cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Philips Hue bridge v2 not connecting to Hub 3

ontheradio
Joining in

I’m hoping someone can help me with this issue that’s totally beaten me over the past 48hrs. 

We installed Virgin Media on Friday (previous broadband supplier was BT) and I plugged in my Philips Hue bridge v2. It was working fine on Friday but dropped off yesterday (Saturday).

I’ve reset both the router and bridge. I’ve tried multiple Ethernet cables. I even bought a new Hue Bridge but my v3 router won’t recognise that either. In my dashboard, it says 0 devices are connected via Ethernet. 

I’ve had a quick look around the forums and tried a few things people have suggested (like temporarily disabling 5GHz etc) but absolutely nothing is working and now I’m just contemplating going back to BT on which it was working perfectly!

thanks for reading - hoping for an answer! 

10 REPLIES 10

legacy1
Alessandro Volta

I'm thinking the Hue bridge is 100Mb and the hub don't like that so you need to look at getting a better router with 1Gb (that will work with 100Mb) ports and put hub in modem mode.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Ah that’s annoying. Thanks for that. I’d rather keep things simple, I assumed it would be a case of plug and play like it has been like I first bought the system 6 years ago! 

jbrennand
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

This is worth a try...
_________________

Go into the Hub’s settings. Type in  http://192.168.0.1  into your web browser’s url box and login with settings password on the Hub's base sticker (or your own if you changed it). Then in Advanced>wireless signal >smart wifi - tick the disable “channel optimisation” box or the“Smart Wifi” box and save settings.  May be different pathways and wording on the 3 Hub types

Then, go to advanced>wireless signal>security, rename the 2.4 & 5 GHz network ssid's.  Just type over to change 'em to whatever you like and something that will differentiate them (e.g - Billybob_2 & Billybob_5) Try to avoid spaces and periods in the SSID names as they can cause issues with certain devices. Use the same password for simplicity,  Then, apply settings and restart the Hub.  Your 2 wifi networks will now be clearly separated - and you can then select the network you want each device to connect to… individually from the "available networks" list on each of your devices. 

Note all your wifi devices will need re-connecting to the new SSID's and passwords.
All things being equal, 5 GHz is always better/faster and subject to less congestion/interference (and is better for iDevice speeds than the 2.4 one - although the 2.4 one has the better "range" and will be needed when the 5 GHz drops out of range and some older/cheaper/dumber or “specialised” devices - like your Hue - can only use this one. 

You should also use a wifi analyser App (or Airport Utility on iOS) to check which 2.4 channels are being heavily used around you and move yours to one of numbers 1,6,11 that is least so, but it wont help if there is other interference.
]
See if these changes help - you will lose any “seamless roaming” benefits but it may not matter and you can always change the settings back by doing a " pinhole factory reset " if you prefer the way it was - or it doesn’t help.


--------------------
John
--------------------

I do not work for VM. My services: HD TV on VIP (+ Sky Sports & Movies & BT sport), x3 V6 boxes (1 wired, 2 on WiFi) Hub5 in modem mode with Apple Airport Extreme Router +2 Airport Express's & TP-Link Archer C64 WAP. On Volt 350Mbps, Talk Anytime Phone, x2 Mobile SIM only iPhones.

Cheers John, I’ll give this a go. Wish me luck! 

Although the above advice is all fair enough, it does miss the pertinent point which is that Hue bridges are connected via ethernet so making any changes to the WiFi provision is likely to do precisely nothing. We need to ascertain if the ethernet ports on the hub are working at all, if they are not then getting your own  router will be pointless as well.

So when you plug the Hue bridge in, do any of the lights on the hub port come on? Do you have any other device you can connect to an ethernet port, if not can you beg, steal or borrow, something, anything, that you can connect and see if that works. have you tried different ports on the hub.

Now there have been reports on here of Hubs where the ethernet ports simply give up and the only fix is a hub swop. Now you might well think that in that case VM would properly test and rectify rather than simply giving the faulty hub out to another unsuspecting mug valued customer - on the grounds that the majority of people properly just use WiFi, then they'll probably get away with it.

So what you need to do it this, firstly test the Hub ports with another device. If no luck then try a full factory reset (press in the tiny reset button with a paperclip and hold it in for a full 60 seconds, and let the hub reset itself). And if that doesn't work, then the only option is to call VM and try to arrange a hub swop. Now this latter option may be difficult, VM's customer service provision, not being either the most technically competent, or indeed, just competent - and will probably try to palm you off with some BS excuses.

Still, see how you get on and let us know the outcome.

John

This - to me - seems like the most sensible. 
I had a bit of success last night by moving it to the only Ethernet port I hadn’t tried. Set all the bulbs up again (what a pain!) and it was working when I went to bed but has dropped off again this morning. 
I think I’ll call VM and ask about a replacement hub. Especially as I’ve since spoken to people who managed to connect the two flawlessly, it does seem like there could be a fault.
thanks for your help!

You were right, Jim. I called VM who sent out an engineer and replaced the router. It worked straight away so it seems faulty Ethernet ports were to blame. Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Tom_W1
Forum Team
Forum Team

Hi @ontheradio thanks for your post here, although we're sorry to hear of your concerns raised here.

Generally when it is a third party issue, we can't support this over here and this is the same with your problem unfortunately, however we're glad to see our VIP's have contributed to hopefully give you a resolution!
Many thanks

Tom_W

It wasn’t a third party issue, Tom. If you would read my last post, you would see that.