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According to this comment on Reddit, Philips Hue bulbs reset to 100% brightness after any power interruption (e.g. a power cut, switching the physical light switch off then on, etc).

This does seem like a useful safety feature, but it's not practical for lights in my bedroom; if there's a power outage and then the power comes back on, the lights switch back on at 100% brightness, waking me up again. For areas where the power supply occasionally has problems, this could be a really big problem - imagine being woken up multiple times per night if the power cuts out, even for a couple of seconds!

Is there any way I can prevent Philips Hue bulbs from returning to 100% brightness after a power reset? Official solutions or workarounds would both be helpful.

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    That's really half-assed design :D Maybe provide your bedroom with an UPS
    – Helmar ♦
    Jan 22, 2017 at 11:49
  • @Helmar I think that could be a viable workaround as an answer (albeit a little frustrating); feel free to post it if you want.
    – Aurora0001
    Jan 22, 2017 at 13:44
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    Not sure it really answers the question, maybe some Hue expert can shine a light—on not shining the light :D
    – Helmar ♦
    Jan 22, 2017 at 14:49

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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@Helmar 's comment is quite good for a workaraound : You should monitor power outage.

Monitoring power outage is starting to become recurrent here and it is critical to see if there was an intrusion attempt. So several solutions can be managed to detect power recovery:

  • ping your Internet gateway and log the last time you did this. If the time is large (> 1 minute), you just recovered.
  • query an UPS connected to a RPi or any computer to see when the battery is loading
  • ...

You could then issue a command to reset the previous light dim stored in a global variable.

Of course a Philips Hue oriented answer could be interesting but automtated light bulbs act funny during OTA updates or rogue rules so you might not have the behavior you want.

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    From the question I take it that the bulbs turn on as soon as the power is back. For very short outages that might be faster than an additional system querrying the outage and applying the proper settings to the bulb again.
    – Ghanima ♦
    Jan 23, 2017 at 9:31
  • Connect a UPS to the lamp (or bridge?). Alternatively you could put a normally open relay to set the lamps on (and use the hue system to set color rather than control on/off. But those are quite hacky and not solid/easy solution.
    – Paul
    Jan 24, 2017 at 15:00
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Hue Restore App might help you.

Hue Restore- Hue Restore let you save and restore all Philips Hue lights in your home with single tap. You can do this right from home screen of your phone with convenient home screen widget. You no more have to worry about those pesky power cycle resets because you can get back your favourite settings in a single tap.

Disclaimer: I am developer of this app.

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    Hello and welcome to IoT.SE! Please note that full disclosure of your affiliation with the product is recommended. While it seems helpful it addresses the madnificent OP's question only in part as it requires manual intervention after being woken up by his pesky bedroom lights :(
    – Ghanima ♦
    May 28, 2017 at 11:00

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