Philips Hue not working

[Bosgirl]

We have 28 philips hue bulbs in our home with a Hue bridge. Yesterday we setup orbi on the 2.4 network on Comcast. All of our Echos, ADT pulse Wemos, PS4, phones and tablets worked perfectly. We could not get the Hue to work at all. The Hue Bridge was direct connect into the Ethernet port of Orbi. It was visible on the Orbi app and green. I couldn’t connect to the Hue app (it would just spin “connecting” endlessly.), and I couldn’t even use the Hue app to control the lights. After over an hour on the phone with Netgear support, nothing. They said all was fine on their end - see ya later. We are about to return the Orbi because with over 1K in lightbulbs, if I can’t tell Alexa to turn stuff on and off for me - orbi is useless to me. I am NOT technical so I need “baby step” help on this please!

[AC641]

What version of firmware do you have installed on the Orbi Router and Satellite/s?  There was a known issue with a previous version of firmware, ensure you have v2.1.4.16 and report back.  You can update from within the Router's GUI.

[Bosgirl]

Thank you for your reply. The tech at Netgear had us run all the firmware updates

[AC641]

I know it's a complete pain in the a**e but have you tried a complete reset of the Hue Hub?  I had to do this following the installation of the updated Orbi firmware.  It highlighted a weakness in teh Hue system in that you cannot back-up your settings for reinstalltion following a reset.

[Bosgirl]

Ahh the one reply I was hoping not to see LOL!!!! No I have not- was avoiding that like the plague. The thought of reconfiguring all the bulbs - my head!!!! I guess we are going to have to decide if we want to reprogram or return the orbi and live with bad WiFi!!! Thank you!

[twokatmew]

Have you tried to "clean" your Hue Bridge? Fortunately I didn't have any issues with Hue when I installed my Orbi RBR50 system. But periodically I experience some weirdness with the lights suddenly turning off when they're scheduled to be on, or lights coming on at 100% during the night. Cleaning the bridge has resolved any issues. It says it will delete all your Hue config, but IME it hasn't. Trouble is, you have to be able to launch the Hue app, as the command resides in the Hue Bridge settings (at least in the Android app and).

[Bosgirl]

Thanks, yes. The app will not work at all. I think at this point we have decided to return the Orbi. We have it disconnected and went back to the xfinity router/modem. Everything is working just like before and we will have to live with dead spots for now.

[twokatmew]

It sounds like it might be that the Hue bridge is not getting a network connection. Have you tried to log in to Hue via a web browser? That would at least rule out the app on your phone or tablet. It's been over a year since I configured my Hue bridge, so I'm going from distant memory....

Is it possible the Hue bridge is configured with a static IP address instead of dynamic (DHCP)? And is the Orbi running in AP mode connected to the Comcast router? I only ask because my LAN uses the 192.168.1.... subnet range, and I noticed that when setting up my Orbi, it changed the subnet to 10.0.0.... If for some reason your Hue bridge is configured for a different subnet or has an IP address conflict, that would kill its network connection. Just something to check before you return the Orbi. Once I got the kinks worked out, it's been rock solid. 😊