Getting Philips Hue to Pair - Mystery Revealed?

Running:
openHAB 3.4.0 Build #3029
Using the Ember EM35x Coordinator on a Dual USB Nortek stick

I’m trying to understand how the Philips Hue pairing process works. I have been using mine successfully since I first used OH but I haven’t seen a description how to make it work. Mine stopped working after a reboot and so I went through various steps and it started working, but I have no idea why. So here are some questions:

Let’s say I delete the Username in the Thing Config … How do I restore it?
I’ve used this trick before that I found on a thread here I think:

1. To get username using the Top Hue Button:
  1. http://<BRIDGE_IP_ADDRESS>/debug/clip.html
  2. fill URL with /api
  3. fill MessageBody with something like {"devicetype": "openhabHueBinding#openhab"}
  4. press hue box button
  5. click POST
  6. find username in response.

After that you add the Username to the config … and then what? I disabled the Thing, then Reenabled it. nothing happened …

The thing that made it come Active again was to do a Hue Scan. And it immediately came active. But not sure if that is all that is needed in a normal case.

So what are the definitive steps to get a Hue Bridge running?

Curious if anyone else has had problems getting Hue configured after a reboot? I haven’t rebooted Openhab in 6+ months and now I’m having the same problem as in my original post. However, this time I am not able to get Hue to go ONLINE.

From reading various posts it seems others have trouble and then suddenly the Hue starts working and it isnt clear what happened to make it work.

Does anyone have any repeatable steps to make it go ONLINE?

To make it clear, everything else in the system is running fine. Hue Thing properties are:

  • macAddress 00:17:88:47:51:11
  • protocol http
  • serialNumber 001788475111
  • modelIdBSB002
  • vendor Philips
  • firmwareVersion 1960062030

Well again, it just spontaneously came active. I have no idea why. It took over an hour for it to become active, although I was trying various things to get it to come active. :man_shrugging: