The color picker in SmartThings is horrible. Usually I want the most saturated color I can get, and I always end up going into the whites and then have to very precisely try to pick the color just below the line. On top of that, my thumb covers up exactly where I’m trying to pick.
Can you make it more like the LIFX interface with the color wheel and saturation slider? Or at least separate the whites from colors so that it’s easier to get max saturation?
@Brian_Renstrom, because I know you are already using webCoRE, why don’t you set your lighting directly from Scenes within your LIFX app? This gives you the ability to directly control your lighting between webCoRE and LIFX directly. Plus, you have additional LIFX functionality already built into webCoRE specific to LIFX (Pulse, Scenes, etc…)
Here’s the How to I created for LIFX and Hue specifically with webCoRE:
@Automated_House That looks better 
@WB70 Hue’s color picker is a step up from SmartThings, but LIFX is the best IMO. But to your point, if you only have Hue bulbs in your house, or if you only have LIFX, this would work great, but there a couple of reasons why I don’t do this.
I assumed you had LIFX bulbs based on the title of the Topic
Sorry for the confusion. I don’t yet have any LIFX, but have been looking at lots of videos and articles comparing various brands including their apps. So far, for me at least, none of them are perfect, which is probably why I have a hodge-podge.
Makes for an interesting setup 
I am 100% Hue and LIFX. When Im gone, someone in the family is going to be rich from light bulbs 
I’m learning a LOT about the nuances of all the different brands and communication protocols, for sure. I bought some Osram’s because they were half the price of Hue and LIFX, but I’ve found they have some drawbacks. For example, Osram bulbs won’t smoothly fade between colors, unless you use a custom DTH. Also, their purple is not very saturated (all other colors are very vibrant though), and they don’t report their color name, so you have to rely on hue & saturation values when capturing the attributes in ST. (That last one may be a DTH issue, not an Osram issue).
I may replace my Osram’s with Hue or LIFX eventually, but it’s still not practical for me to use smart bulbs in places where I don’t need color and a wired dimmer and dumb bulbs would be more economical.
One of my biggest reasons of using Hue with the Bridge is that it gives me a completely separate ecosystem than being completely SmartThings dependent. If SmartThings is out to lunch, I have 100% control of my lighting either thru the Hue App or via voice with Alexa. One of my Backup Plans. All of the LIFX bulbs are WIFI, so I have the ability to control them independently from the LIFX app as well or thru Alexa. Same reason for having my Nest System as it’s own little ecosystem.
Speaking of Nest, I replied earlier to your post in that thread as well.
That’s an interesting reason. Does ST go down often? One of my biggest reasons for buying a ST hub was to not be tied down to 1 or 2 brands or protocols. If I purchased the Osram Lightify gateway (their version of the hue bridge) then I could also still have control of those bulbs by app/voice if ST goes down. As for my Zwave dimmers, I guess I’m just out of luck and would have to go around the house physically touching those like a neanderthal 
When Hue releases their v2 bridge with Zigbee 3.0, it should theoretically be able to see the Osram bulbs as well.
This last month has been interesting for outages. It’s the most I have seen in a little over a year.
I’m expecting to see more because they have ramped things up and have a whole lot going on side by side. There are several betas going (Account Migration round 2, IOS Mobile Presence, 20.14 Firmware beta, and more) and they are planning to merge everything into the Samsung Connect App which is supposed to be a huge deal over the SmartThings app. So with all of this being deployed and tested at various points, my expectation is that we will have more outages in the near future before it gets better. Which I’m prepared for and don’t have my house setup to be dependent on SmartThings alone. No sirens tied to SHM.
If you have devices that run locally that’s your best bet for those to remain functioning when the ST cloud rains. Smart Lighting is the only SmartApp that will run Automations locally and all devices contained within must be local as well. And only a portion of SHM is local so if you have things dependent on that, you can be SOL. It’s all about planning and preparing.
Devices with custom DTH’s can’t run locally, correct?
Correct… 10 characters
That is a very interesting post. This part caught my eye…
I had planned to do some automations with my garage door, and had heard rumors that the MyQ garage door opener would let you automate closing it, but not opening it. Now I understand why!
Lighting isn’t a huge deal for outages, but I will definitely think through this for other devices I might incorporate. Thanks for sharing that.
This isn’t true at all. I have MyQ installed and running MyQ Lite and my Automations are tied to it. I choose not to allow the garage door to close automatically for safety reasons only. I have posts out there as well as JD having posts. If you can’t see it close, don’t allow it to automatically. I have a Nest Camera in my garage so in the event that I forgot to close the garage door, I can view camera make sure that nobody is standing underneath it and either press the button in SmartThings or directly in MyQ App if SmartThings is down.
As for opening the garage, when my mobile presence is detected around the corner, my garage door opens, garage lock is unlocked, ST is Disarmed, etc…
Alexa doesn’t allow you to open/close garage door natively but that’s an easy work around by creating a routine in Alexa to open / close garage door via the buttons defined in ST to open and close.
maybe MyQ changed it, or maybe I’m thinking of the wrong product… I’ll have to find it, but I know I saw some posts and articles where the device manufacturer didnt allow opening due to “security reasons,” but didn’t elaborate. Anyway, we’re WAAAY off topic haha.
Lol off topic. Its your topic so it’s all good. Hijacking your own thread.
The only security restrictions is Alexa not allowing you to unlock a lock or opening a garage door. MyQ and SmartThings have 0 restrictions implemented for opening and closing.
Official thread for MyQ
The security issues you’re discussing are ones that Chamberlain itself (that manufactures myQ) has installed for most of its official third-party integrations, including wink, for example.
Even chamberlain’s own IFTTT channel for MyQ only allows you to close the door, not open it.
Since there is no official SmartThings/MyQ integration, The restriction doesn’t apply to the unofficial ones.
Chamberlain shut down a previous unofficial SmartThings/MyQ integration, and it’s always possible that they will try to shut down the current one, it really becomes a sort of gray area hacking which may well violate your terms of service with chamberlain, but many people still use it.
