Use cases for color smart bulbs?

[JDRoberts]

@dalec

I have a group of three Hue color bulbs. Is there an easy way that can make these guys go to dance party mode with flashing colors?

There are many different ways, but the big question is whether you want to be able to automate that light event from within SmartThings. And whether a slow color loop is OK or whether you want quicker transitions.

Creating a Light Event you could trigger automatically from SmartThings

If you want to do it so you can automate it from within SmartThings and you’re OK with slow transitions, you can just use the color loop “that” in the Hue IFTTT service/channel and it will work fine. That’s probably the easiest, it’s a common method for getting Hue bulbs to blink because of a SmartThings trigger, for example.

Philips Hue Integrations - Connect Your Apps with IFTTT

If you want to do it so you can automate it from within SmartThings but you want fancier transitions, create three or four or five Hue scenes in the official Hue app and then have core switch between those scenes.

(I know you’re familiar with Core, I’m just putting the FAQ link here for people who find this thread in the future.)

FAQ: What is WebCoRE? (And what was CoRE?)

CoRE (now WebCore) is a very powerful community – created rules engine for SmartThings. It allows you to set up stacked conditionals like “If A then B but only while C and not if D.” Setting it up can be quite complex, but there are many community members who will be glad to help you. For example, here is a piston that one member created to notify him if the dog had already been fed twice that day and he picked up the dog bowl for a third time. He needed this because he has a large family and people didn’t always remember whose turn it was to feed the dog. [image] The original version of CoRE Has now been replaced by a new version, WebCoRE, which moves the data entry to a web interface. This allows for flexibility and an architecture that requires more memory than is av…

There are also some community created smart apps that can probably do it. Check the lighting list in the quick browse lists in the community – created wiki.

http://thingsthataresmart.wiki/index.php?title=How_to_Quick_Browse_the_Community-Created_SmartApps_Forum_Section

Options that don’t involve SmartThings

If you don’t care whether you have SmartThings involved, there are a lot of third-party apps for Hue that can create different effects. A lot of people like iconnecthue ($4.95, iOS only), which probably gives you the most granularity, especially if you look at their “animations.”

But there are a lot of much simpler Hue apps to consider as well. Including the ones which will set up the Hues to change in time to music like Hue Disco.

But if you use a third-party app, you probably won’t be able to connect it back into a SmartThings platform.

If you use just the effects in the official hue app, particularly scenes or color loop, then you’ll be able to automate those from the SmartThings side.