LIFX and Works with Nest

I use the RUBY implementation (GitHub - chendo/lifx-http: A HTTP API for controlling LIFX devices.) because of two mains points:

  • Uses original LIFX ruby gem
  • Can be discovered via MDNS

I’m building 3 things:

  • LIFX - App (That will discover the server and add bulb to SmartThings)
  • LIFX Bridge - Device (That just handle HTTP request back from Ruby server)
  • LIFX Bulb - Device (Which is the actual LIFX Bulb)

But recently I have been having issues with their DEV ide that keep going down…

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Well after the last update of LIFX, I’m happy to says that none of my setup work anymore!
However they are working on a restfull API (https://github.com/chendo/lifx-http/issues/27), maybe then I’ll be able to have a proper setup, beside the speed.

I got a client token for their REST api and it seems to work well. Basic control was easy to set up, but I haven’t tried integrating with Smartthings. Got it working with my Fibaro Home Center though, but mostly since I already had things in place there for other REST controls.

I’m working on that today but I got side tracked at work.
As soon as I have a working version I’ll put it online.

I created an SmartThings App LIFX Connect and the associated SmartThings Device LIFX Bulb

Steps are:

  1. Add the Smart Device (https://graph.api.smartthings.com/ide/devices From Code)
  2. Add the Smart App (https://graph.api.smartthings.com/ide/app From Code)
  3. Click on App settings
  4. In settings, set your access_token (which you can get from Chendo https://github.com/chendo/lifx-http/issues/27#issuecomment-72760322)
  5. You can set debug to true, if you want some debugging statement in the log
  6. Install the app (I personally use the IDE simulator to set a location, then i can open the SmartApp in the iOS app)

You should be able to find all your bulbs and add them.

Know bugs so far:

  • If you use LIFX app to turn bulb on/off, their status won’t reflect for at least 5 minute (there is a job that get call every 5 minutes)
  • In the mean time there is a delay on the cloud API of LIFX on the status of a bulb, I wasn’t able to find out how long of a delay it is. But if you turn a bulb on by their API, the status endpoint is not updated right away
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Very nice - works well.

Well, except when my bulbs lose connectivity with the LIFX cloud. Have you seen this behaviour, where, after several days, an individual bulb will lose connectivity with the LIFX cloud? It will still respond to commands from the local LIFX app on the LAN, but requires a power cycle to reconnect to the cloud. Meanwhile, other bulbs continue to work with the LIFX cloud just fine (but then drop out themselves at some other time).

I’ve raised a support incident with LIFX to hopefully dig into and resolve this, but I’m curious if anybody else is experiencing it.

I haven’t seen this bug yet, and I hope I don’t see it soon because this would be highly annoying.
I already mentions my bug to Chendo (Lead Dev at Lifx.co) and he said it should be fix in a later release, but no specific ETA yet.

I too lost reliable control via lifx-http when I upgraded the bulbs to 2.0. I’m using a PHP gateway script to execute curl commands when my Z-Wave/Virtual switches are activated.

Much to my surprise, I was able to use the IFTTT channels as a stop gap until I can get my API token from Chendo. Only occasionally does it take longer than I’d like to trigger the lights – but it’ll do for now. I figure with sending the commands directly to the API should be faster than IFTTT triggers. Here’s hoping!

Although, the bug that @chuckles mentioned has happened to me a couple times… So I guess we’ll see how it all shakes out.

This is great, thank you for taking the time. It works very well, and I find it extremely responsive.

Jesse

Great it stops working again… LIFX is a huge pain!

[EDIT] So i guess i did get the bug where their Cloud API lost connection with my Bulbs, I suppose I’ll have to manage this in my Smart App, to at least alert the user!

My bug report with LIFX has apparently made it past the developers and is now with the engineers.

I see they’re also starting to get a bit of heat on their Facebook page:

Nik Sargent February 18

Wondering why my LIFX bulb would suddenly have stopped responding to Ifttt triggers?
The channel is authorised.
The triggers appear to be running.
The bulb is responding normally locally…
Worked for about 3 days.

LIFX February 18
Hi Nik, that doesn’t sound quite right. Please email us at support and we’ll make sure it’s not something on our end.

Nik Sargent February 23
Yeah - I found two power-cycles and two resets did it… But that happened because it also stopped responding locally too after a few more days of stopping responding to IFTTT

Michael Sjöholm February 23
If someone else has the same problem… I had to powercycle all the leds that wasn’t responding (2-3 times) + restarted my router, after that they all worked with IFTTT and also locally (they all responded locally before but three of them didn’t respont to IFTTT)

Spiros Giourgas February 21
Same problem

So it seems we’re far from alone in this. It’s curious that some of these people are saying they’ve needed multiple power cycles / resets to recover. I’ve only ever needed to power cycle any affected bulb once to recover. It may be they are power cycling too quickly, rather than pausing in the “off” state for 15-20 seconds.

I’ve already pointed out to LIFX that the problem/bug I’ve logged is probably what is impacting Nik Sargent. I’ll touch base with them again now that more people have commented on the thread. Hopefully we’ll see a fix some time soon.

Thanks for posting the code. I picked one up over the weekend and so far it’s working great. Now to start writing my notification smart app…

LIFX released more documentation about their cloud API http://developer.lifx.com also there are new endpoint like breathe and pulse, which I’ll try to implement in my code.

@zzarbi thank you for making this. FInally my lifx lights have some smarts in them within smartthings. It works great.

are you planning on adding any lifx apps to allow triggers of lifx based on motion with the ability to set colours? I’d love to set different moods with different colours for lifx rooms. (similar to the hue mood app that is in labs).

either way, awesome work on this worked a treat (was the first app / device I installed).

Both Hue Apps “hue Mood Lighting” and “Notify Me With Hue” which where created by SmartThings should work with the LIFX bulb, beside the same they aren’t specific for Hue light Bulb. They’re using the architecture of SmartThings which get translated by my code to LIFX. I haven’t tried it… but it should work :smile:

I did try them and it didn’t work. I’ll have another look.

A minor bug I found. If you turn lifx off at the switch smartthings thinks they are on. Thanks for the reply

yeah no action occurs when using lifx 2.0 (via hue app). :frowning: thanks for the suggestion tho. other than that the app is working very well.

Hey @joel_eggenhuize ,

my bad I quickly look trough the code of the HUE app and I didn’t see they were calling a different method than the one I had setup (which is odd since I got that code from their own bulb).
Anyhow I updated the code https://github.com/zzarbi/smartthings/blob/master/lifx/lifx-bulb-2.groovy and test the Hue Mood app, and it’s working fine now. You just need to replace the code, and publish it and done!

Technically LIFX should work with any Lighting app out there.

Best

PS: I also updated the App it self, now it send notification if one of the Bulb get “disconnected” (Only one notification per day…)

thanks so much mate.

Working great mate. One thing I tried and could not get to work was the gentle wake up a smartthings app. Has this worked for you ?