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Philips Hue |OT| And Siri said, "Let there be light," and there was light.

GAMEPROFF

Banned
Steam should be fine. If we're talking Screenbloom with games, it could be that their screen capture method doesn't play nice with graphics APIs (especially with games in fullscreen exclusive, borderless windowed might work).
Ah, I see :D I just started a few games randomly and the Hue always went dark.
Gonna try it your way the next time
 

giga

Member
Is 600 good? Around the same level as Hue bulbs? I tried looking it up but saw different levels depending on some number that goes in the thousands?
The hue color bulb goes to 800 at 4000K but only 570 at 2700K. See chart I posted before.
 

jts

...hate me...
What are the best alternatives in Tap switches that are compatible with Hue?
What’s wrong with Hue’s own dimmer switch? Reasonably priced, battery-powered, smart mount (magnetic+adhesive+ the switch itself is detachable magnetically from the mount), just made Homekit compatible with latest update, offers 4 buttons, and, if you’re willing to tinker, supports up to 8-16 different actions.

Among several overpriced products, the dimmer switch is a very sensitive offer from Philips imo. I’m not sure there’s better value anywhere else.
 

Vyer

Member
Hmm. Already had a Hue dimmer switch for my living room lights. Tried playing with it with the new HomeKit update, but I must be missing something because I can’t see where I can assign dimming capabilities to a button in the Home app. Might have to play with it/research a little more.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
PSA, if you want to create HomeKit triggers on the motion sensor’s temperature or light sensors, the third party Home app ($15) lets you do this. Still trying to determine the accuracy reported to HomeKit for ambient light, but the goal is to set a motion trigger from sunrise to sunset if the day is overcast or stormy.

Hmm. Already had a Hue dimmer switch for my living room lights. Tried playing with it with the new HomeKit update, but I must be missing something because I can’t see where I can assign dimming capabilities to a button in the Home app. Might have to play with it/research a little more.
You need an advanced trigger which requires an app like I just mentioned. I don’t believe you can do it in Apple’s app. You would set a trigger on dim+ where the condition that the lights are at 0% and that would set them to 10%. You’d have another trigger on dim+ where the condition is the lights are 10% that would set them to 20%. So on and so forth. The nice part is you can use them in scenes. So if you have multiple lamps in a room, you can use the actual dimmer function to gradually light or dim the whole room by adding more lamps to the scenes. So 10%-30% might only have one lamp lit, 40-70% might have two lamps now and over 70% you might add a third or fourth lamp. Now that’s a powerful dimmer.
 

jts

...hate me...
They are to expensive. I dont want to spend more then 20€ on switches.
If you need plain white Hue bulbs you can get dimmer + 1 white E27 bulb "dimming kits" for about 40€ or even less*, that price beats the separate MSRPs.

*Currently at about 36 € on amazon.de.

Otherwise yeah, sales, I guess. Really don't know of a cheaper alternative, sorry.
 

sangreal

Member
PSA, if you want to create HomeKit triggers on the motion sensor's temperature or light sensors, the third party Home app ($15) lets you do this. Still trying to determine the accuracy reported to HomeKit for ambient light, but the goal is to set a motion trigger from sunrise to sunset if the day is overcast or stormy.

How is the different from what you can do w/o 3rd party app? With the HomeKit update Phillips pushed out yesterday, all 3 of those sensors are available in Apple Home
 

jts

...hate me...
How is the different from what you can do w/o 3rd party app? With the HomeKit update Phillips pushed out yesterday, all 3 of those sensors are available in Apple Home
Only motion is available as a trigger as far as I see.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
Looks like you're right. I haven't actually set up any automations, but what is the point of having the other sensors in homekit then (without a 3rd party app)?

so in the third party app, motion is still the only trigger. I am guessing this is how the sensor works, not HomeKit as you can use other temp sensors as triggers.

my PSA was that with the third party app, you can use the other 2 sensors as conditions. Unfortunately the first party Home app is very limited when allowing you to set conditions.. mostly related to time and presence. With the third party app you can set motion as the trigger, but have the automation only active based on the temperature or ambient light readings. With the first party Home app, you can only see those values, you can't react to them.

