Hue group not being detected

Technical Questions
13

@linda The following may work for you!

Tonight I was able to diagnose this issue and resolve it. The steps for resolution are not simple so I’ll lay them out with discovery first and then resolution.

Issue: It appears that when you have an orphaned group in the Hue Hub and you create a new group with the same name Sense will not recognize the group. I think this might also apply to duplicate names for zones and for entertainment areas as they use the same array format with a “type” key differentiating them. The reason you might have to do the discovery portion listed below, even if you chose the easy fix, is because you might not know you have an orphaned group. In my case there was no other group called “office” in the app. At one point I think I connected my computer to the lights to change the color of the lights based on the hero I was playing in a game. I think this group was also called office. For whatever reason it wasn’t showing in the app and the only way to find it was through the below discovery.

Discovery: In order to check this with your hub you’ll need to do the following:

  • Find the IP Address of the Hue Hub. To do this go into the Hue app, click on settings and then the bridge, click the bridge once more and you should see the IP Address
  • Open a browser on a computer and type the IP address of the hub followed by /debug/clip.html. The entire string should look like this if your hub was at 192.168.0.10 …
    192.168.0.10/debug/clip.html
  • In the box URL remove everything except for /api
  • In the box Message Body put the following:
    {"devicetype":"my_hue_app#debug testing"}
  • Push the physical button on your hue hub
  • Go back to the web browser and hit the POST button
  • The output should be a command response with your userId assigned to the user we just created. COPY THIS ID as you will need it for future commands.
  • In the URL box after /api put another “/” followed by the ID you just copied followed by “/groups”. The entire string will look like this (note the ID will be different for you):
    /api/1028d66426293e821ecfd9ef1a0731df/groups
  • Remove all data from the Message Body box. It should be blank for the remainder of the commands.
  • Press the GET Button

You will now see a list of all of the groups. Go through the list and look for a duplicate in the name field which immediate follows the group number. If you have duplicates continue to Resolution

Resolution:
The easy way - Create a new group with a different name and move the lights to the new group. Make sure that there’s no entertainment area or zone with the same name. If your duplicate groups are all visible in the app changing the name is the correct way and the easy way. If only one is in the app and the other is the orphaned rogue group, continue below.

The correct way - Remove the orphaned group as follows:

  • Once you find the duplicate group look for the one that lists the lights array. This is the field where it has lights listed with numbers in the brackets as seen below.
"lights": [ 
             "1",
             "2"
 ],
  • Now find the one that doesn’t have any lights. It’s the rogue group that’s causing an issue.
  • Once you find the rogue group get the group number. Again that’s the number right above the name of the group and furthest to the left of the other fields.
  • Go back up to the URL field and append the group to the end of the string that’s present. It should now look like this if FOR EXAMPLE your rogue group is #8:
    /api/1028d66426293e821ecfd9ef1a0731df/groups/8
  • Again make sure you put your userId in between api and groups. Do not use the fake one I have above and do not use group 8 unless your rogue group happens to be 8. Use the correct information that was gathered above.
  • Now press the DELETE button.

If for some reason you mess up, you’re only deleting a group. It won’t cause major issues, you can just re-create the deleted group if you delete the wrong one on accident. If you don’t put the group id before pushing delete you might just delete all the groups (I’m not willing to try). So just make sure you follow the steps above and you’ll be good.

You have removed the rogue group. Give Sense about 5-10 minutes and it will recognize the group change and fix the grouping issue.

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