Controlling non-reachable Philips Hue Lights

Like so many others, I am from time to time affected by my lights going non-reachable.

Even when the light is “reachable”: false, the light is surprisingly still controllable by the hue bridge (if you specifically ask the bridge to eg. turn the light on via the Hue API)

It is somewhat strange, how the bridge can do that, if it thinks that the light is not reachable. It is of course possible, that it just send the command in the blind.

But what sadly does not work, are the rules and the schedules, which only (seem to) work on “reachable”: true lights.

I have not found any way to make rules work on non-reachable lights, but schedules works just fine, if you just add the light to a group, and make the schedule operate on the group in stead.

For instance:
Make a group:

{
  "lights": [
    "9"
  ],
  "name": "SpecialLights",
  "type": "LightGroup"
}

the group were created with id “5”

Make a schedule on the group:

{
  "name": "SpecialLight-On-18",
  "description": "SpecialLight on around 18",
  "command": {
    "address": "/api/<apikey>/groups/5/action",
    "body": {
      "on": true
    },
    "method": "PUT"
  },
  "localtime": "W127/T18:01:00A00:16:00"
}

Now the schedules work just fine – even when the light is “reachable”: false

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