Unable to pair Philips hue bridge and can't see "Please press the connect button on the Hue bridge. Waiting for pairing for"

Setup, Configuration and Use Beginners
1

Hi,

I am brand new to OpenHab. I love the concept and want to learn. I bough a Philips Hue starter kit and configured OpenHab based on the instructions provided. When I launch OpenHab from my Windows machine I don’t see this message:
Please press the connect button on the Hue bridge. Waiting for pairing for 100 seconds…
Please press the connect button on the Hue bridge. Waiting for pairing for 99 seconds…
Please press the connect button on the Hue bridge. Waiting for pairing for 98 seconds…

I am controlling OpenHab from my iPhone and when I try to turn the light ON here is what I do see at the console:

D:\ha\OpenHAB\openHAB>start.bat
Launching the openHAB runtime…
osgi> 2015-12-03 23:11:05.681 [INFO ] [.o.core.internal.CoreActivator] - openHAB runtime has been started (v1.7.1).
2015-12-03 23:11:06.578 [INFO ] [o.o.i.s.i.DiscoveryServiceImpl] - mDNS service has been started
2015-12-03 23:11:07.083 [INFO ] [o.o.i.s.i.DiscoveryServiceImpl] - Service Discovery initialization completed.
2015-12-03 23:11:08.072 [INFO ] [penhab.io.rest.RESTApplication] - Started REST API at /rest
2015-12-03 23:11:16.314 [INFO ] [c.internal.ModelRepositoryImpl] - Loading model ‘nadeems.sitemap’
2015-12-03 23:11:16.414 [INFO ] [c.internal.ModelRepositoryImpl] - Loading model ‘nadeems.items’
2015-12-03 23:11:17.603 [INFO ] [.o.u.w.i.servlet.WebAppServlet] - Started Classic UI at /openhab.app
2015-12-03 23:11:23.908 [INFO ] [.service.AbstractActiveService] - Hue Refresh Service has been started
2015-12-03 23:11:26.491 [INFO ] [c.internal.ModelRepositoryImpl] - Loading model ‘demo.rules’
2015-12-03 23:12:05.555 [WARN ] [o.u.i.items.ItemUIRegistryImpl] - Cannot find page for id ‘demo’.
2015-12-03 23:12:06.785 [WARN ] [inding.hue.internal.HueBinding] - Hue binding skipped command because no Hue bridge is connected.
2015-12-03 23:12:06.788 [INFO ] [runtime.busevents ] - Light received command ON

Can you please tell me what am I missing?

I have the hue binding “org.openhab.binding.hue-1.7.1.jar” already copied in the D:\ha\OpenHAB\openHAB\addons folder.

thanks.

2

Have you entered the correct IP Address in your openahb.cfg file? And also uncomment the hue secret and refresh?

Here is what mine is set up like:

############################### Philips Hue Binding ###################################
#
# IP address of Hue Bridge (optional, default is auto-discovery)
hue:ip=10.0.X.X #IP Address of hue hub

# Default secret key for the pairing of the Philips Hue Bridge.
# It has to be between 10-40 (alphanumeric) characters 
# This may be changed by the user for security reasons.
hue:secret=openHABRuntime

# Polling interval in msec to retrieve Philips bulb status.
# Other apps can change Hue status or a physical switch can turn on / off lamp status. 
# If this happens the status of hue lamps within OpenHAB won't reflect the real status.
# Currently (September 2014) there is no push technology available, so the only option is 
# to poll Philips bulbs to retrieve status and update items accordingly to reflect changes.
# Polling is enabled if refresh is specified, by commenting out "hue:refresh=10000" statement.
# Be aware that polling will consume resources, so a small refresh interval will increase cpu load.
hue:refresh=10000
4

My settings are set on auto-discovery. Here they are:

############################### Philips Hue Binding ###################################

IP address of Hue Bridge (optional, default is auto-discovery)

#hue:ip=

Default secret key for the pairing of the Philips Hue Bridge.

It has to be between 10-40 (alphanumeric) characters

This may be changed by the user for security reasons.

hue:secret=abcdefghijklmnop

Polling interval in msec to retrieve Philips bulb status.

Other apps can change Hue status or a physical switch can turn on / off lamp status.

If this happens the status of hue lamps within OpenHAB won’t reflect the real status.

Currently (September 2014) there is no push technology available, so the only option is

to poll Philips bulbs to retrieve status and update items accordingly to reflect changes.

Polling is enabled if refresh is specified, by commenting out “hue:refresh=10000” statement.

Be aware that polling will consume resources, so a small refresh interval will increase cpu load.

hue:refresh=10000

5

could be an issue with auto discovery, you may want to enter it in the IP Address just to see if that corrects your issue, I never tried the auto discovery.

6

Also, I noticed the following error in debug logs where it says “answer did not match”:

20:07:33.775 [DEBUG] [m.r.internal.engine.RuleEngine:77 ] - Started rule engine
20:07:37.066 [DEBUG] [.o.b.hue.internal.HueActivator:30 ] - Hue binding has been started.
20:07:37.094 [DEBUG] [i.internal.GenericItemProvider:341 ] - Start processing binding configuration of Item ‘Light (Type=SwitchItem, State=Uninitialized)’ with ‘HueGenericBindingProvider’ reader.
20:07:37.109 [DEBUG] [h.internal.tools.SsdpDiscovery:57 ] - Sending SSDP discover.
20:07:37.112 [DEBUG] [h.internal.tools.SsdpDiscovery:59 ] - Waiting for response.
20:07:37.113 [DEBUG] [h.internal.tools.SsdpDiscovery:109 ] - Got an answer message.
20:07:37.118 [DEBUG] [h.internal.tools.SsdpDiscovery:137 ] - Analyzing answer message.
20:07:37.123 [DEBUG] [h.internal.tools.SsdpDiscovery:156 ] - Answer did not match.
20:07:37.127 [DEBUG] [h.internal.tools.SsdpDiscovery:109 ] - Got an answer message.
20:07:39.131 [DEBUG] [h.internal.tools.SsdpDiscovery:62 ] - Timeout of request…
20:07:39.135 [INFO ] [.service.AbstractActiveService:169 ] - Hue Refresh Service has been started

7

How do I get the IP address of the hue bridge?

8

If you have a hue app on your phone, you might be able to find it there, if you go to settings, select find bridge and it should come up with the IP Address. If you are on a linux box, you could use “arp -a” if you know the MAC address of the hue hub

9

thank you John @jsable - that worked! The Hue bridge was configured for DHCP. I had to turn it off in the Hue app on the iPhone.
Once DHCP was turned off, the Hue bridge acquired a static IP 192.x.x.x. I put this IP in the openhab.cfg file:

IP address of Hue Bridge (optional, default is auto-discovery)

hue:ip=192.x.x.x

On restarting the OpenHab server I could now see the elusive (;)) message:
Please press the connect button on the Hue bridge. Waiting for pairing for 100 seconds…
Please press the connect button on the Hue bridge. Waiting for pairing for 99 seconds…
Please press the connect button on the Hue bridge. Waiting for pairing for 98 seconds…

Next, I pressed the button on the Hue bridge and pairing was a success!

I am able to control my lights with my OpenHab app now!

10

Try this: openHAB not authorized to access Hue bridge (SOLVED)