Are you doing anything with Hue?

New Hue Dimmer Switch model out....GBP 17.99 on the Philips site with 20% discount for two or more. Been on my list to pick up for a while, so nabbed a couple.
 
mid_gen said:
New Hue Dimmer Switch model out....GBP 17.99 on the Philips site with 20% discount for two or more. Been on my list to pick up for a while, so nabbed a couple.
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As a replacement, or just because of need?

I don't think there's any change over the old one AFAIK, apart from a design update.
 
Semple said:
As a replacement, or just because of need?

I don't think there's any change over the old one AFAIK, apart from a design update.
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Needed em, left my old one in my apartment in Germany when I moved back (doh). Also slowly changing all the lighting to Hue in the new house so needing more. I can get away with adding smart lights everywhere as long as the OH has a switch to control em...
 
I could really do with some help here.

I've a Philips Hue Bridge, and a real selection of ceiling lights, bulbs, hue lamps, etc. I then have Amazon Echo as the personal assistant speakers around the house.

I've configured the Alexa App to have the various rooms of the house, and then put the smart appliances in each room.

I however have a bit of a problem in our bedroom. We've recently got two Hue Lamps (named as "Our Name" Lamp) and we have the Hue Cher ceiling light (named as "Our Bedroom Light")

If we have all 3 on and say "Alexa, Our Bedroom Light Off", all 3 turn off.

What are we doing wrong? do we simply need a different name as we're confusing Alexa with "all Bedroom lights off' Or somesuch?
 
Conanius said:
What are we doing wrong? do we simply need a different name as we're confusing Alexa with "all Bedroom lights off' Or somesuch?
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Basically yeah. The Alexa thinks you want to turn off the entire room as the name for the room is the same as the first word of the name of your light. We had this problem when we tried names such as "bedroom light" and "bedroom tv". Changed them to "big light" and "upstairs tv" and not had any problems since.
 
EH75 said:
Basically yeah. The Alexa thinks you want to turn off the entire room as the name for the room is the same as the first word of the name of your light. We had this problem when we tried names such as "bedroom light" and "bedroom tv". Changed them to "big light" and "upstairs tv" and not had any problems since.
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Just renamed the 'bedroom light' to 'ceiling' and that seems to still turn the lamps on and off

Edit - I am an idiot. I'd somehow bound the lights together in the hue app.
 
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In the space of five weeks, I'm almost completely Hued up now.

My hallway has a bulb and a motion sensor that is triggered when the light gets below a certain level from an hour before sunset until midnight and then does the same from midnight until an hour after sunset but comes on a lower level.

My upstairs landing has two bulbs and a motion sensor that's triggered as per the above.

These are transit areas and the lights are configured to go off 45 seconds after the motion sensor stops detecting movement.

My radio shack has a couple of uplifters and a centre bulb and a motion sensor all configured as per the above except that it waits for five minutes of inactivity before switching off.

The front room has a higher powered Hue bulb that's purely voice triggered although I may add a hue smart button.

My office has a bulb which is voice controlled but also part of a scene combing a powered socket that I use to start everything up and a HomePod mini which comes on playing the radio for me as part of the automation.

In our bedroom, we have one bulb in a light above the bed, purely voice triggered (Lumos and Nox).

The bathroom has a bulb that's triggered by a Hue smart button. From sunrise to midnight, it will come on at full brightness and from midnight to sunrise, it comes on at 50%. The button has a shortcut configured to do all this so I don't have to faff with long pushes, a simple push will turn it on to the appropriate level and then a second push will turn it off.

My daughter has a lamp which is purely voice controlled and a centre ceiling light that's controlled by a Hue dimmer.

My son has the same although I've not got the centre light and the dimmer yet, they're due in the next couple of days.

We have a second light in our bedroom which is going to have a dimmer and a Hue bulb but as per my lad, they've not arrived yet.

The only room that's not got any smart lighting in is the kitchen and that's because it has a single central fluorescent tube which I can't easily smartify. I'd very much like to get some Hue lighting in there along with a motion sensor but am still working out what to do.

All the rooms except the landing and the hallway have HomePod minis so we have full Siri control everywhere. The main front room has a stereo pair of full sized HomePods.

We have an outhouse but the door and frame need replacing. It's the sort of place that always needs a light so once the door and frame are sorted, I'll fit an Eve door and window contact sensor to control the light in there - When the door is opened, the light will come on and when it's closed, the light will go off.
 
Feek said:
These are transit areas and the lights are configured to go off 45 seconds after the motion sensor stops detecting movement.
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Have you configured that externally to Hue? IIRC the minimum time is 1 minute. And from my understanding/researching the timer starts at the first detection of movement rather than the last - which is mostly why I find them a bit useless.
 