Unfortunately the first party app is very much apple's approach of "we want to give enough to be useful, but not so much as to overwhelm". Hence the options for condition are limited, multiple conditions are not a thing, etc. Fortunately apple (afaik) has improved the default Home app so that now automations created in the third party app actually show up WITH ALL CONDITIONS in the first party app. Previously if you were using conditions or triggers unavailable in the default Home app, when you viewed the automation it looked way more simple than it was.. and if you changed anything in that app it killed all of the complex parts. Not a big deal if you're the only one doing this as you'd just always use the third party app. But if you have multiple people in the house and any only use the first party app.... Now everything shows up fine.. and multiple conditions that Apple doesn't make available show up in the first party app as toggles on the condition sheet. Pretty slick in fact.

The only limitation of Homekit left that I haven't figured out how to work around.. It seems apple only allows you to use sunrise and sunset together, period. What I would like is sunrise/sunset one boundary, and a fixed time as another boundary. So have one setting valid for sunset to 11pm, and another setting valid from 11pm to sunrise.
 

GAMEPROFF

Banned
If you need plain white Hue bulbs you can get dimmer + 1 white E27 bulb "dimming kits" for about 40€ or even less*, that price beats the separate MSRPs.

*Currently at about 36 € on amazon.de.

Otherwise yeah, sales, I guess. Really don't know of a cheaper alternative, sorry.
Its fine, I thought the circles where my only option, the rectangular ones are actually pretty decent prized. Gonna get one of these.
 

jts

...hate me...
so in the third party app, motion is still the only trigger. I am guessing this is how the sensor works, not HomeKit as you can use other temp sensors as triggers.

my PSA was that with the third party app, you can use the other 2 sensors as conditions. Unfortunately the first party Home app is very limited when allowing you to set conditions.. mostly related to time and presence. With the third party app you can set motion as the trigger, but have the automation only active based on the temperature or ambient light readings. With the first party Home app, you can only see those values, you can't react to them.

Unfortunately the first party app is very much apple's approach of "we want to give enough to be useful, but not so much as to overwhelm". Hence the options for condition are limited, multiple conditions are not a thing, etc. Fortunately apple (afaik) has improved the default Home app so that now automations created in the third party app actually show up WITH ALL CONDITIONS in the first party app. Previously if you were using conditions or triggers unavailable in the default Home app, when you viewed the automation it looked way more simple than it was.. and if you changed anything in that app it killed all of the complex parts. Not a big deal if you're the only one doing this as you'd just always use the third party app. But if you have multiple people in the house and any only use the first party app.... Now everything shows up fine.. and multiple conditions that Apple doesn't make available show up in the first party app as toggles on the condition sheet. Pretty slick in fact.

The only limitation of Homekit left that I haven't figured out how to work around.. It seems apple only allows you to use sunrise and sunset together, period. What I would like is sunrise/sunset one boundary, and a fixed time as another boundary. So have one setting valid for sunset to 11pm, and another setting valid from 11pm to sunrise.
Does the 3rd party app stuff work when you're not home?
Its fine, I thought the circles where my only option, the rectangular ones are actually pretty decent prized. Gonna get one of these.
Ah yes. Those rectangular ones are the dimmers we are referring to. Literal game changers from the Hue Tap, which I also dreaded having to drop €50 into one haha. It was amazing news when they were announced.
 
Was thinking of getting the hue white + color starting kit next month for my bday. I might as well hold out around black Friday huh?
 

giga

Member
So, no B12 models even though Ikea loves those stupid candelabra lights? Welp, I hope the BestBuy link was a sign Lifx has something coming up because I'm not paying $150 to fill a $20 lamp.
Stick with white or white spectrum bulbs because color bulbs will be expensive for a while. The tradfri white spectrum e12 is $15.
 

borghe

Loves the Greater Toronto Area
Does the 3rd party app stuff work when you're not home?

the third party app works directly with HomeKit and HomeKit automations. It simply uses the API to give you more features and functions than available in Apple's default app. Obviously to use automations you still need an ipad or apple tv.

