[OBSOLETE] ColorCast - Color Changing Weather Lamp

There are no settings within the app to specify times but it can be assigned to one or more modes. So if you have a mode called “Morning” that’s scheduled for a certain time frame you can set it to that and it would only come on when “Morning” is active.

One thing I sort of wish I could choose is how long it shows the color change. I have it set to go back to the lamps default color, and so it only shows the weather color for about 1 sec. It would be cool, imo, if I could select the amount of seconds it stay the weather color. Either way, thanks for spending your time making this awesome app! :slight_smile:

It’s definitely an option that could be added to the configuration screen at some point. But in the meantime you can change it by editing this line def delay=2000 //The amount of time to leave each color on on line 378ish (I just realized that that’s a really poor naming choice for that variable and I’ll change it with the next update).

You may run into issues if the total amount of time is more than 20 seconds. That seems to be the SmartThings limit for apps. For example if you set it to stay on for 10 seconds and there are 3 different colors to display, the total time to complete would exceed that upper limit and cause an error. Also keep in mind that 20 seconds is the total limit for the app to run. I believe that includes retrieving the weather, processing the data and cycling the colors. So even if you have the lights set to 20 seconds it may still fail because the weather retrieval and processing time will add to that 20 seconds and cause you to exceed the 20 second time limit. I haven’t verified this last part yet so I could be wrong.

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Hello!

It’s a nice idea, but I can’t really use it in it’s current form. Maybe someone has an idea. I have a HUE IRIS lamp and I would like to play the temperature for X number of time at a specific time. I don’t think that I can launch smartapps in Rule Machine, so do you think it these feature could be added?

Thanks!!

I’m working on an update to allow the continuous display of the forecast. If/when that’s complete you would be able to assign it to a specific mode so it would only display the forecast while that mode is active. I don’t have any plans to add scheduling within the app as I believe the mode approach works well. Also, just to clarify, the app doesn’t show the temperature, it shows if the temperature is going to be above or below a value you set in the app. So you can tell it to alert you if the temperature is going to be below 40° and you will get the same notification for any temperature below 40°. I’ve been considering writing an app that would just convey the current temperature using red and blue at different intensities but that wouldn’t be a part of this app.

Sweet I’ll mess around with that later tonight. Thanks!

Something like that would be fantastic. I’ve been toying with trying to do something similar based on your earlier suggestion of setting to trigger only in a certain mode but busy schedule blah blah blah nonsense gets in the way (also, fairly new to all of this so the coding would probably be ugly and primitive).

My idea is I have 2 lamps on end tables with Hue bulbs. Have it run only during my “Morning, Getting Ready for Work” routine and have one lamp colored based on temp (blue/cold to red/hot) and the other lamp showing the type of weather for the day (cloudy, rainy, sunny, etc).

I know this is somewhat of a specific use case, so hopefully I can get around to it at some point. Think it would be a very easy way to see the weather when we wake up in the morning and head to the kitchen to fix some coffee.

I like this idea too and if you can get it implemented, please share the code.

As promised, here is a picture of the lamp I bought for this project. It is going to be placed in the hall on top of a narrow bookcase so the shape is ideal.

I have a bit of a problem though. I want to operate this so that it switches off after being triggered but sometimes the light stays on. Now I know that in the app it there is warning that the light may not return to its original state due to the way SmartThings polls so I was wondering if there was something separate I could have running in the background to check if the light was on and turn it off.

EDIT - ignore the above I have reread he thread and I deselected ‘remember light settings’ and that should do what I want.

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Has anyone had any issues with it not changing color for snow? This is the first snow we’ve gotten here since I’ve gotten my lamps setup and I noticed it wasn’t changing colors to show it. Looking at the Live Logging I was getting this error:

java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot get property ‘precipType’ on null object @ line 287

I completely removed and reinstalled the app in the IDE and app and still had the same problem.

I just noticed it too but thought it was only present in the updated code I’m working with. I just updated the repository with the fix. You can either go get a fresh copy or update your smart app directly. You just need to change currentConditions.precipType to hour.precipType on line 287.

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Sweet, thanks for the quick response!

Any chance of getting this to work with other bulbs (ie LIFX) ?

Under lights and switches, use the power timer app. It will turn the light off after a dedicated time set by you.

Not at the moment. I don’t own any LIFX bulbs to work with. I’m finishing up a pretty big update, or I will be if I’m ever able to get my Hues working with SmartThings again. After the update is released, if you’d be willing to help test it, I’ll take a shot at adding LiFX support

No need for that. There’s an option in the app to turn the light off after it’s done displaying the weather.

Big Update

I’ve made some major updates to the app. The code has been updated at GitHub so go grab a copy today to try the newness. It definitely probably might be bug free. Let me know if you find any issues.

For @aaronsmethurst, @JvH and anyone else interested, I “borrowed” a LIFX bulb from a friend and I was able to add support for the bulbs.

Other new features include:

  • Added support for contact sensors. Now you can trigger the display when a door is opened.
  • Added the ability to specify precipitation intensity for rain.
  • Added the ability to specify accumulation for snow.
  • Added “Always On” to display the forecast continuously while the app is active.*
  • Redesigned the interface to make it more user friendly and easier to use.
  • Added option to enable/disable the app.
  • Added the option to disable the “All Clear” alert.
  • Adjusted the color definition for “Yellow”. It was too similar to green.
  • Added an “Under the Hood” section for additional app settings and debugging.

* “Always On” has some significant limitations that are worth mentioning. Due to scheduling and app execution time limits, when multiple weather conditions exist, the lights will cycle through all colors, leaving each one on for 2 minutes. The scheduling limit is supposed to be one minute, which I still think is too long, but at 1 minute, and even 90 seconds, I noticed a high rate of schedule failures. These limitation also prevent flashing the lights for weather alerts. Trying to flash the lights for more then 20 seconds would exceed the maximum app execution time. Because of this, flashing lights for weather alerts are disabled when “Always on” is being used. If an alternative becomes available, I’ll implement it.

As always, your feedback is welcome.

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Awesome!! Thanks so much for incorporating LIFX!

I tried it this morning. It’s working very well! But I had to disable it because it was set in the bedroom. Do you think it would be possible to add a intensity parameter so I could put the light at x%?

Thanks!

LJ

I keep getting Please fill out all required fields and everything is completely filled out.

Getting the same error here…