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Manual bridge configuration

Stefan Wichmann edited this page Mar 30, 2017 · 1 revision

There may be cases where the automatic bridge discovery fails and you will have to manually provide the information for Kelvin to talk to your hue bridge. This information consists of two parts:

  1. The IP Address of the hue bridge in your local network
  2. A Username for authentication that was generated by the Hue bridge

The following sections will help you to obtain the two bits of information. Once you acquired them you will have to enter then into your config.json manually.

IP Address of your hue bridge:

Since network configurations can be vastly different, there is more than one way to identify the address of your bridge. I would recommend you try the following steps in their particular order.

  1. Open http://www.meethue.com/api/nupnp in your browser.
  2. Get the address from the hue app on your smartphone (Navigate to "Settings" -> "Hue bridges" -> "Info" -> "Network settings" -> toggle the button "DHCP", don't forget to switch "DHCP" back on.)
  3. Check the configuration in your wireless router.

Username

Kelvin will need the username to authenticate itself at your hue bridge. This way only valid applications will be allowed to read and modify your light states. To manually register a valid user on your bridge you should take the following steps:

  1. Enter http://<bridge ip address>/debug/clip.html into your internet browser.
  2. Enter the string /api into the "URL" field.
  3. Enter the string {"devicetype":"kelvin"} into the "Message Body" field.
  4. Press the blue link button on your physical hue bridge.
  5. Back in your browser click on the "POST" button.
  6. The "Command Response" field should now contain a text similar to:
[
  {
    "success":{
      "username": "1028d66426293e821ecfd9ef1a0731df" 
    }
  }
]
  1. Copy the string after username (in this example 1028d66426293e821ecfd9ef1a0731df) into your config.json.
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