Setting Up Control of Hue Lights Via Homekit Bridge

[joesan]

I'm having trouble setting up control of my Hue lights via Homekit Bridge.

I'd like to be able to turn on different rooms separately as well as turn everything on/off. (I find that I can't rely on 'Toggle' command as the Hue sometimes don't all toggle at the same time, meaning that sometimes some remain on when they should be off ie some lights get out of sync.) Dimming/brightening individual lights or room sets would also be good.

• What's the best naming scheme for the lights?
• Do I group them?
• Do I use toggle commands or explicit on and off commands?
• How do I invoke dimming or scenes?
• Should these by actions or devices in the Homekit Bridge settings?
• Basically what does the setup look like in Homekit Bridge?

Can someone who's got Hue light control working in Homebridge give me some tips?

[virgahyatt]

First of all, I would add the Hue lights directly to HomeKit. You will get faster and more reliable responses by taking out the middle man. Indigo can still control them and will get updated when they change.

However, this is the important bit and can be done if you added them directly to HomeKit or through Homebridge:

Assign them to the appropriate rooms in HomeKit. Then it's as simple as "Hey Siri, Turn off the living room lights" or "Hey Siri, turn off all the lights." You can even combine multiple rooms into zones. For example if you have a great room with both your kitchen and living room is really just one big room. You create both rooms and then add them both to the zone "Great Room" and you can control all the lights in that area with a single command.

Additionally, if you have a HomePod, it knows which room it is in. So if it's in the Living Room and you say "Hey Siri, turn off the lights" (note the absence of the word all) and it will turn off the lights in the living room.

To brighten or dim simply say "Hey Siri, set the living rooms lights to 50%"

[joesan]

Thanks Virgahyatt.

I have some of the lights in Homekit so perhaps I'll go through the step of making sure everything is allocated to the right rooms. I do have a HomePod so I do use Siri sometimes to control the lights but I find it a bit hit and miss. Indigo, in contrast, is normally very reliable but I can't work out a good UI for manually adjusting colour and dimming from Indigo Touch for individual Hue lights.

[siclark]

I have the Hue v1 Bridge so have to set up my Hue lights through HKB and it works great (although would do directly if my bridge were HK enabled, as I do with Alexa) . I have stopped using Indigo Touch for almost all controls as the Home app works well. It is a pain setting up all the rooms but worth the effort. Once the Hue lights are in the Home app, through either method, you can set colour and brightness through the Home app.

[joesan]

Thanks Si. I'll work on getting the Hue lights into HK as suggested. I suppose the best idea is to move as much as possible to HK as the IOS app is a bit more friendly than Indigo Touch eg graphical interface, doesn't expose all devices etc.

I think that where things have been getting confusing is the 'halfway house' of most items in Indigo and only some in HK. With HKB I should be able to get everything into HK.