Philips Hue Plugin v2, Early Access

[tiptronic]

Philips Hue EventStream Plugin (early access)

Here's another beta-version of the new Philips Hue EventStream Plugin.

Download 2.0.0.42 com.elgato.philipshue.streamDeckPlugin.zip

This version 2.0.0.42 now adds some checks, if the bridge or the user's machine is online and reachable.

• It also contains all fixes for issues reported by our brave early-access-testers (you)
• It now also resets itself after system-sleep to avoid larger delays when trying to re-connect.
• There are also some adjustments to icon-sizes and placements along with some cleanup of the code-base

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The plugin is a complete rewrite of the old plugin and uses the new CLIP-API (v2) and uses the new CLIP-API (v2) and http2/https (secure) to communicate with the bridge. This API is available on all modern v2-bridges (sold since a 5-6 years already).

This is basically a complete re-write of the last beta to work around problems found in the initial version.

If no mission-critical errors are found, this new version will serve as the base for future versions. So please report anything you find.
Documentation of the new features is on the way....

NOTE: If you have the old Philips-Hue-plugin installed, you should FIRST install the original Philips-Hue version linked here - otherwise your sidebar's categories will get mixed.

Philips-Hue original plugin 1.7.1 com.elgato.philips-hue.streamDeckPlugin.zip

Please NOTE:

• The plugin is still in beta and might have some quirks and bugs.
• Actions are not settled yet and might change during the beta.
• The plugin is tested on Windows and Mac
• The plugin is tested with quite a bunch of bridges, lights, plugs, sensors, and switches. If it doesn't work with your setup, please let me know.
• The plugin is tested with a couple of Stream Deck models (Plus, Mini, XL, MK2)

Store/Marketplace-Note:

The plugin is not yet available in the Stream Deck Marketplace, so you have to download it from the (pre-)releases-section of this repository.

General Info:

This version will NOT take over your former settings, so you can use it alongside the old (Philips-Hue v 1.x) plugin. If you have a large installation and you're looking for a way to take over the old settings, please create an issue.

The plugin contains all the actions you know from the old plugin, but with some improvements and new features.

New:

http2 support

Before, each and every request to the Hue bridge was sent individually using an own connection to the bridge , which could pile-up pretty fast and could cause a sorts of delays and quirks.

The new client now multiplexes all requests into a single connection, which is much faster and more reliable - and also prevents the bridge from crashing due to too many requests being sent.

EventStream support

Before, the plugin listened to the response of every sent request and acted on the outcome of the request.

Now, the plugin listens to the EventStream of the bridge(s) and acts on the events sent by the bridge. These events are sent over the same http2-connection mentioned above.

The EventStream is updated by the bridge continously, so the plugin is always up-to-date with the current state of the bridge. This also means, if a light (or other connected resource) is updated (e.g. via a mobile phone or a button-switch), these updates are immediately reflected in the EventStream and the plugin is notified about these changes.
(in practical use this allows the Stream Deck to be used as 'monitoring' device for all connected (smart-home) devices).

Network Discovery support

Before, the plugin used a single method (using the MeetHue REST-interface via http ) to discover a bridge, which was pretty unreliable and could fail in many cases. Also this method is limited to a 3 requests per 15 minutes, which often resulted in a network error 429. Discovery was also limited to bridges known my the Philips-Hue-Meethue portal - so required a registration there.

Now, the plugin uses a combination of different discovery methods (dns-sd, mDns, etc..) to find bridges, even if the bridge's IP address changed (or even if the bridge was moved to another local IP range). This discovery methods can run as often as needed and works on local network first - and falls back to the old method, if no bridges are found on the local network.
Another improvement is, you don't need to be connected to an Philips-Hue account to discover a bridge - you can just plug in a bridge and the plugin will find it.

Notes:

• Rooms or Zones will take a bit to reflect its state changes on the Stream Deck - key. This is because it takes some time to collect the zigbee network's state for the lights involved in that group.

For users with a Stream Deck Plus:

The plugin contains a new action called Toggle Lights, which allows you to switch lights on and off using a dial. This action is still in beta and might change during the beta.

