbs when it’s not connected to the same wifi network, and I’m at work. Grr.

Edit: Just realized that from a security standpoint, not being able to update my Hue firmware from outside my home network is actually a good feature. So I can live with that. :)

Is there an easy way to tell these apart from older versions? Is 3rd E the “Ambiance” line?

No, the 3rd gen Hue are more vivid in their colour than the previous gen. Ambiance is a separate SKU from plain white.

The 3rd gen bulbs have a little sunburst in the top right corner of the box that says “Richer color” or something along those lines.

Thanks!

Thread necro: I put a gen3 Hue colour bulb into a FADO IKEA desk lamp since the Friends-of-Hue GO Lamp isn’t supported to try an approximation of Philip’s old AMBIX initiative (colour matching to video playback, or games) and it works (with whatever CPU hit the Windows app takes) but the overall effect is underwhelming. Not really good as ambient/bias lighting either.

rei (or anyone else with one of these,) outside of your bias project, in practice do you end up actually changing the hue of any of your standalone bulbs that much or is it mostly a one time novelty and then left alone afterward.

I’ve wanted to get one for a while but I’m betting I would set it and forget it, making them much more of a cost premium than a dedicated color light.

I use the color settings around the holidays… and that’s it. I can strongly recommend the White Ambiance though - changing to a bright blue-white when I’m doing work, then a softer white to warm white/nearly yellow as the evening goes on is great (and can be automated!).

If you’re after bias lighting, there’s a bunch of Chinese resellers putting their own branding on cheap LED strips with a remote to change colors on Amazon. No integration with smart home tech last I checked, but perfectly serviceable for the $10ish they’re asking.

I think the only practical use is changing hue during winter to provide more blueish light.

Once or twice I’ve used it to dim the lights so I could watch annoyingly dark movies.

Smartphone control sucks which means a hardwired device which is more money wasted.

Good info, I’ll strongly consider the white ambiance.

Is the hub still needed to tie it to voice control on an Echo?

There is also this …

Hue Disco has it beat by a mile.