Hue Emulation: Everything shows up as a Dimmable Light

Add-ons Bindings
1

I’m using the Hue Emulation to expose my devices to Alexa, and it works really well, except for the fact that everything is being exposed as a Dimmable Light in /api/discovery.xml. My understanding is that items tagged with Switchable should be exposed as a plug, not a light. This is frustrating because saying “Alexa, set the lights to 50%” results in the switches being set to on at full brightness, since they don’t support dimming.

2

How are the associated items configured in OH, can you post your items file?

3

The items were configured through PaperUI so they’re not in an items file, but the output from items list on the console for one of the items is:

LivingRoom_Chair (Type=SwitchItem, State=OFF, Label=Living Room Chair, Category=null, Tags=[Switchable], Groups=[All_Lights, Bedroom_Triple_Tap_Off])

The same item from discovery.xml:

"50":{"state":{"on":false,"bri":-1,"hue":0,"sat":0,"xy":[0.0,0.0],"ct":500,"alert":"none","effect":"none","colormode":"ct","reachable":true},"type":"Dimmable Light","name":"Living Room Chair","modelid":"LWB004","uniqueid":"50","manufacturername":"openHAB","swversion":"66009461","pointsymbol":{"1":"none","2":"none","3":"none","4":"none","5":"none","6":"none","7":"none","8":"none"}}
4

That should have quotes around it.
[ “Switchable” ]

Have you tried creating a single item in the items file to test if you get the same result?

5

Actually the hue emulation of 2.3 is only capable of exposing dimmable light. That’s because at time of implementation there were no ZigBee plugs that worked with the hue bridge.

The hue emulation 2.4 will support dimmable light, extended color light and Osram plug as emulated devices.

6

Thanks! Do you know if I will need to remove and re-register the devices with Alexa when 2.4 comes out? I think I remember reading something about Z-Wave requiring re-registering Things in 2.4, so I think the upgrade will be a winter break project regardless.

7

I recently moved from 2.3 to 2.4 M7 and installed the latest Beta Alexa binding. The only thing needed was to log in to my amazon account.

8

It’s about latency, the hue emulation is faster. With the Alexa app you are always doing another round trip to the cloud.

And yes 2.4 requires all devices to be rediscovered.