Toggle Lights action is supposed to work like this:

• you can scroll through your lights using dials
• the highlighted light in the panel is your target
• a press of the dial will switch the highlighted light on/off
• You can adjust the color for the highlighted text using the Property Inspector's Title-settings...
• The Lights selector in the PI is used to define which light is pre-selected in the panel
• The toggle light also shows the type of device in the panel (e.g. Light, Plug, Sensor, Switch,...)
• If the tiny icon at the right is grey, the device is switched OFF, if it's white - it is ON

Download

Current version

Download 2.0.0.42 com.elgato.philipshue.streamDeckPlugin.zip

Previous version

Download 2.0.0.38 com.elgato.philipshue.streamDeckPlugin.zip

The version now installs to the new category 'Philips Hue'.

Legacy version

If you have the old Philips-Hue-plugin installed, you should FIRST install the version below - otherwise your sidebar's categories will get mixed.

Philips-Hue original plugin 1.6.8 com.elgato.philips-hue.streamDeckPlugin.zip

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Please let me know below, if this version works for you.

Thank you in advance!

Previous versions

Download 0.2.0.17 com.elgato.philipshue.streamDeckPlugin.zip

This version should (hopefully) fix the connection problems after system sleep, as well as pairing issues when multiple bridges are connected.
The version now installs a new category 'Philips Hue2'. (We will streamline the categories later.)

Download com.elgato.philipshue.streamDeckPlugin.zip

[ThioJoe]

I've only played around with it for a bit, but it seems great 👍

Here's some initial thoughts:

• I really like the automatically colored icons with the gradients - before I was manually making similar icons in photoshop

• In at least one case the icon gradient color is slightly off, specifically the icon having more of an orange shade instead of red

• It might just be a temporary placeholder, but I notice the slider color for "set brightness" goes from blue to orange the same as "set temperature", but it might make more sense to have it go from black to white

• The Toggle Lights dial is very cool.

• I was initially a bit confused about there being a "Lights" dropdown in addition to the filter selections until I saw your notes in the post, so maybe the label could be like "Starting Selection", "Initial Selection", or even "List Start" or something, depending on available space for that text to the left of the dropdown. And maybe also add another question mark tooltip circle next to it like there is next to Filter if possible.

• Perhaps the up/down sorting arrows at the right side of the expandable sections for Lights/Rooms/Zones should only appear if the corresponding box is expanded if possible.

That's basically all cosmetic stuff - I haven't noticed any behavioral bugs.

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Some random ideas for future features if there's extra time but definitely aren't necessary:

• Ability for setting brightness 'steps' to any number instead of preset list
• An ability to cycle through a user-set list of brightness's (could be with the dial and/or key button), so similar to the to the steps functionality, but you could just set specific ones to cycle through like [10% | 60% | 100%] or whatever else.

---

Here's what I mean about the orange color in the icon instead of expected red.

[tiptronic]

Hi @ThioJoe

thanks a bunch for your comments - that's exactly what I was looking for while we're shaping the plugin.

I'll put your comments onto our list and we'll discuss this here shortly.

• As far as the 'orange' problem is concerned: we tried to match the behaviour of the colors in the mobile Hue.app, but unfortunately that doesn't work too good, because we have to keep Mac/Windows, Stream Deck-UI and the Stream Deck-actions visuals in sync (somehow) and quite often the colors are completely 'off' comparing them on these devices. So for some colors, there's a trade-off, visibility vs. accuracy... I think there's not much we can do...

• The brightness-slider in the Property Inspector shows the same behaviour as in the Control Center-plugin. It combines the 'true' light-settings (color/temperature/brightness) and shows these colors as background. If it's getting too confusing, you might be right and changing to black/white works better... I'm putting it on the list...

• Also thanks for your suggestions. Most of these are on our list already, but atm. we're still using the 'old' property inspector, which has some limitations and we didn't want to break it (or re-create everything), because a new property inspector for our SDK is already in the works. When that's done, we're going to re-visit all property inspectors anyway...

Thx again for your input!

[ThioJoe]

Yep no problem!

I think I might have poorly described what I meant by the brightness slider, I mean literally the coloring of the slider itself might make more sense as going from black to white:

[Smiffleblurf]

Glad I ran across this post after installing the original plugin. If it isn't called out in the original notes or on the marketplace, I'd add a blurb about how this beta is now available because this updated plugin works great so far.

