Scenes

[jay (support)]

Hey Nathan, not sure if this is on your radar, but it would be cool to be able to take a snapshot of a selected group of Hue lights for later recall. For instance, we have 5 strips and 4 bulbs in our main room. We like to mix up the colors into a theme, like fall. It would be killer if we could set them individually and then save them as a group for later recall.

One other thing - I have 4 lightstrip plus's and they show in the plugin as bulbs rather than strips.

Hey Jay.

Thanks for the feedback. I think a few people have asked for that feature. It'd be a very nice feature to have and would more closely mirror the features of the Hue app. I plan on adding that feature, though it will probably take some time as my original code base is not well designed for extensibility.

As for the Light Strip 2, yea, I know. Because the plugin code was originally designed around one type of bulb (the original Hue bulb), and due in no small part to my aversion to OO coding, my solution for managing apparent feature differences with new lights was to group light models by their capabilities rather than something more user friendly like form factor or just listing every new model separately in the Device list. As a result, because the Light Strip 2 has color temperature control capabilities (which the original Light Strip did not), in order to be able to use the Set Color Temperature action with the Light Strip 2, it had to be put into the same group as the original Hue bulb. It's been an annoyance of mine that the two Light Strips are in different Device lists, but I'll need to rewrite most of the plugin code to make light models and light features independent of each other. Eventually I'll do that, but probably not real soon as my day job and family life tend to hamper long programming stints.

Nice request but the right answer should be, no ETA!

[jay (support)]

We don't want to be the only ones swamped with feature requests!

Hahaha!

no squeaking in this thread

Squeak squeak squeak

Jay - I can pick this up, but it's back to you with a feature request!

To save scenes you need to tell Hue which bulb(s) are actors in that scene. I can't think of a way to currently present a dynamic list of bulbs easily.
It would be possible, I suppose, to have a big list of lists - but I have some scenes with 30+ bulbs in them....

Creating the list of devices controlled by the plugin is pretty easy. Putting it in a UI for the user is the hard part. But here's a thought:

Have a menu action to capture the current state of ALL your devices, and save it to a named "scene". Then it's up to the user:

1. Turn off all (plugin controlled) lights
2. Turn on just the lights you want in the scene, to a specific brightness/color/etc.
3. Run the Menu Action to capture the scene
4. Repeat as necessary for other scenes

Doing it that way you never have to show any kind of list. Just build it internally and save it.

There's a couple of use cases that doesn't easily capture:

1. What if I want a bulb to be turned off in a given scene, while others are on?
2. What if my significant other is expecting to not sit in the dark while scenes are configured?

Agreed - the UX is the hard part here.

[jay (support)]

Jay - I can pick this up, but it's back to you with a feature request!

To save scenes you need to tell Hue which bulb(s) are actors in that scene. I can't think of a way to currently present a dynamic list of bulbs easily.
It would be possible, I suppose, to have a big list of lists - but I have some scenes with 30+ bulbs in them....

I'm not following you - dynamic lists in the UI are simple unless I'm missing something.

My request is pretty straight-forward: allow the user to select a set of hue devices (easy enough in the UI) and then save their current state, including color (like the Device Group in the Virtual Devices interface). You can either present this as a new "Scene" device or I suppose you could prompt for a name and store it as part of the plug's config. The config dialog would need to be updated to add some UI, but that's not that hard (it would be similar to the Global Property Manager Plugin I think - not exact, but close).

BTW, this is completely independent of any "scene" concept the hue hub may have. This would be strictly an Indigo construct.

Version 1.5.0 Posted

• Added limited Hue Scene support with a Recall Hue Scene action which can activate any scene stored on the Hue hub.
• Added tool tips to all Hue Lights controlled Indigo UI windows.
• Fixed automated plugin version checking that wasn’t comparing current and latest versions correctly.
• Improved Hue Groups device setup dialog so you can see a list of all the lights in the selected group from within the device setup window.

Version 1.5.1 Posted

• Added a Recall Hue Scene menu item to Plugins -> Hue Lights menu to easily recall a Hue scene from the Indigo GUI without having to create an Action Group or trigger action.
• Fixed a UI bug in the Recall Hue Scene action settings window that prevented the Lights Affected list from being populated on initial action creation.

A bit of a newbie on Hue and the available scene support. I've been playing around a bit with the Hue Indigo Plugin 'Preset' functionality and also the Hue App Scenes capabilities.. Are any of the scene capabilities dynamic in order to automatically transition thru various settings of color/temp/brightness/etc?

Such as the following for a group of lights:
1) Have all lights in the group match the same settings - but cycle thru several different preset color/temp/brightness settings. For example, a Halloween scene to have all of my exterior lights be Orange for 30 seconds and then switch to Purple for 30 seconds, then start over again.
2) Have all lights in the group independently cycle/rotate thru a set of several preset color/temp/brightness settings. For example, a Christmas scene for my exterior lights - each would be a different xmas color - Red, Green, Blue, Orange .. 30 seconds later the bulbs would each change to the next color in the sequence.
3) Have all lights in a group automatically transition from Warm Color Temps in the Early AM/Late PM to Blue/White Color Temps in the middle of the day. BTW - I do see the presets on Hue App for Relax, Read, Energize, Concentrate, etc.. I guess this could be easily scripted to choose one of these based on the time of the day.. However, I was looking for something more gradual and adaptive rather than discrete fixed presets - possibly update every 10-20 minutes and change

I haven't done much with scenes in the Hue app or elsewhere really. From what I can tell, built-in scenes are not dynamic (i.e. no animation). So you can't do any of the things you're looking for through Hue scenes alone. There may be some third party app that accomplishes some of what you're looking for. If you want to do it with Indigo, though, you'll need to use the Scheduled actions to accomplish what you're looking for. The Hue system wasn't really designed for rapid or synchronized animation. Philips/Signify have added some animation type functionality when using specific hardware and applications, but none of that can be accomplished through the Hue app or with Indigo. You can accomplish slower, less synchronized effects using a combination of Triggers, Schedules, Hue Groups and Hue Scenes, but you'll have to do some experimentation to see what works best for your purposes.