Core: Hue integration bug: Rooms do not get added anymore as a light entity

[recklessnl]

The problem

I have a hue bridge, and that hue bridge has a bedroom and a bathroom as "Room", both with hue lights in it. In the app, I see the two rooms, and I can fully control the light of the entire room - brightness, color, scene, toggling on and of, etc.
Normally, the hue integration in Hass would add the room from the Hue app as a separate light entity, like light.bedroom. This is incredibly helpful and vital for the integration, as it allows you to turn off all the lights in a room super easily. This is in addition to adding every single light as a seperate entity, for fine-tune control per single light.

However, I noticed in the latest version of Hass that the rooms simply do not get imported anymore. I still get all the individual lights, like light.ceiling, but no room entity. I changed the local IP address of the Hue bridge, so I had to re-connect my Hue bridge using the Hue integration (no yaml for this was necessary). I've tried at least 4 times, and every time, none of the rooms on my Hue bridge were transferred as a light entity in Hass. It always used to be the case that the room got added as a full entity and I'm missing that feature currently.

This seems like a bug. Anybody else that can reproduce this?

Environment

• Home Assistant release with the issue: 0.106
• Last working Home Assistant release (if known): Not sure - it's been a while since I reconnected a Hue bridge to Hass.
• Operating environment (Hass.io/Docker/Windows/etc.): Docker
• Integration causing this issue: Hue
• Link to integration documentation on our website: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/hue/

Problem-relevant configuration.yaml

No logs or errors of any kind that I can see.

[probot-home-assistant[bot]]

Hey there @balloob, mind taking a look at this issue as its been labeled with a integration (hue) you are listed as a codeowner for? Thanks!

[balloob]

This has been done on purpose in the last release. Hue groups do not have unique ids.

You can enable it again using YAML.

[Mariusthvdb]

Couldn’t the hub-id be suffixed to the group name so they will be unique?

[recklessnl]

I can't imagine why you'd want that on purpose, seems like a regression to me, but the below YAML re-instated the rooms again and is the solution for now:

hue:
  bridges:
    - host: DEVICE_IP_ADDRESS
      allow_unreachable: true
      allow_hue_groups: true

@balloob Isn't it a better idea to update the integration to ask users if they want to import the rooms as an entity? More user-friendly and I know I would want to have them imported.

[balloob]

It's still available as YAML.

Instead we should suggest room membership as areas for the light devices in Home Assistant. Then you can just control an area and that's the same.

We don't want external groups as entities in Home Assistant. It is confusing.

[recklessnl]

We don't want external groups as entities in Home Assistant. It is confusing.

I disagree - toggling the lights off as a Hue group is smoother compared to individually turning off every light, it's something to do with timing and the way Hue does it. This is pretty well documented. Besides, not everybody uses Home Assistant areas or wants to set them up.

It's your call though. As long as we always keep the YAML option to keep the hue rooms as full entities, I'm good with it.

[DACN]

Just found this thread as trying to work out why my lights no longer work after upgrading from .102 to ,106.

It might have been done 'on purpose'; but given that the documentation says that it works - that's a bug! Would also have expected to see it noted in "breaking changes"

[balloob]

It's not a breaking change as it only applies to new setups. Old setups are not impacted.

[recklessnl]

I can confirm the above for what it's worth. But it might be helpful to add this as a note on the Hue documentation page, as it is already confusing people clearly.

[i00]

It's not a breaking change as it only applies to new setups. Old setups are not impacted.

This is not true.. old installations will function differently, as new zones will not automatically be added to Home Assistant.

[balloob]

Incorrect. It's a global setting per hub. Old ones default to true, only new installations will default to false.

[i00]

My new rooms stopped appearing when my hub got re-picked up as a new hub in discovery (after being fine for the last 9 months or so) ... and yes it has a static IP... either way it started happening to an old setup here (even if it is related to another issue to do with this).

[DACN]

I disagree; it was a breaking change.

I have a static IP, and the light automation all stopped functioning on the upgrade to this version as the group was not being picked up. Prior to that, the lighting groups had all been untouched for some 18 months.