Just noticing minor issues that look related to what was previously mentioned, but just from my use. Such as...

• When setting the dial steps lower to something more granular it has trouble keeping up or rubber bands back and forth between settings. This looks related to the call latency I believe you mentioned earlier. Not sure if you can introduce brief input block delays after the first step is sent that prevents spam of the next steps until the previous value is confirmed set and so forth. That might prevent the rubber banding.
• When lining up Power, Set Color, and Cycle Color side-by-side, I noted the Set Color button background color can get out of sync when toggling through the Color Cycle button. The Power button background does appear to stay in sync though when I toggle through Color Cycles

If I could think of any suggestions, it would be when I look at the functionalities provided in the Philips Hue Sync app when controlling zones, some would be great to add as buttons to control.

• Toggle between Hue Sync modes: Games, Music, and Video.
• Toggle level of light reactive intensities: Subtle, Moderate, High, and Extreme.
• When in Games mode toggle using audio for effect on/off.

Overall this is beta is working fantastic! Just the fact the rooms and groups are working is great.

[tiptronic]

hi @Smiffleblurf

thanks a bunch for your notes...

The plugin is in 'early access' mode right now, that's why it is not mentioned on the Marketplace yet. This gives us some room to discuss features/working with interested folks out there (like you :))

The rubber banding is expected and a matter of the (new) inner workings of the plugin.

For everyone interested, here's a little technical overview:

Old

The old plugin just sent a request to the bridge and then polled for updates. Most of the times that worked, BUT:

• it produced lots of traffic (especially, if you're Hue-setup is large(r))
• it only worked on http
• it relied on Hue's 'MeetHue' services
• and you didn't see the rubber banding, because the delay until the buttons updated was mostly larger than the time it takes to update the lights.

New

With the new plugin everything is instant, with these limitations:

• when sending an event to the bridge, the bridge only acknowleges it received the event
• the bridge then sends the event out to Hue's Zigbee network and collects responses from the individual zigbee-nodes (lights, plugs, etc...)
• these incoming messages are collected and the values for groups/zones are calculated and sent to the plugin. Depending on the size of your installation this can take from a couple of hundreds of milliseconds to 4 or 5 seconds (e.g. if some lights are in a greater distance to the bridge)
• The plugin doesn't wait for the final reply at first, but tries to calculate the outcome of the event (if everything works fine).
• When the final reply drips in, the plugin updates the UI (again).

This procedure allows for really fast UI-updates and works fine accross all sizes of installations, BUT:

• on larger installations it can happen that some events to the lights get lost, or other events to a light 'jump' in-between
• if you use zones or groups, they take a considerable amount of time to report back (because the bridge first needs to collect ALL DATA from ALL lights and then calculates the final values - which are then reported to the plugin).

Summary

Your observations are greatly appreciated and I'm sure we can better align coloring in the future (unfortunately we can't use the high color range the Hue.app uses, because we must make sure colors work on Mac/Windows and also on the different Stream Deck devices. So atm. it's lots of guess-work.

Concerning the 'Hue Sync' support... please stay tuned ;)

If you (and everybody else, of course) have some more input, just drop a note here are create a new discussion...

thanks again!!

[Smiffleblurf]

@tiptronic Much appreciated, and thanks for clarifying.

It was working great the first day. Then, some days later, last night, after I booted up OBS and the Stream Deck, I selected some of the Philips New buttons from the locally installed plugin, and they were all non-responsive.

I looked in the settings, and it still shows as connected to my bridge and to my room's group. Just pushing them doesn't appear to do anything anymore. Let me know if there is anything I can do to assist you in troubleshooting this or if I can attach any logs if this plugin produces them.

[tiptronic]

@Smiffleblurf This is interesting... I have the plugin running since weeks and never seen this problem.

• Which OS is that? Mac/Win? (version)
• Did you re-launch Stream Deck?
• Could this be related to the OBS-plugin (which I don't use that often)?
• Any observation/steps to find out what's causing this would help tremendously...

There's a known issue where the EventStream connection is lost for some unknown reasons and can't be automatically re-activated. But this happens (if at all) after the system wakes up. But a re-launch of Stream Deck.app fixes that. What I read in your note sounds more like some kind of side-effect... which would be very interesting to peek into...

