LIFX bulbs + Weather?

Wiki Ideas and Suggestions
1

Hi folks…this may or may not be SmartThings related depending on the solution we come up with.

Here’s what I want to do:
On Mon - Fri mornings
When my alarm goes off (or a specified time is okay)
Check the current weather report for two different cities (home and work)

Actions: On my LIFX bulb:

  • If it’s going to rain, show deep blue (if possible, would like to be able to set conditions based on chance of rain %)
  • If it’s clear skies show light blue
  • If it’s going to be hot, show red-orange (if possible, would like to be able to set conditions based on temp)

Here’s what I currently have to do it:

  • IFTTT
  • SmartThings system - Connected to IFTTT
  • LIFX bulb - Connected to SmartThings, IFTTT and Nest
  • Tasker
  • Nest Thermostat - Connected to SmartThings (with Nest Manager smart app, including the weather device type they made) and IFTTT

I also have the following smart apps:

  • Nest Manager
  • Rule Machine
  • CoRE (haven’t learned how to use it yet, primarily use Rule Machine for now)

I tried setting this up with IFTTT, but since IFTTT is limited, no conditions to the IF statement and no complex IF statements using multiple services. You’re also limited to only 1 city with IFTTT on the weather service.

I commute to work every day on my motorcycle and every morning I check the weather/rain report on Alexa for both cities before I leave to know if I can take the bike or if I need to take my car, or throw on a rain jacket.

For the alarm trigger, I usually use my Echo for my alarm, I figured I could use IFTTT to run something on SmartThings which triggers a Rule Machine rule (or CoRE piston) which is set to only run on Mon-Fri from 5AM - 9AM (when I usually get up for work)…from there I’m not sure how to perform the weather report to bulb color actions.

2

Have you looked at ColorCast - Color Changing Weather Lamp ? It’s probably not exactly what you want, but it may be a good start…

1 Like
3

I think I might be able to get this done using Core. I’ve never used it before today. But I’m playing around with saving device attributes to local variables.

I’ve created a Smart Weather Tile for each city, and I’m able to load the forecast value into a local variable in a CoRE piston. I think from there it’s just getting everything configured and logic in place.

EDIT: So I can’t seem to get the Alert to change on the Weather Tile, so I don’t know if it works. I found a zipcode on the map that is getting killed with rain right now and it didn’t budge, it just says 100% precip…so I guess the Alert section is for more serious things…might have to find a different weather tile that has better info.

4

I’m able to get some of this working with CoRE but it seems like it’s going to be a lot of points of failure, so I think the best bet might be to just write my own smart app…will be my first attempt at one so it would be fun.