The Philips Hue integration with Home Assistant is about to become faster

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Home Assistant Core and Philips Hue have had a robust integration for some time now, with the added benefit of not requiring any cloud services and the ability to operate offline. The integration relied on a local API, where Home Assistant Core would simply query the Philips Hue bridge for the state of paired lights and sensors. Although local control is always preferred over cloud control, the current integration method was not without its limitations. With the release of Home Assistant Core 2021.6, the Philips Hue integration has been upgraded to improve the overall experience.

The method just described, called polling, can cause slight delays in response times as Home Assistant needs to periodically check the hub for any changes. An alternative to polling is pushing, where the device, in this case the Philips Hue Hub, actively sends a state change to Home Assistant as soon as it occurs. This allows for near real-time updates and faster response times compared to polling. With the release of Home Assistant Core 2021.6, the Philips Hue integration now supports local pushing, a significant upgrade over the previous local polling method.

With the release of Home Assistant Core 2021.6, the integration with Philips Hue is getting a major boost with the addition of local pushing—a significant improvement over the previous local polling method. This upgrade is a win-win situation for users as there are no downsides to the change. Everything will work seamlessly without the need for any adjustments to the configuration, and users can expect faster response times just by updating to the latest version of Home Assistant Core.

About Liam Alexander Colman

is an experienced Home Assistant user who has been utilizing the platform for a variety of projects over an extended period. His journey began with a Raspberry Pi, which quickly grew to three Raspberry Pis and eventually a full-fledged server. Liam's current operating system of choice is Unraid, with Home Assistant comfortably running in a Docker container.
With a deep understanding of the intricacies of Home Assistant, Liam has an impressive setup, consisting of various Zigbee devices, and seamless integrations with existing products such as his Android TV box. For those interested in learning more about Liam's experience with Home Assistant, he shares his insights on how he first started using the platform and his subsequent journey.

9 thoughts on “The Philips Hue integration with Home Assistant is about to become faster”

  1. Will push only be used for state changes to lights, or will sensor state changes be pushed as well?

    The polling of sensor state is a main reason why people use Zigbee USB sticks instead of the Hue Bridge for sensor automations.

    Reply
    • The way I read it on the HA website, it is available for everything. I’d still rather use Zigbee2MQTT though, as I can connect just about everything to it.

      Reply
  2. How does one enable this? I use many hue lights and I still have issues with not all lights turning on or off and response times on hue switches take up to 5 seconds. It’s very frustrating.

    Reply

Leave a comment

9 thoughts on “The Philips Hue integration with Home Assistant is about to become faster”

  1. Will push only be used for state changes to lights, or will sensor state changes be pushed as well?

    The polling of sensor state is a main reason why people use Zigbee USB sticks instead of the Hue Bridge for sensor automations.

    Reply
    • The way I read it on the HA website, it is available for everything. I’d still rather use Zigbee2MQTT though, as I can connect just about everything to it.

      Reply
  2. How does one enable this? I use many hue lights and I still have issues with not all lights turning on or off and response times on hue switches take up to 5 seconds. It’s very frustrating.

    Reply

Leave a comment

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