ESPalexa and fauxmoESP Hue Bridge Emulations and Hue Essentials App, ESP32 and ESP8266

Devices
1

Hello, with Arduino ESPAlexa-library(also fauxmoESP-lib) you can build devices where each ESP-Device(ESP8266, ESP32) emulates a Hue-bridge(partly!) with a combination of hue lights(all together on one ESP-Device), for example my “couch-device” is an ESP32(Wemos Lolin 32) bridge with 6 “lights” (onoff, RGB, dimmable, onoff, onoff, onoff).
The Alexa Echos can find (with “Alexa, search for new devices” command) all the bridges with their lights (30 lights/switches in 11 ESP-devices(=hue-bridges) in my house) and show them in the alexa app without an addional skill, hardware or cloud.

I try to connect one device with Hue Essentials App(Android), the app displays 4 bridges of 11(=espalexa-devices) and when i will connect one,the app runs into an error, “bridge is not reachable” (“Fehler Die Bridge ist nicht erreichbar. Bitte überprüfen sie die Internetverbindung”. Manual connection as a diyHue brigde gives the same error.

Is there a documentation (or a special Hue Essentials App with detailed error reasons or a log) where I can find out, what the app is missing from an espalexa-bridge (emulates parts of the SSDP protocol and the Philips hue API ) to connect such a devices/bridges?

https://github.com/Aircoookie/Espalexa
https://github.com/vintlabs/fauxmoESP

2

From what I quickly see is that Espalexa is some kind of Hue bridge emulation, isn’t it? It is probably something like diyHue. Personally, I have no experience with this type of connection yet. Thomas (dev) and me should look into this first. Hue Essentials offers some ways of looking into the connection through API explorer and so. Find this on the bridges screen, select your bridge. Please post as much information as possible about your Espalexa. We only just started working with ESP’s, so you obviously have a headstart on this project. I guess we will have to fix some issues just like we did on the diyHue simulation.

@Thomas, FYI

3

Yes, every device(ESP32 or ESP8266) is a hue bridge emulation like diyHue containing 1-n lights or switches. But you did not need extra hardware as with diyhue.

When i connect one device in Hue Essentials App, it runs immediately in the error i described above. I found nothing i can switch on. As i have no physical bridge, i cannot use “API explorer”, right?

I will add some debug information outputs to espalexa-lib and will post, what happens as Echo /Plus/Dot or Hue Essentials App will connect the “espalexa-bridge”, may be after next weekend.