In fact, in iOS 10 as I was saying you could even setup more complex automations than available in the default app, AND your home hub would properly execute them even though they would show up incorrect in the iOS 10 Home app.

So yeah, clearly HomeKit is a system unto itself in your home.. and the apple app (and others) are just gateways/tools into that system. The third party app simply has more capabilities in the devices it exposes and automation capabilities it offers. Likely due to apple wanting to limit the scope of the default app.
 

Uhyve

Member
Anyone interested in testing my screen mirroring program?

I guess the features would be that it's much lower latency than Screenbloom, scales transition speed according to the difference in color/brightness, works on fullscreen exclusive games, can handle resolution changes, recovers after UAC prompts and has a pretty low CPU usage. It does require Windows 8 or higher though and a DXGI 1.2 compatible graphics card (DX11? Maybe DX11.1. I'll look it up).

I'm interested to see if my default settings are appropriate for other peoples setups or if I need to detect less optimal conditions somehow. Through wifi it seems to work pretty good for me but my Hue bridge is in the same room as the light and that may not be the case for alot of setups. You'll know if there's an issue with the default settings if the latency starts to get really bad.

Also, just wanna find bugs. I'm pretty sure I caught everything, but I thought that days ago and have been finding stuff ever since.

Oh, and the user friendliness. I didn't want to make a GUI, but I added a setup wizard to the output console (which is hideable in the settings), a readme and examples for more advanced setups (and for more simple setups like making icons to turn your lights on and off for your desktop/startbar).

Anyway, download here if you're interested. I'm allowed to link to my own little projects like this right? Not like I'm charging for it or anything.

I think it'll require the VS2015u3 redist, though you probably already have it installed from some other program. But if it crashes at launch, it's probably this missing.

Edit: Since it does screen capture, just thought I'd mention that it contacts the official Philips Hue server on first launch, after that it should never try to contact a server outside of your local network. The only reason it connects to the Hue server is because it has a fast detection method for bridges on your local network, the program will fallback to the slower SSDP method though if you don't have an internet connection. After the first successful connection to a Hue bridge, it remembers the local IP and won't go outside of the local network again.
 
Anyone interested in testing my screen mirroring program?

Edit: Since it does screen capture, just thought I'd mention that it contacts the official Philips Hue server on first launch, after that it should never try to contact a server outside of your local network. The only reason it connects to the Hue server is because it has a fast detection method for bridges on your local network, the program will fallback to the slower SSDP method though if you don't have an internet connection. After the first successful connection to a Hue bridge, it remembers the local IP and won't go outside of the local network again.

I'll give it a whirl later on and report back. I have two Hue Bloom lights next to my bed and a new Hue colour bulb in my main light in my bedroom together with Amazon Echo, all bought in the rare sales so the outlay wasn't too bad. I'm a huge fan of coloured lighting and even have an Ambivision kit setup on my PC/PS4/Wii-U and keep meaning to get my Switch Dock hooked up also.

Anything that lets me play with this stuff for cheap is on my radar :)

Update: Ok, it works on my W10 x64 Pro with GTX1070 and all three lights when i edited the config file. However it seemed to crash on that youtube video. I'll do some testing with delays etc and get back to you. Alexa is very handy in these situations, "Alexa, turn off Bedroom lights" has been used a couple of times this morning while playing about with it :)

My PC is on AC-Wifi and the Hue Hub is in the room connected via a simple switch into Homeplug downstairs to the router. I'm surprised it worked at all.

I found the "Liquid Chaser *HD*" video and other similar videos to be very handy for playing with Ambivison/Ambilight etc.
I also played a simple RGB switching video to get an idea of the delay/lag/latency in the system and it was noticable on defaults but eh, i'm sure it can be dialled in with a bit of tinkering.
 

Uhyve

Member
I'll give it a whirl later on and report back. I have two Hue Bloom lights next to my bed and a new Hue colour bulb in my main light in my bedroom together with Amazon Echo, all bought in the rare sales so the outlay wasn't too bad. I'm a huge fan of coloured lighting and even have an Ambivision kit setup on my PC/PS4/Wii-U and keep meaning to get my Switch Dock hooked up also.

