Hue Lights discussion

[nsheldon]

Version 1.0.3 Posted

(See main Hue Lights announcement thread for download link).

• Fixed: a bug that caused the plugin to crash when using a LightStrip device.

[DU Lou]

The "ct" parameter is for color temperature, which (apparently) the LightStrips don't support.

Interesting you mention that. I noticed on the Hue iPhone app the Bloom and Lightstrip are isolated to the ROYGBIV area and can't be moved to the orange, white, light blue area on the right.

[DU Lou]

The Hue App is pretty limited. I mean I suppose its cute to get colors from a photo across all your bulbs but I am looking for more and Nathan's plugin combined with Indigo might just meet that requirement.

Has anyone one created a scene to simulate a sunset or sunrise? For example, with respect to a sunset I would want to start with something warm like the "relax" color and then somehow transition to a mid-deep blue (for a night sky effect) over a period of 10 minutes.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to accomplish this?

Thanks!
~Lou

[ckeyes888]

I just tested a 540 sec ramp rate on two bulbs simultaneously and it worked pretty well.
I watched their progress in the Hue app and they seemed to inch up to full brightness
alternating between the two bulbs. Not really noticeable though.

I suppose you could ramp them up to one color and time another action to begin
at the end of the first ramp rate to transition to the final color.

Carl

[nsheldon]

I suppose you could ramp them up to one color and time another action to begin
at the end of the first ramp rate to transition to the final color.

Carl

This is what I do to coincide with my a morning wake-up alarm. It's not a sunrise transition (just a long fade-in from 1% to 100% brightness), but that's only because I hadn't thought of trying that.

Note that when transitioning from any brightness to OFF, there's a bug in the Hue hub firmware that causes it to turn off the lights completely after about 60 seconds of fading out. This may have been resolved in the most recent firmware update, but I haven't checked yet. The work-around is to use one (or more) action(s) to go to 1% brightness then another action to turn the light off completely if you're going to use a transition time (Ramp Rate) of more than 60 seconds. This bug doesn't appear when going from OFF to full (or any other) brightness, only when going to OFF.

[loafbread]

Great plugin. I am using it across the Internet to our vacation apartment. Thanks sheldon.

[nsheldon]

Great plugin. I am using it across the Internet to our vacation apartment. Thanks sheldon.

Thanks! Glad you're getting some good use out of it.

[huey]

Love this plugin! It's been working great for me.

Today I added some under cabinet lighting using LightStrips, and I upgraded this app so now they are controllable via the kitchen light switch. So it appears that they are fully functional for me.

The issue I'm having is that we have 3 sets of the LightStrips and we got one to the perfect color through the Hue app, but I wanted to replicate that color over the other two. I read that in the newer update there was a full status on bulbs so I tried to run the get status from Indigo and got the following error:

Hue Lights Error The "Kitchen Right: Lights" device has an unrecognized model ID of "LST001". Hue Lights plugin does not support this device.

Which is fine, I get that maybe that information isn't going to be available until you get your hands on some LightStrips to flesh out the functionality but now it looks like it is sending the status request every 15 seconds and I'm getting logs full of the above error. Anyway to cancel the status request? I tried reloading the plugin and restarting the server all together, but neither worked.

Any thoughts?

[nsheldon]

Actually, thanks to a generous donation, I was able to get ahold of both a LightStrip and Bloom and am nearing completion of a Hue Lights plugin update that will provide full support for both and experimental support for LivingWhites devices (because I don't have any of them yet). I should have an updated plugin later tonight or sometime tomorrow which will fix this issue.

[huey]

Wow, awesome! Thanks for the quick response!

Any idea on how to clear out the current status request though?

[huey]

Oh and how do you get to the "Extended Bulb Status Information" that you talk about in the plugin details? I tried sending a status request to a normal Hue bulb and just got back what it's brightness level was, none of the other details, what am I missing?

[nsheldon]

Any idea on how to clear out the current status request though?

Reloading the Hue Lights plugin (from the Plugins menu) should clear that out.

Oh and how do you get to the "Extended Bulb Status Information" that you talk about in the plugin details? I tried sending a status request to a normal Hue bulb and just got back what it's brightness level was, none of the other details, what am I missing?

First, you have to have Indigo 6 or higher. If you have Indigo 6, while viewing the Devices list in the Indigo client, select the Hue Lights device for which you'd like to view extended data. Hover your mouse over the bottom edge of the device list pane. The mouse pointer should change to a separator adjustment pointer. Drag the bottom edge of the device list pane up to reveal the list of custom device states. This works with all devices that have custom states, not just Hue Lights.

[huey]

No go on the status reset, I reloaded the plugin and the error just comes back, same thing when I stop and restart the Indigo 6 server. Guess I will just have to let it roll until the update is ready, thanks!

I did get the extended status though! Very useful, can't wait to have that for the strips so I can nail down this color!

Thanks again for the quick responses!

[nsheldon]

Version 1.1.0 Posted

(See main Hue Lights announcement thread for download link).

• Added support for the following Friends of Hue devices:
  • LightStrips
  • LivingColors Bloom
• Added experimental support for LivingWhites devices.
• Fixed a bug that wouldn't turn off the Hue bulb as quickly if using the standard device Turn Off command as opposed to setting the brightness to 0 method.
• Fixed a bug that would not properly update the "online" device state with newer Hue hub firmware versions that properly show the online condition of a Hue device.
• Updated the Set Red/Green/Blue function to better match Hue device capabilities.
• Added a Set xyY Chromaticity (Advanced) action that allows one to directly specify the x/y chromaticity and Y luminosity values for devices that can render color.

[huey]

Decided to check the status before I headed to bed and was pleasantly surprised! Thanks for the update! Works like a charm!