Philips Hue - Forcing a Firmware Update
TL;DR: if your pairing your Philips Hue Bridge with the 'My Hue' cloud service is driving you nuts with "You weren't quick enough" error messages, skip to the end for my fix.
I often find myself an early adopter of new technology. Unfortunately, this can be quite an uncomfortable position: problems often arise early on that are resolved before a product hits the mainstream.
Unfortunately, setting up my Philips Hue lighting was no exception.
The problem
The Philips Hue comes with a central control hub known as the 'Bridge'. This connects the bulbs to your local network and the internet.
Pairing my iPhone with the Bridge was a perfect and seamless process. I could now control my lightbulbs from my phone. However, in order to control the lights remotely (and access some of the coolest features, such as Geofencing) I needed to pair the Bridge with the 'My Hue' cloud service. This was... not so easy.
Following the instructions just did not work and after a pause, timed out to an error message - or more accurately, an infuriating taunt - "You weren't quick enough".
Game on
A search revealed many, many Hue owners struggling with the same error message. Suggested solutions ranging from "switch it off and on again" to "forward port 80 on your router to the Bridge" and "mine magically fixed itself overnight."
To save you the time and effort: none of these worked for me.
Digging deeper, I discovered a post from a Philips engineer stating that this process had been made more robust with a software update... but every time I tried to update the Bridge software from the iPhone app it cheerily informed me that I was already up-to-date.
Checking the software versions, this was clearly not the case: my Bridge was stuck on firmware version 01003542. Argh.
The solution
- Plug in all of the bulbs in the Starter Pack. All of the bulbs needed to be connected to the Bridge before it would attempt to update. This was the missing piece of the jigsaw for me and left me stumped for ages. Do it first!
- Use the API to force an update. My Bridge could not connect to My Hue without a firmware update. I couldn't update my firmware without connecting to My Hue. A classic catch-22. The API allowed me to override this.
- Check for updates. Using the iOS/Android app, check for software updates. This should now work!
How to force an update.
Disclaimer: this worked for me, but proceed at your own risk...
Using a web browser, visit the web-based interface for the Bridge API:
http://[your Bridge IP address]/debug/clip.htmlRegister a new API user.
Set the URL to:
/apiand the message to:{"devicetype":"custom user", "username":"[a custom API username]"}. ClickPOST. The response should show an error.Press the button on the Bridge.
Perform step (1) again. The response should not show an error.
You can find Philips own instructions for this here.
Change the 'portalservices' variable to true.
- Set the URL to:
/api/[your API user]/configand the message to:{"portalservices":true}. ClickPUT.
- Set the URL to:
Switch your Bridge off-and-on again.
Using the iOS / Android app, check for software updates.
A well-deserved hat-tip to the folk at the EveryHue forum, Drew at Lab Smoke and the folks behind the Philips API documentation.