Hello, I'm Tristan.
When I first set up my Philips Hue ecosystem, I played around with the lab formulas a lot.
These are great, but I always wished that I could trigger some of these via Alexa Routines.
After all, being able to easily setup a flashing light doorbell, or create a disco when you
walk into a room, are really nice smart home effects which weren't really possible to set-up
with a basic Hue and Alexa setup.
Until now.
Basically, the Hue skill was upgraded 'at some point' so that any Hue Lab Formulas that
you create will appear as scenes under the Alexa app.
And luckily you can trigger scenes as part of routines.
This video shows you exactly how to do this, so that you can create awesome smart home
routines without needing to buy an expensive smart hub.
So the first thing to note is that you must have a Philips Hue Bridge in order to use
the Hue Lab Formulas, and therefore get the full Alexa integration features.
Using your Hue lights in Bluetooth mode on your phone (without the Bridge) won't work,
unfortunately.
Right, so I assume that you already have Alexa and Hue setup (if not, I've covered that in
another video), and also that you've set up some Hue Lab Formulas (which I've also covered
in another video).
Before you can add these lab formulas to routines, you should launch the Alexa app, go to Devices
and then Scenes.
Scroll through and see whether the Lab Formulas are listed here as scenes.
If they aren't, scroll right to the bottom and click Discover Scenes.
After a short wait, your Hue Lab Formulas should be pulled through into the Alexa app.
(but if not, you should probably try turning the Hue Bridge off and on, and in the worst
case, unlink and relink the Hue skill within Alexa - then click 'Discover Scenes' again).
While having these scenes in your Alexa app might not seem like much, it allows you to
setup some powerful automations that previously weren't possible.
This is because the Hue Lab Formulas are dynamic and color changing (just like this one), so
now - for the first time - you can set up Alexa Routines that do more than just turn
a bulb on or off (or change to a single colour).
So to do this, stay in the app and click More and then Routines.
Click the plus icon, and give your routine a name.
Choose your trigger, which could be anything - when motion is detected (by a smart camera
or motion detector), when your doorbell is pressed, or even when your water sensor detects
a leak.
Then for the action, you'll want to choose Smart Home then Control Scene.
Scroll through this labyrinth list (which had no filters or search capability...
thanks Amazon) and choose your Hue Lab Formula.
Feel free to add more actions if you'd like, and then click on save.
Now you can test this out.
In my case, I set up a routine that activated my Hue downlights when my doorbell is pressed.
[Clip] Paaarty at my house.
Please come to my party.
I'm so cool.
This is all pretty easy to set up, and thanks goes to shrew who pointed this out over on
my blog.
However there are some bugs: in one case, my lab formula kept coming on at 1% brightness.
Therefore I had to add a new action, that said to set the brightness to 100% first.
Also it wasn't clear to me how long this effect would stay on for: so I ended up adding a
wait into the routine, and then I turned the effect off at the end of this wait.
Otherwise it probably would have stayed on forever.
Well, until the light burnt out - I guess.
Finally, sometimes the Hue Lab Formulas can be buggy... they simply don't turn off when
you tell them to.
They literally just ignore you and stay on.
Also sometimes after running a lab formula, your Hue accessories won't control the light
properly - requiring you to turn the power to the light off and on again.
This is a general bug with Hue Lab Formulas, but it has become a bit better in recent months
- so maybe Hue are actively working on fixing these bugs.
And that just about wraps up today's video.
I'm pretty happy that this works now - many other smart lighting providers don't allow
you to set up dynamic effects via Alexa routines, so it's a nice benefit of the Hue platform
that this is (now) possible.
Alexa's integration with other smart devices seems to be growing more powerful every month,
in my opinion.
I hope you liked this video.
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Thank you!