If you want you can take a look into the log files... (or send them over).
Most interesting would be the regular log (com.elgato.philipshue0.log) found in these places:

(Mac) ~/Library/Logs/ElgatoStreamDeck/com.elgato.philipshue0.log
(Windows) C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\StreamDeck\logs\com.elgato.philipshue0.log

Currently they log pretty much, but we can improve...

[tiptronic]

@Smiffleblurf Ah well... that's a bug/shortcoming in Stream Deck 6.5++ on Mac. For some reasons the sockets disappear after a system sleep... I have a workaround, which is not ideal, but I'll again investigate why this is happening...
By any chance: did you enable developer-mode on your system? (this mis-behaviour should only happen, if developer-mode is enabled... otherwise that sounds more like a bug)

[Smiffleblurf]

@tiptronic I also didn't realize the Stream Deck+ has its own sleep, which was set to Never. So it has been staying awake while the MacBook Pro and monitor go to sleep. I set the Stream Deck to go to sleep after a while as well so that the buttons don't remain illuminated all day.

Before that, though, I was doing some work a bit ago while I had the Philips New profile up and working and I looked down to notice all the buttons switched to the sockets symbol for a moment, and when I pressed one of them, they all came back. The MacBook Pro didn't sleep as I was doing some work on it and I didn't have the Stream Deck+ set to sleep itself after finding that feature in its settings.

[tiptronic]

@Smiffleblurf we just had a talk here and - if you have logs after the problem appeared, it would be great if I could have a look.

You can find the logs here:
Mac:

• ~/Library/Logs/ElgatoStreamDeck/StreamDeck0.log
• ~/Library/Logs/ElgatoStreamDeck/com.elgato.philipshue0.log

Windows:

• C: \Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\StreamDeck\logs\StreamDeck0.log
• C: \Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\StreamDeck\logs\com.elgato.philipshue0.log

or you can use the Elgato Reporter Tool found here:

https://gc-updates.elgato.com/mac/reporter/final/download.php
https://gc-updates.elgato.com/windows/reporter/final/download.php

[Smiffleblurf]

Noticed the last few days now it lost connection altogether. The MacBook isn't in dev mode. Every button is showing the socket plugs.

[tiptronic]

@Smiffleblurf I guess re-launching Stream Deck.app fixes it, yes?
If you look into the plugin's folder, there's a config.json- if you modify anything inside it it triggers an internal re-launch of the plugin (as a workaround for now)

I reworked the whole thing and the next version will hopefully fix this... I'm going to share that version in the next couple of days.

[HDClown]

The interactive behavior of the keys is really cool! I just started using a Stream Deck+ with Hue so only using a few features right now, so here is feedback on those:

• "Power" (key) - I have a "Power" and "Set Brightness" key set to the same group and the background colors are different on each key. The Set Brightness key color is more accurate, and the Power key color is way off. I've tested this across a bunch of different colors and those two keys never align. With cooler scenes (5000-6500k) the Power key is warmer, and with warner scenes (2000-3000k) the Power key is cooler. I'm also seeing the "Power" key color change as brightness is adjustment, but the "Set Brightness" key doesn't do this. Seems like a bug in the "Power" key background color behavior.

• Set Brightness (key) - It could be confusing to some with having the key shows a fixed percentage (defined brightness of the key) and then the slider in the key is reflecting the actual brightness. Maybe add an option to show/hide the "actual brightness slider" for this key?

• Toggle Lights (dial) - When toggling a room, should there be an icon change to indicate if the room is off/on? I see the individual light icons change grey/white but the room icon stays grey when I press the button.

• Adjust Brightness (dial) - Setting Icon preview isn't showing
  

• Adjust Brightness (dial) - I miss the tap dial to set defined brightness from the old "Brightness" dial. I can use another key for that, but I set my dial press brightness to my "default" brightness and that saved me the use of a key for that particular brightness level. Perhaps bring back the tap touchscreen on the new dial and have that be used for setting brightness with a dial? Or maybe you have two adjust brightness dial's to pick from, the more classical style now set in v2 (press on, press off, turn brightness) and a "mutli-function" dial that has the v1 design.