Anything that lets me play with this stuff for cheap is on my radar :)

Update: Ok, it works on my W10 x64 Pro with GTX1070 and all three lights when i edited the config file. However it seemed to crash on that youtube video. I'll do some testing with delays etc and get back to you. Alexa is very handy in these situations, "Alexa, turn off Bedroom lights" has been used a couple of times this morning while playing about with it :)

My PC is on AC-Wifi and the Hue Hub is in the room connected via a simple switch into Homeplug downstairs to the router. I'm surprised it worked at all.

I found the "Liquid Chaser *HD*" video and other similar videos to be very handy for playing with Ambivison/Ambilight etc.
I also played a simple RGB switching video to get an idea of the delay/lag/latency in the system and it was noticable on defaults but eh, i'm sure it can be dialled in with a bit of tinkering.
Huh, it crashed out? Weird... hmmm, probably the threading, I'll have to give that a good look.
 
Huh, it crashed out? Weird... hmmm, probably the threading, I'll have to give that a good look.

I worked for a minute or so and then just seemed to hang as the video was playing but the lights didn't change anymore. I was able to quit the app from the systray icon no problem and Alexa could control the lights so i think it might have just stopped talking to the Hue kit. No errors in eventvwr and no log files in programdata/profile that i could see. Didn't get a crashed exe dialog but the console output didn't appear to be updating if that helps.

I haven't had a chance to fiddle with the settings and fine-tune them yet but i'll give that a whirl tonight when i have some time and the lights are prettier in the dark :)
 

Uhyve

Member
Hmmm, guess it's not quite ready for release yet, heh. Got a few ideas what those issues could be, thanks for the feedback.
 

Uhyve

Member
Anyone know if the IKEA motion sensors are planned to work with Hue? In the UK it's £16 vs £35, can't quite justify it to myself. Especially because I want 2...

Are there errorlogs we could send you?
Not really. Though knowing that it happened after the strip turned on is actually pretty handy, means it probably crashed starting up DirectX for the screen capture. For now, I've made it fail in a less crashy way and added a fall back (slower) capture method.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
I wish the led strip had a method to individually address the LEDs so you could do a more advanced, proper ambilight with different colours for each zone of the TV
 

jts

...hate me...
I've been trying to figure out if there's any app that can make use of the Hue dimmer switch's extra actions, like long press, and lets set it up to activate a Homekit scene.

It's a messy world of apps out there. And it doesn't help that the switch only now has been made Homekit compatible. So what happens is that most if not all the apps that make use of the extra actions, make it just for Hue-specific things, not Homekit.

I don't understand why Philips doesn't make those actions officially available.

But I guess it will just be a matter of time until something pops up that lets me do it.
 

jts

...hate me...
I can’t even get my switch into the Home app, how do I do that?
Make sure your Hue app version is 2.16. It distinguishes itself by the white app icon, whereas before it was black. After that, make sure of updating your Hue software in-app. That's about it, your Hue accessories should pop up in the Home app afterwards.
 
Make sure your Hue app version is 2.16. It distinguishes itself by the white app icon, whereas before it was black. After that, make sure of updating your Hue software in-app. That's about it, your Hue accessories should pop up in the Home app afterwards.

Just saw it got updated to white, I’ll make sure everything is there when I get home

I just hate the Hue app so much I try to avoid it
 

jts

...hate me...
This thread made me order a Hue colour kit. What have you done?
Got you into a terribly addictive hobby that makes you think that "just one more" accessory and you'll get that perfect setup, that things will start happening around you without you even thinking about them, and your comfort and pleasure around the house will turn up to 11. Besides, you'll feel like you can now talk to your house. How cool is that?

In all honesty, smart home / homekit stuff is an incredible experience in fulfilling those old sci-fi dreams of how people would live in the future, and lighting/Hue is a major part of it, and a great gateway to get into more stuff of the kind.
 

mm04

Member
Got you into a terribly addictive hobby that makes you think that "just one more" accessory and you'll get that perfect setup, that things will start happening around you without you even thinking about them, and your comfort and pleasure around the house will turn up to 11. Besides, you'll feel like you can now talk to your house. How cool is that?

