large hue deployment suggestions

[cheaha]

Hey guys, I am redoing a complete home in HUE and will be using well over the 50 bulb limit. As to adding a deployment of this size do any of you have any suggestions as best practice? Should I use multiple bridges, should I add them in groups of 20 at a time or just power them all up then start adding etc... thanks for any and all suggestions.

[kenrad]

I currently have a hue setup with 75 bulbs, I would definitely recommend multiple bridges I found that if you get near the 50 limit is the distance if greater than 100ft there starts to be a noticeable lag when lights are triggered. I would also recommend adding bulbs slowly and plan out your layout so you can be sure to add bulbs to the correct bridge if distance or interference is am issue.

[w.vuyk]

Cheaha,

I cannot speak out of experience with that number of lights.
The Philips API documentation is showing there is a technical limt for 63 lights connected to one bridge. At the same time they confirm what Ken is telling you, the practical limit is 50 for performance.

I hear the same from others. There has been one user who connected 60 to one bridge, but as far I know he also went back to around 50 per bridge.

Also distance can force you indeed to two bridges, even if you do not have reached the limits on the first bridge.

Wim

[kenrad]

Even at the 50 limit i had issues with performance if there was any interference between the bulbs. I think from my experience if you are looking at controlling with homeseer and this plugin more bridges is better. The only issue i have found is with android apps becuase you need to keep switching bridges. But with homeseer 1 have 3 bridges now and it never misses a beat.

[cheaha]

Thank you everyone for the helpful suggestions. Do you think it best to associate the bulbs in groups, or to give them all power first and then start associating? I am unclear as to if all bulbs are point to point RF or if they build a mesh.

[kenrad]

how many bulbs are you looking at adding. When I was building my setup I added a few bulbs at a time to keep things from getting to complicated

[cheaha]

About 110

[kenrad]

I would definitely add them in small groups and probably go with 4 bridges if possible just because of possible lag times if them bridges have alot of traffic going to them

Just my 2 cents

Cheers Ken

[w.vuyk]

Cheaha,

I think it is wise if I added some considerations to the large hue deployment discussion.

This is about how the Philips Hue Bridges work with their commands. It might help you think on how you will group - or not group - the lights.

Technically the bridge can send one light command per 0.1 second. So if you have a room with 10 lights you will see that it takes 1 second to switch the 10 lights on, if you send 10 single lights commands. If you have 20 lights, it will take 2 seconds and so on. For 50 lights it would take 5 seconds (one bridge). I am now skipping the possibilities of interference to keep mys story clear.

If you group the lights through the plugin, the plugin creates this group on the bridge. Standard the bridge has one group, containing all lights. With the plugin you can add selective lights to a new group.
If you send a group command to the bridge, it can handle one command per second. So in that case you could have all 50 lights set to on in one second!

This does not mean you only have advantage of groups when you have 10 or more lights in one room. Controling a light per 0.1 second is noticeble for us humans when you switch the lights on that way. When a group switch is done, you will see the difference already with 4 lights as all lights go on almost simultaniously when controlled through a group command.

There is a limitation on groups for the bridge, you can only create up to 16 groups on one bridge.

So you should think on how you would group the lights, so you can get the best of response and granular control.

This also makes it clear to me that I will need to change the plugin for this many bridges. When I enabled the multiple bridge option, I was expecting that most users might have 2 bridges or so. Ken triggered me earlier already with three bridges and when you will have 4, I definitally need to make sure bridges will not be waiting on each other to get commands

Will work on that with the new release... it might also give you and Ken advantages in speed!

Hope this helps in designing the right layout.

Thanks,

Wim