Hi all,
for some reason, I do not see any channels for Philips Hue light items in OpenHab anymore. It seems that other items, such as the Hue Wall Plug, or Dimmer Switches are not affected.
I still can control the channel though with the items I initially set up, but I don’t see the channels anymore.
Any idea what might be wrong and how to fix this?
Thanks,
Florian
I’m experiencing the same on 3.1 release - openhabian.
same for me. upgraded from 2.5 and no channels anymore for the light items.
Same here (3.1.0 release)
Only the advanced ‘Alert’ and ‘Color Loop’ channels are visible.
When I open an item that was previously linked to a channel, the screen shows an everlasting ‘Loading…’ circle, as well as a lock top right: ‘links defined in a .item file are not editable’ The item was not linked in an item file but in the OH3 ui.
Maybe this is related to the Hue updates? I guess the add-on is up for a major rewrite anyway now that the bridge finally supports pushing events instead of having to poll it all the time.
I build the system with 3.0.1. I could find the channels. Now they are gone.
Is there an news on topic? i’ve updated my openhabian config but stille experiencing the same issues.
same problem with 3.1.0 stable… Are there any solutions?
Hi everybody,
unfortunately Im experiencing the same behaviour. Any help is appreciated. I’m also on 3.1.0 stable.
It happens when your thing is too much old. There were changes in channels at a certain time, between 3.0 and 3.1 I believe.
Just remove and create again your thing.
Thanks Lolodomo! After removing and creating the thing, the channels showed up again.
This a terrible user experience, to be honest. If you have a lot of hue devices, this means hours of work for reconfiguration.
If your things are defined in a config file, this kind of change is transparent and takes 0 second (as the things are created at each startup(.
But I understand your point if you are using UI to define your things.
For expert users, it was probably possible to fix that by editing the JSON database file. Look at the GitHub issue for an explanation of what was changed (I believe there was a switch to system channels).
I am experiencing them same issue - in fact, just found out by luck, for was trying something new in my stable OH3 system I am running for over a year now. this is really bad UX - you have a stable system, and then, for some strange change, the UI doesn’t display things correct anymore while the system is still working.
Now I do have over 100 Hue Light things - is there really no other way than creating all these from scratch again? @Lolodomo mentions editing the JSON-file. What exactly am I supposed to change there? Which Github issue are you referring to?
And as said, I do see all channels in the model view. It is only the things view creating problems …
Forgot to ask: do I get this right, you are suggesting not to use the UI for configuration? When I started setting my system up a year back, I was a complete newby, thus used the UI for everything. Meanwhile, I do several things using config files for this is just sometimes more efficent …
I can confirm that recreating the thing is the solution. Items will be re-mapped because HUE id stays the same after recreating.
Not exactly. This is a personal choice.
My vision is that UI is for standard users while config files is for power users (more technical).
Each kind has advantages and disadvantages.
I agree. As explained, that was also my personal experience.
Nevertheless, can you also answer my other (and more important) quesiton regarding editing the JSON DB file manually? I am really not looking forward to manually deleting and again creating over 100 Hue things …
I’d go back a step before tinkering with that.
The reason for the change being breaking change is because the Thing has changed shape in some way - channels renamed, channel type changed, parameters added or removed.
Because these are configuration changes, it would be very difficult to automate an update. Should this new parameter assume some default? If the type changes, it’s no use having it linked to the old Item, it’s the wrong type now. Which has knock-on impacts in UI, rules, etc.
Note that while using xxx.things files gets you further along recreating a Thing in the “new shape” - you will eventually run into more obscure issues, “that parameter is ignored now”, “why does my Number Item suddenly have a temperature unit”, etc.
Changes bring changes - you can opt never to update, but most people are updating for some other valid reason, something they want. There’s a price.
Dealing with it in the most conventional way - Thing by Thing, using the GUI - is your best chance of seeing the underlying changes, where you can see channel lists, prompts for parameters, and so on.
Sorry I have no guide for you.
As things defined with UI are persisted in a JSON file, I was just saying it is very probably possible to fix it.
At my knowledge, what changed is the channel types. I am sure the channel type is part of this JSON file.
Here is the original PR that changed the channel types in case you would like to see the old and new.