[Philips Hue] Register new dimmer switch as thing

Setup, Configuration and Use Beginners
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Morning all,

I have a Hue dimmer switch and would like to the use standard binding to read it’s button value. So far I have been using a network binding but given that the Hue binding also supports dimmer switches I’d liek to change to “standard”.

The documentation only states examples where I would register the bridge newly and in [] the various devices. I do have, however, already some 50 devices registered as things on that bridge using automatic discovery and don’t want to delete them all and type everything into a file. I also can’t seem to be able to register the switch via paper UI (it only offers bulbs and smart plugs as types) so I’m looking for the right syntax for a new things file which would have only that switch and uses the existing bridge. The syntax for things suggest using

Thing <binding_id>:<type_id>:<thing_id> ,

so I tried

Thing hue:0820:17

where “hue” is the name of the binding for the bridge, 0820 would be the device type according to the Hiue binding documentation and 17 the Id of the sensor (which I checked using via an HTTP request against the API) but that doesn’t seem to work, as ID 17 is already an existing bulb - apparently the information that there is also a sensor with ID 17 is not passed on …

What am I Missing? Must be something very simple, but as a beginner I’m not seeing it …

Thx and have a great day

Stefan

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Automatic discovery in hue binding works also with dimmer switch and motion sensor. Are sure you are running latest version of the binding?

And if you want to create an things file here’s my configuration for reference:

Bridge hue:bridge:livingroom "Hue Bridge" @ "Livingroom" [ ipAddress="xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx", userName="blahblahblah..." ] {

    0820 dimmerswitch "Hue dimmer" @ "Kitchen" [ sensorId="3"]
}

But if you have your hue bridge added as a thing in PaperUI then you can’t make a double configuration in .things file.

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How would I know? I installed 2 weeks ago it via Paper UI and thus assume it pulls the most recent version. The version number state it binding-hue - 2.3.0 , the author is Telekom. Under supported devices, however, I only see bulbs and smart plugs, no switches (type 0820)

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See here

You should be running quite recent snapshot for it to work.

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ah ok. so the next question from a newbie then would be: how do I install a snapshot which has this feature merged?

6

What version of openHAB are you running and do you know how to manually install bindings?

Here’s a download link for test version which I’m using for now also: https://github.com/eclipse/smarthome/files/2567639/org.eclipse.smarthome.binding.hue-0.10.0-SNAPSHOT.jar.zip

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I’m on 2.3 and no, I don’t know how to install bindings manually

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Here’s a section of documentation about it: https://www.openhab.org/docs/configuration/addons.html#through-manually-provided-add-ons

Find out where the addons folder is and that’s where you should place the .jar file you downloaded from previous link. Before this you have to uninstall the current hue binding through PaperUI. Now the new binding should be installed and you can start adding things again.

Just to clarify the steps:

  • PaperUI -> Add-Ons -> Uninstall hue binding
  • Place the new .jar in addons folder
  • PaperUI -> Inbox -> “Add new” and automatic discovery starts and hopefully new hue things are discovered.

Notice that you are running oh 2.3 and I’m not 100% sure the new hue binding works with it. You have to test and see. If you encounter problems just recheck everything and go through those steps again. Afterwards report here how it goes.

If you want to uninstall manually added binding just delete it from addons folder.

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For the future questions read parts #5 #6 form here How to ask a good question.

For now I added few tags and added [Philips hue] to the title.

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