• Adjust Brightness (dial) - Brightness adjustment is much improved overall compared to 1.x plugin. With faster knob movements, I will sometimes see the brightness increase/decrease to the "further" point and observe it on the display and the light output, but then it jumps back to something in-between the old and new level. Other times, it will go to the furthest, bounce back to in-between, then bounce back to the further setting. Note that this is with a group that has 2 lights in it.

General question - Is it possible to add a toggle for each key to show/hide the Hue room icon? If I want to position the title at the top of the key, it sits over the icon and looks a bit messy.

[tiptronic]

Hi @HDClown
thanks for your input - much appreciated!!

First of all -> colors on the action-keys: keep your notes coming... we will re-visit colors soon. Please keep in mind: we must (degrade) sync colors so they work on computer, Stream Deck and in the software (Mac/Win). So we likely never match the Hue.app 100%. Still interesting is the different colors you see on "Power" and "Set Brightness"... They both share the same base-icon, so there must be a bug somewhere :/

• The 'percentage' issue is/was in long discussions and there's no resolution yet. You can play with these settings, however:
  There's a file called config.json in the plugin's root folder. Using the suffixForIcon or showSlider settings, you can change the icon. (Note: the plugin will restart after every change in the config.json). There are some more settings in there, not all are functional, however.

• Toggle Lights (dial) : We tried to match the behaviour of the Hue.app here - and sometimes it takes a while until the room, zone or group-calculation on the Zigbee-network is done. We decided to not use pre-emptive updating of the rooms button, as that causes to flicker in the UI pretty much (especially on larger installations). If you find discrepancies, just give me a hint how you think we can improve here.

• Adjust Brightness (dial) Setting Icon preview = bug

• Adjust Brightness (dial) - I miss the tap... = this change was done to be in sync with the behaviour of the ControlCenter-keys. Would it be an option to put the 'default' setting onto a tap in the SD+ panel?

• Adjust Brightness (dial) - performance: I think there is not much we can do about that, because groups (rooms/zones) accept requests only once (1) a second and then they reply with some internal calculations what the average of the new setting (across all members of the group) is... so what we do here is a best guess... In the Hue.app this is simpler, because it doesn't have to maintain the state of multiple UI-element in real-time (that's what we try to do here).

• The mini-icon's (archetype-icon) position is a bug - and fixed already. It might be we can add a setting for that once the new Property-Inspector is in place. Atm. lots of dynamic elements are shown on the icon and space is rare...

For anything I didn't answer above: I make notes and I am open to any discussion or request...

Anyway - thanks for the notes... keep them coming

[HDClown]

• Set Brightness "percentage slider" - I set showSlider to false in the json and restart Stream Deck app and slider disappeared as expected. I see its universal so applies to any icon that has a slider. Is it viable to make this a unique per-key and as a toggle in Stream Deck editor? I'm always a fan of more control options vs. less, but don't know if it can be this granular.

• Toggle Lights (dial) - I tested this a few more times and the icon color never change between grey and white for any of my rooms as part of them being on and off, even after waiting extended period of times. The individual light icons change as expected.

• Adjust Brightness (dial) - I am not familiar with Control Center as I do not have a need for it, but I understand aligning behaviors. I think using the SD+ panel "tap" to set a default brightness percentage would be a good compromise to bring back that function. If possible, as an enhancement on this, let panel tap also be used to set a default scene as well, and make brightness and/or scene optional. This way someone can use the tap associated with a dial for brightness only scene only, both, or neither.

• Power (key) color not matching Set Brightness (key) - Here are pictures for reference where the 5K/60, Power, and Set Brightness keys as well as the Dial are all tied to the same room. The active scene when these pictures were taken has a color temp equivalent of 5000k.
  
  
  
  

[tiptronic]

@HDClown thanks for taking the time to make photos etc...

Set Brightness "percentage slider"

Of course we will move relevant settings into the Property Inspector... and we can make these as granular as we like.
The config-file is there to quickly add/remove some settings without complicated development...

Toggle Lights (dial)

Do you mean the icon on the SD+ panel? If so: we removed that, because that didn't look too good...

