Blue Hue Hub and Hubitat Progamming

hi,

I got my first batch of blue switches.

I have them connected to Hubitat and can see them turning on/off no problem. I have the hue hub also connected.

I can control the lights and they work. I can control the switches and I see the status bar going up and down. If i turn on/off the group of lights i see the status bar go up and down on the switch.

When i press the up and down on the switch nothing happens.

What step did I miss?

Thanks

To be clear, your Hue lights are integrated to Hubitat via the Hue Brige, right? (As opposed to direct Zigbee pairing?) If so, you would have to have configured some automation to make this work; Zigbee binding (instructions for which you might see elsewhere) won’t work. So, you should be able to extend whatever automation that is to do this, too.

If you didn’t do that, what’s probably happening is that your Hue lights are only turning on and off because you’re cutting power. This is definitely true if you didn’t enable smart bulb mode or local protection (different features that can both be used to accomplish this, depending on your exact goals). You could verify by putting “dumb” bulbs in the fixture and seeing if they turn off, too; another test would be to see if the Hue bulbs are still reachable in the Hue app (can you turn them back on? or it might say “unreachable” too) when they are turned off from the switch. If you hear a click on/off at the switch, that’s another sign.

The solution would be create such an automation on your hub. As part of that, you’ll need to enable smart bulb mode or at least local protection (I only do the latter, but I suspect the former is more common, even without binding) — otherwise you’re going to run into the above problem no matter what. There are multiple ways you can create an automation to do this, but built-in options that would be fairly easy to set up include Mirror (if you’re using smart bulb mode; this lets you “mirror” the tracked level or on/off state of the switch/dimmer to your bulbs without actually modifying the output from the switch/dimmer) or Button Controller (respond to the button events from the switch and turn the Hue bulbs on/off directly, or send a startLevelChange/stopLevelChange command to smoothly dim up/down and stop on release of the paddle).

If you have problems setting any of this up, someone can probably help if you confirm or share more information. Good luck!

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Hi thanks, now i understand where you were leading me.

The switch isn’t connected to the load at all. Just line and has power.

I tried the different options. Mirrors seems to be the easiest to set-up. The only thing i have noticed so far is that it seems a little slow and the granularity need to be adjusted. E.g. the level that the lights run at is generally 8 and couldn’t get there holding down the switch.

I’ve never tried Mirror, but I use the button approach myself: pressing up 1x turns on the lights, down 1x turns them off, a hold up starts dimming up, a hold down starts dimming down, and a release in either direction stops. Multi-taps do other things like activate scenes or change mode. I wrote a custom app to do this, but there’s no reason you couldn’t use the built-in Button Controller app or other options to ultimately do the same.

This might be faster since you are responding directly to the button events from the switch/dimmer, rather than having to wait for the real-world (switch or level) changes that result from that and then mirroring those events out as commands to do the same on the actual devices. The only disadvantage I can think of is that you won’t see the level reflected in the LED bar. Personally, I don’t need that; I can see the level perfectly fine from the lights. :slight_smile: And it frees up the LED bar to be a more easily-visible status indicator (100% or a full bar is easier to see) of other things in my home, such as mode or lock states. But if you really want that, you could probably still do it by picking a representative light or group and mirroring its level or on/off state back to the switch. You just might get a similar delay in that direction and likely not the smooth up/down dimming of the bar (just a move when it’s over). That and it won’t work with binding, but you can’t do that with a Hue Bridge, anyway.

For your level problem, I’m not quite sure what you mean. But it sounds like something you might be able to solve using one of the ramp rate/dimming rate preferences or maybe minimum level (if that is the problem, though I’m not sure). You could also use a double-tap or other multi-tap or the config button to just set the lights directly to your desired state more easily.

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Got it, great app,

Have you seen this error when using the dimming function

Unable to start level change up on [Katie’s Desk]: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Command ‘startLevelChange’ is not supported by device 83.

I can’t figure out why it’s doing this.

Really appreciate you building this app.

The only item i think I’m missing now is to figure out how to integrate Big Ass Fans into the upcoming invoelli multi button switches. There is an app for homebridge that works well, wonder if there is a connector back to homebridge

Are you using a Hue group from the Hubitat built-in integration? If so, those don’t support the startLevelChange() command (yet…), so you’ll have to use the individual devices or find another way to do this.

My way was writing my own Hue integration, CoCoHue. :slight_smile: But switching to that might entail a bit of work. The easiest workaround for now would probably be to:

  1. Enable the “Allow separate selection of group device besdies individual bulbs” option under Advanced Options
  2. Select your individual Hue lights instead of the group for “Select lights to turn on/off and dim with below actions”; and
  3. Select your Hue group device (containing the same lights, ultimately) for “Select group device to use when applicable” – the new option that the first step will enable.

When Hubitat adds startLevelChange() for Hue groups, you should be able to go back to the way things are now. This workaround uses the group device for on, off, color/CT, level, and similar commands, while reverting to the individual devices for the start/stop level change commands, which have historically not been implemented on groups (Hue or Hubitat, though it was recently added for Hubitat groups, too, so I hope this option will eventually no longer be useful…).

Thanks, so far working well.

Found a solution for the Big Ass Fans - Home Assistant and hub connect to bring them over to Hubitat.

Does the switch have to be in smart bulb mode for this programming to work?

Is there a way for the switch to be controlling an actual load and still be programmable? (Or partially programmable?)

Thanks!

Smart bulb mode disables control of the load while still internally tracking/reporting the state (so it knows the on/off state, level, etc., just doesn’t actually change the output; this is useful for reporting back to the hub or seeing on the device itself if you care about that). If you want the load to still be controlled, won’t it just do what you want if you keep that feature disabled and use the switch like normal? I’m not sure if this is what you are asking, but if so…

In any configuration, you can still use multi-taps or other events to control other devices. So if your single taps are currently controlling lights, either directly from the button events or via some sort of Mirror automation, you can also use double taps, the config button, or something else to control the fan (for example).

K, have to figure out what is wrong then. Have 2 switches that are controlling a load and i can’t get them to do other things with programming. Interestingly i don’t see anything in the live logs when i press the buttons. Any thoughts? Should i dry re-adding them to the system?

If you have info logging enabled (assuming you’re using Inovelli’s driver), it should log button events and anything else you do. Have you verified that the switch is actually working on your Zigbee network? Changing the LED bar color or setting an effect would be one way to test that. Re-pairing is normally an easy step to try that might help if it’s not (don’t delete it from the hub first, just reset and re-pair — or you can actually remove it if you don’t already have anything on the hub set up using it). Just a guess but one possibility based on what you describe.

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