Hello Guys,
I’m able to control my Philips Hue Lamps with my Alexa Plus (integrated Hue Bridge). But I can’t activate the Hue Binding because I need the IP of the bridge, and I don’t know, if I’m just not able to finde the right Username, or if it’s not possible to use the Echo Plus as a bridge in openHAB.
Hopfully somebody have an idea how to fix this, because I don’t want to buy a extra bridge, if not
necessary.
(p.s.: Sorry for my bad Englisch skills) thank you in advance
Hi Lennart,
IIRC I read something about the same features available in the Alexa Pro as for a normal Hue Bridge. This leads me to the assumption that the following tutorial will work too.
Could you give it a try?
Hi Christoph,
Thanks for the reply. I think the main features like: dimming, Light colour etc. are available on the Pro.
But to connect to the bridge I need the IP of the bridge. If i try to handle my Echo Pro as the bridge and try to use this IP (in my case xxx.xxx.xxx.33) im not able to connect. Neither in the Hue App or openHAB. If i try to find out the IP e.g. with this (https://discovery.meethue.com/) link I don’t get any response. And without the IP i can’t get the Username. So it’s not possible for me to follow the instructions…
I googled but didn’t see an alexa pro is this the same as alexa plus? If so, the alexa uses a zigbee hub and you can control your devices using either the wemo or hue emulation binding.
You are right, there is only the Amazon Echo Plus, my fault. When I try to use the hue emulation the status is: OFFLINE - CONFIGURATION_ERROR. It tells me: “Failed to create new user on hue bridge.” Im not sure which IP I should use. The one, where I host OH, or the one from Alexa?
And where do i get the username from?
Hm, too bad. What happens if you type in http://<alexa ip address>/debug/clip.html into your browser?
I only get “ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT”. I don’t have any idea where to get the username from…
Personally, I use the wemo emulation and it works with hue lights. If your using with OH just apply the tags to your items and the alexa app will find it as a new device.
To answer the original question, no alexa cannot be used as a bridge to OH.
Thanks to you both for your answers! A friend of mine told me he can give me a Hue Bridge Gen 1. I think this is best way for me to solve this Problem!
Its always good to have options…
Another option if interested:
Something I started using a few months ago that has worked very well is zigbee2mqtt and a cheap USB dongle CC2831.
After some research I came to the conclusion that it will not be possible to connect your Echo Plus via the Hue binding to openHAB. The Echo Plus supports limited features and bulbs. No sensors. And so on. Even Philips mentions on their own website that you will get way more functionality out of your lights if you use a Hue Bridge.
Most important reason: it contains a ZigBee transmitter/receiver not the Hue REST API.
Mentioned in the 4th post here and several others on the forum.