Adjust Brightness (dial)

I will add a Touch event to the next version, where we can play with. Maybe we can also add a switch, to let the user decide (we also have such a switch in the ControlCenter plugin's scenes, where the user can decide what happens on dial-rotation: change brightness of the current scene, or select other scenes...

Power (key) color not matching

That's on my list already and I'll look into it

[Smiffleblurf]

Sorry for the delay on this Andy, been super busy. Noticed that there was no ~/Library/Logs/ElgatoStreamDeck folder under Logs, so I used the Mac version of the Elgato Reporter Tool in the last few minutes. Terry Campbell

…

On Apr 12, 2024, at 1:38 AM, Andy Fuchs ***@***.***> wrote: @Smiffleblurf <https://github.com/Smiffleblurf> we just had a talk here and - if you have logs after the problem appeared, it would be great if I could have a look. You can find the logs here: Mac: ~/Library/Logs/ElgatoStreamDeck/StreamDeck0.log ~/Library/Logs/ElgatoStreamDeck/com.elgato.philipshue0.log Windows: C: \Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\StreamDeck\logs\StreamDeck0.log C: \Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\StreamDeck\logs\com.elgato.philipshue0.log or you can use the Elgato Reporter Tool found here: https://gc-updates.elgato.com/mac/reporter/final/download.php https://gc-updates.elgato.com/windows/reporter/final/download.php — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#61 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AJ5BYSMSG6RI5YQ3IPZD2U3Y46MRVAVCNFSM6AAAAABFNBS5SKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43SRDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHM4TAOJTGE4TC>. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.

[tiptronic]

@Smiffleblurf Don't worry - I'm pretty busy as well - but nothing gets lost

[GilleGill]

Hey there, thank you for the invite.

So, bad news, I'm still unable to connect my bridge with the plugin. Old and New, I do believe both bridges are connected to the MeetHue-system. So I'm not sure what gives.

If you have a list of potential fixes, I'll gladly go through it to see if we can figure out what's up with the bridge. I'd love to help out with further testing and feedback once I'm up and running :)

[tiptronic]

@GilleGill That's mysterious... because the new bridges don't rely any more on the MeetHue system to get found by the plugin.
Please rest assured, we WANT to make you up and running :)

What happens if you try to pair the bridge? Does the pairing window show the bridge(s)?

If you don't mind, could you give some more info on your setup?
Also - logs would be helpful to see what's going on (and why).

You can find the logs here:
Mac:

~/Library/Logs/ElgatoStreamDeck/StreamDeck0.log
~/Library/Logs/ElgatoStreamDeck/com.elgato.philipshue0.log
Windows:

C: \Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\StreamDeck\logs\StreamDeck0.log
C: \Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\StreamDeck\logs\com.elgato.philipshue0.log

[tiptronic]

@Smiffleblurf Please check out version 0.2.0.17 and let me know, if you continue seeing the hangs (hopefully not)

[Smiffleblurf]

@tiptronic
Thanks for the heads-up. I got it installed, and so far, the only thing I'm noticing is that changing the set temperature dial on the Steam Deck+ doesn't change its value. Otherwise, everything else is good. I'll keep you posted.

[GilleGill]

@tiptronic Still unable to connect the Bridge :/ Shoot me a DM on Twitter @GilleGill and I'll send you the logs there.

If the logs don't yield the answers we need, I'll factory reset my bridge to see if that fixes it.

[tiptronic]

@GilleGill Sorry for the late reply - in the meantime I found the culprit ... It'll take a couple of days to make a new version. I hope that's okay for you

[GilleGill]

@tiptronic all good! It's done when it's done!

[tiptronic]

@ThioJoe @GilleGill @HDClown @Smiffleblurf
It took much longer than expected to get out a new early-access version - but now it is here.
Basically it's a complete re-write of the first version, because we identified some issues which we couldn't resolve using the former plugin structure.

Good news is, the pairing now should be much better and the sleep/awake problems should be a thing of the past.

If you still run into a situation where the settings are not stored (and the bridge is 'forgotten'), then we now have some mechanics to identify the root of the problem. In such a case, please leave a message here (or on Twitter) and we work together looking at the problem.

Hopefully this version fixes most (if not all) of the connectivity and pairing issues.

Thank you all for testing - and please report back if you find something going wrong...

