Do Hue bulbs need to be connected to an Echo Plus directly?

Question

I have a multi-Alexa setup at home. It's a three storey house, so an Echo Plus on the bottom floor and 2nd gen Echos on the other floors.

The hue bulb that came with it worked fine when it was plugged in on the bottom floor. I've now moved it to the top floor, and it no longer connects. I've tried removing the device from Alexa and adding it again, but when I search for devices, it doesn't find any.

So my question is this: Does the Hue bulb need to be connected to an Echo Plus? Or if there's an Echo Plus in the network, it should be able to connect (my original assumption)?

Answer 1

The Hue bulb must be connected to the Echo Plus itself.

Philips Hue bulbs communicate using a protocol called ZigBee (as explained in a little more detail here). The Echo Plus has a built-in radio/smart hub to communicate using ZigBee with other ZigBee-compatible devices, but all other Echo devices do not have any support for ZigBee — they operate using Wi-Fi only.

Your other Echos physically can't communicate with the light bulb — they don't 'speak' the correct language, so it's not just the hub features that are required from the Echo Plus; it's the actual wireless connection that's required.

You can probably expect about a 10 to 20 metre range, perhaps less in a challenging environment, from a ZigBee hub. Your bulb needs to be within that range to be able to communicate with your Echo Plus and connect to the network. This might involve moving either the bulb or the Echo Plus itself.