Hue Binding: Routines and CLIP Generic Flag Sensor

Add-ons Bindings
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Use case : To get rid of my complex OH rules to dim up and down my Hue lights in different situations with various light scenes I rather would like to use Hue routines which can easily be defined in the Philips Hue smartphone app implemented by Signify. With OH I just would control if the Hue routine is active or not – as you can manually do in the Hue app.

Basics : Depending on the type of the Hue routine “CLIPGenericStatus” or “CLIPGenericFlag” the Hue bridge differentiate between CLIP Generic Status Sensor and CLIP Generic Flag Sensor.

According to the 2.5.x Hue Binding documentation both sensor types are supported.

My issue : CLIP Generic Flag Sensor (Thing type 0850) is not working for me: when changing the related OH switch item, the Hue routine in Hue app is not turned ON or OFF.

CLIP Generic Status Sensors are working for me – thanks to the hint of @Chiuaua79

My question : Did anybody make CLIP Generic Flag Sensors to work?

Configuration
openHAB 2.5.0 M4 (milestone build) on Raspberry, with Hue Binding Snapshot 2.5.12.202101050353
Thing

Bridge hue:bridge:001788665b6a [ ipAddress="philips-hue", userName="hue-name" ] {
   0850 99 " Hue Flag Routine" [ sensorId="99" ] }

Item

Switch HueRoutine_Flag “Routine test” { channel="hue:0850:bridgeID:99:flag" }

Regards,
Andy

2

Yes - works like a charm for me.
I created a flag sensor on my hue bridge through “all4hue” app and connected now OH to it.

Every change true / false in my hue app is reflected in my OH item.
Every change on my OH item switch is reflected accordingly in my Hue app.

Did you already crossverify your sensor status through api call?

e.g. http://192.168.xxx.xxx/api/<your bridge username>/sensors/99

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@khb3bw2 Thank you Christoph four your feedback.

In fact, I did several tests also using the Philips Hue CLIP API Debugger. In the meantime my 3 OH test item switches for the respective CLIP Generic Flag Sensors (thing type 0850) can trigger ON and OFF, the corresponding changes I can see in the Hue app and in the command response of the Hue API debugger.

I don’t know why – and sounds strange – but the OH flag sensor items only worked well after I manually triggered the OH item switches first time on the Paper UI control menu (I tested this behaviour with two more items).

Nevertheless, I’m facing two hurdles before I can fully use the OH flag sensors:

  • When I switch an OH flag sensor item to ON (i.e.: the corresponding hue routine becomes active), not only Hue flag sensor is immediately switching to ON but also the lights of the corresponding light group dim on after a few seconds! Is my Hue bridge kidding me? - this is really not what I want for my time-controlled Hue routines – this effect I could reproduce with all my 3 OH test items. Of course, this behaviour I do not see when I active a Hue routine directly in the smartphone Hue app.
  • When I activate a routine in my smartphone Hue app this change is not reflected in my OH items, but thats not that bad, cause mostly I would turn the Hue routines On and OFF via OH, not within the Hue app.

To point 1. To exclude side effects I commented out all OH Hue related rules.

Did I miss anything? I think my configuration is incorrect but I do not see the crux of the matter.