Down the color device support rathole...

I'm working on updating the MQTT Shims plugin to support color devices, so that Zigbee device support using zigbee2mqtt will work directly.

Here's a link to the MQTT API for zigbee2mqtt, specifically the section on control messages to the devices.

https://www.zigbee2mqtt.io/information/mqtt_topics_and_message_structure.html#zigbee2mqttfriendly_nameset

Looking at the example for the Philips Hue Go, I see that "state", "brightness", and "color_temp" are all acceptable in the payload. And also a long list of possible color specifications, of which RGB color is an option. I'm assuming (but am not 100% sure) that I can send either color_temp or color. Or maybe both?

My problem is, that the Indigo SDK doesn't allow for for the SupportsWhiteTemperature property unless I also have SupportsWhite enabled. But SupportsWhite puts a white level slider in the UI when it's enabled. And I have no idea what to do with that value. What's the relationship between the Brightness and whiteLevel?

Any suggestions on how to set up the Indigo UI for my Color shim devices to best map to the parameters I need to send to the zigbee2mqtt devices?

FWIW, I'm not making these changes to only work with zigbee2mqtt. I'm making them as generic as possible, but I need to make sure that when I'm done, it works for zigbee2mqtt.

Hi Joe.
Quick reply until I can get back to the computer.
I’ve been confused on the white level before when I was developing my CCT plugin. I ignored it then and yes think we should ignore it now.
For this I think we also ignore it, It doesn’t get used in the zigbee2mqtt plugin.

Yes for rgb bulbs they can take rgb and colour temp, or only one, or none. I don’t know the reaction if both are sent and so would expect best behaviour is to send which ever was last changed.

Simon

[matt (support)]

There are some Z-Wave color modules that support the normal R, G, B channels but also have one or two additional white channels (which are normally a warm white LED and a cool white LED). For those modules the white "temperature" is controlled just by mixing different while levels for the two LEDs. How warm/cool the LEDs are isn't really well defined, so Indigo just gets low level control over the actual LED level for those white LEDs. For those devices the brightness is independent of all the individual channel levels (R, G, B, and white). As an example, setting Red to 10% and White to 50% then changing brightness to 10% would result in the Red LED being about 1% and the White LED about 5%. Changing brightness back up to 100% would set the Red to 10% and White to 50%. That is all just internally how the Z-Wave modules handle it that I've come across. Point being, Indigo doesn't do anything special with multiplying the brightness through the individual channels or anything; the module handles all of that.

Other modules allow the white temperature to be specified specifically (I believe always through a configuration parameter based on the ones I've seen).

My problem is, that the Indigo SDK doesn't allow for for the SupportsWhiteTemperature property unless I also have SupportsWhite enabled. But SupportsWhite puts a white level slider in the UI when it's enabled.

That is probably a mistake on my part. We should allow the white temperature UI to show without the white level slider. I'll look into that, but for now just ignore that slider.

Hi Matt,

.... That is probably a mistake on my part. We should allow the white temperature UI to show without the white level slider. I'll look into that, but for now just ignore that slider.

The white slider is displayed for my LIFX bulbs (via my plugin). I have logic in the plugin to match the White slider to the brightness value and vice-versa to keep them consistent. However, it doesn't really do anything as far as my LIFX plugin is concerned.

It would be good to make the White Slider optional.

In addition, I have a new feature request : It would be great to have a new slider for infrared and for that to be optional. So you could have either a white slider or an infrared slider. The LIFX bulbs (some models) support infrared.

Thanks for considering.