In all honesty, smart home / homekit stuff is an incredible experience in fulfilling those old sci-fi dreams of how people would live in the future, and lighting/Hue is a major part of it, and a great gateway to get into more stuff of the kind.

Yeah, it's super addicting. Just in the the last 6 months or so I've purchased 3 motion detectors, 13 color bulbs, 2 light strips from Philips, 3 Wemo smart plugs, a Nest thermostat, an Alexa, Google Home and 2 Harmony Hubs. My day to day home experience now has been completely revamped. Think of it as redecorating your house, but with tech instead of furniture.
 

sangreal

Member
I got an LIFX+ bulb today, mostly because I wanted to see if I'd get any benefit out of the IR mode. The IR is pretty useless, but man the brightness/colors are waaay better than my Hue Gen3s. I really like the 1st party effects in the app too. I almost wish I invested in LIFX bulbs instead of Hue but oh well. My main reason for avoiding LIFX -- I don't want a million WiFi devices -- hasn't changed anyway.

Anyways, more on topic I also got my E12 color bulbs in. Really like those as well, though I still maintain they aren't worth $50. I was starting to worry after seeing the dimensions showing them to be longer than the E26/A19 bulbs but they're pretty small and fit great in my ceiling fan. Huge upgrade from having the A19 bulbs sticking out with an adapter
 

nabil2199

Member
Same here, I didn't want to have a million extra wi-fi devices in my appartment. zigbee just makes much more sense for such devices.
Being able to also control ZLL compatible plugs if great (I use osram lightify plugs)

I got an LIFX+ bulb today, mostly because I wanted to see if I'd get any benefit out of the IR mode. The IR is pretty useless, but man the brightness/colors are waaay better than my Hue Gen3s. I really like the 1st party effects in the app too. I almost wish I invested in LIFX bulbs instead of Hue but oh well. My main reason for avoiding LIFX -- I don't want a million WiFi devices -- hasn't changed anyway.

Anyways, more on topic I also got my E12 color bulbs in. Really like those as well, though I still maintain they aren't worth $50. I was starting to worry after seeing the dimensions showing them to be longer than the E26/A19 bulbs but they're pretty small and fit great in my ceiling fan. Huge upgrade from having the A19 bulbs sticking out with an adapter
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
Still fiddling around with the motion sensor for the upstairs landing. I have it set in the evening to come on full when it detects motion, and then overnight it turns on at 1% brightness as a nightlight. But during the day I want it to come on - only if the light level is low (eg on a dark winter morning). But can’t quite dial it in

Using the 'hue lights' app which gives more flexibility on rule setting
 

Jill Sandwich

the turds of Optimus Prime
Got you into a terribly addictive hobby that makes you think that "just one more" accessory and you'll get that perfect setup, that things will start happening around you without you even thinking about them, and your comfort and pleasure around the house will turn up to 11. Besides, you'll feel like you can now talk to your house. How cool is that?

In all honesty, smart home / homekit stuff is an incredible experience in fulfilling those old sci-fi dreams of how people would live in the future, and lighting/Hue is a major part of it, and a great gateway to get into more stuff of the kind.

Aye, I'll be getting a Nest next. At least now I know what to answer when I'm asked what I want for Christmas/Birthdays.
 

Spinifex

Member
So all of a sudden I have 2 bulbs out of 8 that seem to have died. They won't power on at all. Socket is still fine, normal bulbs work fine in the socket.

Any actual troubleshooting or are they pretty much gone?
 

jts

...hate me...
Oh wow, those Trådfri E14s would solve my living room issue brilliantly (no pun intended) if they can be controlled with Hue. With Hue I'm looking at a minimum of €130 for the non-color E14s. I need 5.

With Ikea at 7€ a pop makes it 35€. Too bad I might need the bridge to update them (?) that adds another 35€. What a waste. Maybe I can update and return. Also might need a dimmer to pair them. Another 15€. Could do the same or just keep it.

Anyway, need to look into it.
 

Luke_Wal

Member
So can I buy one of those new Echos (with the Hub built-in) and the IKEA bulbs and be good to control the bulbs from my iPhone? Or do you need more than that?
 
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