Andy

[groove200]

Just wanted to say thanks for your work on this, ive got multiple bridges here and an unhealthy amount of lights arranged into zones and rooms etc etc. 1.6.x was utterly useless controlling anything other than a single bulb. I had zero problems pairing the bridges, and the brightness is actually now usable across zones (with the short expected 1 sec delay if turned fast). Absolutely superb work.

[groove200]

Have just bumped into an oddity

Tested adding a bunch of scenes, all good

But if i go back and single click them (to edit or add a title etc) they seem to change back to a default light. Happens on every button except the top left one which seems to remember its setting

[groove200]

@tiptronic All good......having the 3 is just extra confusion tbh, if it was me i'd remove them as well :-)

Think ive found another little issue, let me fully test it and document it and Ill get back to you

[tiptronic]

Great - keep it coming :)

The thing with groups is, that there are still tons of leftover groups lurking on my bridges and I don't know where they come from (likely old settings, experiments or whatever). So removing them seems to be the better choice...

[groove200]

Another little bit of feedback.

When creating a new scene / sec colour /or colour cycle I have to switch away from the room initially selected and back again for it to 'take'

tried to show it in these videos. New scene, Office selected by default, set a scene, icon doesn't take colour and scene does not work on the SD button. Simply flipping the room to another room , and then back again will fix it. (and the button takes on the scene colours) Same symptoms on the other button actions (set colour, cycle colour)

I've got in the habit now of as soon as I drag and drop a scene, change to a different room then back again and it will work first time/

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5H8TdG7xW-o

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PGSXy1LNbNE

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/reRIfZdK120

[tiptronic]

@groove200 thx for the reports... this was a bug in the last version... I'll provide an update very soon.

Did anybody see re-connection problems after system-sleep?�

[groove200]

@tiptronic copy.

Reconnection after pc sleep ?

[GilleGill]

Been meaning to get back to you, thank you for your continued efforts in working on this!

I sadly still can't connect my bridge, I've sent you a video on Twitter with the process of installing and trying to connect and of my setup. Maybe I'm missing something simple or just doing something wrong. Hope the info can help us figure out what's up :)

[tiptronic]

I don't think your bricked your bridge, but to me it sounds that there's a communication problem from your bridge to your computer, because it seems to be found in discovery...

The plugin itself just needs ports 80 and 443 (http and https) to communicate with the bridge.
In your process.logs, everything looks okay....

And you can operate the bridge from the Hue.app just fine?
Does it appear on your router's portal-page?
Can you ping it from your computer and get a valid reply?

If there's nothing super-important on your bridge, you can always try to reset it... There's a small pin-hole on the back of the bridge which you must press for 10 seconds to reset to factory settings...
Unfortunatly then you have to set it up from scratch again (depending how many lights you already paired with the bridge that's a quick (or not so quick) process...)

[GilleGill]

I will try pinging it tomorrow, I did hit it with a factory reset and still I'm unable to get to step 3 or gain access via the streamdeck. I'll also try to do all the steps on my laptop to see if that would work.

Should I not be able to ping it, is there any way I could make it reachable in that way?

[tiptronic]

@GilleGill But you can access it now in Hue's CLIP-debugger?
If not:

• did you ever manage to connect to the bridge from your computer?
• could you pair the bridge at some point with the Hue-plugin (no matter, if old-plugin or new plugin)?

[GilleGill]

I feel like we're getting somewhere here. So I am not able to reach the Clip-debugger... on this computer. I was able to reach it on a separate unit, no problem at all.

To answer your questions, I did manage to connect it at one point, many months ago, but then after coming home from holiday it did not work anymore.

It seems that the connection between this computer and the bridge specifically isn't working for some reason. The question is then, why?

[GilleGill]

I fixed it! No idea why I didn't try this earlier but...

I swapped the ethernet cables order. My computer was connected to port 2 and the hue system to port 1, for some reason, this made it so that they didn't see each other, swapping the computer to port 1 and hue system to port 2 fixed it. I'm now connected, can access the CLIP-debugger and have FINALLY managed to connect to the app.

Let the testing begin!

[GilleGill]

Hey there, I've been messing around with the lights for the past couple days and everything is working well! No disconnects or connection issues. There was one time where I had to open the streamdeck app for the buttons to function as intended, but other than that things have been working seamlessly!