Feek said:
In the space of five weeks, I'm almost completely Hued up now.

My hallway has a bulb and a motion sensor that is triggered when the light gets below a certain level from an hour before sunset until midnight and then does the same from midnight until an hour after sunset but comes on a lower level.

My upstairs landing has two bulbs and a motion sensor that's triggered as per the above.

These are transit areas and the lights are configured to go off 45 seconds after the motion sensor stops detecting movement.

My radio shack has a couple of uplifters and a centre bulb and a motion sensor all configured as per the above except that it waits for five minutes of inactivity before switching off.

The front room has a higher powered Hue bulb that's purely voice triggered although I may add a hue smart button.

My office has a bulb which is voice controlled but also part of a scene combing a powered socket that I use to start everything up and a HomePod mini which comes on playing the radio for me as part of the automation.

In our bedroom, we have one bulb in a light above the bed, purely voice triggered (Lumos and Nox).

The bathroom has a bulb that's triggered by a Hue smart button. From sunrise to midnight, it will come on at full brightness and from midnight to sunrise, it comes on at 50%. The button has a shortcut configured to do all this so I don't have to faff with long pushes, a simple push will turn it on to the appropriate level and then a second push will turn it off.

My daughter has a lamp which is purely voice controlled and a centre ceiling light that's controlled by a Hue dimmer.

My son has the same although I've not got the centre light and the dimmer yet, they're due in the next couple of days.

We have a second light in our bedroom which is going to have a dimmer and a Hue bulb but as per my lad, they've not arrived yet.

The only room that's not got any smart lighting in is the kitchen and that's because it has a single central fluorescent tube which I can't easily smartify. I'd very much like to get some Hue lighting in there along with a motion sensor but am still working out what to do.

All the rooms except the landing and the hallway have HomePod minis so we have full Siri control everywhere. The main front room has a stereo pair of full sized HomePods.

We have an outhouse but the door and frame need replacing. It's the sort of place that always needs a light so once the door and frame are sorted, I'll fit an Eve door and window contact sensor to control the light in there - When the door is opened, the light will come on and when it's closed, the light will go off.
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I think HomeAssistant is your next stop!

Id recommend you replace the kitchen light with some downlighters, it'll be an improvement in many ways.
 
Semple said:
Have you configured that externally to Hue? IIRC the minimum time is 1 minute. And from my understanding/researching the timer starts at the first detection of movement rather than the last - which is mostly why I find them a bit useless.
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I've done all the configuration within HomeKit - You're quite correct regarding the off time which is why you have to get a bit sneaky. I don't claim originality for this, I found this method online somewhere and have tweaked it.

Here's the automation/shortcut I use to trigger the shack lights from one hour before sunset to midnight. I'll put it behind spoiler tags because it's so large!

To explain the time thing, it gets the current time and converts it to a number, so if sunset is 19:45, it converts that to 1945. To get an hour before sunset, ie 18:45, we need to subtract 100 from that 1945. It works perfectly well for increments of one hour, two hours etc but if you want to go to different offsets then it's more complicated.

The trigger for this is "When motion detected in shack"
Wjtk9BA.png

Switching off is also done in a similar way, via a shortcut/automation thing. Here's how I do the 45 second switch off in my landing - My landing has two lights, 'light1' and 'light2' which are grouped and called just 'light' so I check to make sure one is switched on and go from there. It waits for 15 seconds and if there's still motion, the shortcut is ended. If there's no motion then it turns the light group off.

The trigger for this is "When no motion detected in landing"
3JCsCW5.png

It takes a bit to get your head around these and they're a little fiddley to set up but they're working really well.

Hyburnate said:
I think HomeAssistant is your next stop!
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What benefits will that give me when I'm able to do everything I need in HomeKit? I do have the iConnectHue app but am not actually using it for anything at the moment!

Hyburnate said:
Id recommend you replace the kitchen light with some downlighters, it'll be an improvement in many ways.
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Our kitchen is very old and a real mishmash of fittings, I was thinking about simply replacing the fluorescent tube with a light bar with GU10 bulbs. I like the light pattern of the fluorescent tube because everywhere is flooded with light so I need to replicate that at an absolute minimum.
 
Aye, I'm using their internal ones. I have a 500W PIR halogen flood outside at the moment that's not smart in anyway whatsoever but I'm planning on replacing that later this year with a Hue outside light using one of the external movement sensors. Apart from not blinding people every time it comes on, it'll save a bit of cash on the electricity as well.
 
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