Swapping bug

As groove mentioned, I too have to swap rooms / scenes when setting up a Color sycle

Brightness slider

I believe this has also been mentioned earlier, but having the brightness slider be from blue to orange is a little awkward as it indicates a temperature shift instead of brightness shift.

A black and white slider like this, would be more clear to indicate it's function:

Steps

There seems to be a noticeable delay sometimes when adjusting lights with the step feature. Some times it'll near instantly jump, as an example, +10 in brightness, while other times it'll take a good second before adjusting. This might be out of your control though.

Folders

This might be a weird personal preference, but would it be possible to make each category into a subfolder in the menu? With a lot of lights this menu could become very frustrating to navigate, being able to hide it away would be a huge help!

This is how it currently looks:

This is what I imagine it could look like:

Final thoughts

Plugin is working wonderfully! It's very nice to be able to quickly swap scenes and adjust the lights via the streamdeck instead of having to whip up the phone to do so.

The plugin works great in combination with something like a Multi action, where you can swap a scene, put on a song and tune your lights for the perfect setting! Thank you for your wonderful work :)

[tiptronic]

Hey @GilleGill
thanks for your report and the kind words - this is much appreciated (both :))

• I fixed a couple of bugs with Scenes and stuff, which I'll upload shortly (likely tomorrow). Let's see if that also fixes your issues.
• The next version will also remove groups alltogether (like in the Hue.app), because they make more problems than they do good.
• The delays you notice are likely to come from 2 things:
  -- If your target is a room or zone, only 1 change per second is allowed by the bridge
  -- If the bridge is busy, it takes a short while until the response drips in (at most that should also take just a second)
  There's nothing we can do about it....
• As far as the drop-down is concerned that's not possible at all within the property inspector. The dropdown is a real step-child of those controls
• Personally I use the plugin mostly on a Stream Deck +, where we have some more actions to help, if you have lots of devices/rooms/zones, etc... (see the screenshot).
• Maybe we can swap the dropdown with a folder-structure as shown in the screenshot (I'm not sure if that is possible without huge efforts, because the PI re-builds itself every time you select something from the drop-down, which makes the drop-down (generally) the best choice.

Again - thanks for your input and if you find more things (or have more ideas), just leave them here...

[rebel2k]

Excellent, willing to test the new version 2.0.0.42 and report if anything is wrong. Regarding the limitation of "one change per second" on the bridge, do you know how physical buttons are working with against that? My Hue Dimmers are clearly able to send more than one change per second when dimming...

[tiptronic]

one more note: if your WiFi/bridge connection is a bit slow, those delays can be way longer than a second (on rooms/zones, I have seen delays of more than 5 seconds)

[rebel2k]

Ok I understand the whole thing better now. Thanks for your detailed explanations! That's so nice to have this kind of rich exchange with developers! :)

I can't agree more, let's have something ready to make it official whenever it's feasible, and then improve it over time, iteratively!!!

[tiptronic]

@rebel2k thx for the updated link - I now see which switch you mean... I have one here (somewhere), but didn't even install it yet... but will do asap....
And yes - we'll improve over time... But there's always a bit of a trade-off: nitpicking details or adding new and cool features 😎

[groove200]

@tiptronic All good. I suspected it was the case that they work differently, not nitpicking, this version is light years ahead of the currently released one!

[tiptronic]

@groove200 Well - I meant nitpicking more humorously... Paying attention to details is good!

[groove200]

2.0.0.42 Feedback

Can confirm the bug of having to toggle to a different room and back before the button works is fixed. However, the colouring of the button still requires a room flip to get it to take effect.

The new 'Colour' tick box doesn't appear to do anything ?

[tiptronic]

hey @groove200
thanks for the report...

However, the colouring of the button still requires a room flip to get it to take effect.

Can you please elaborate on this? I don't really understand what that means...

The new 'Colour' tick box doesn't appear to do anything ?

The Colour box allows to switch on/off the colour-rendering of a key in your Stream Deck... (It's just some experimental thing for our design-studies)

[groove200]

Little video that may help explain a bit better

Add a new action, select scene to trigger and it works straight away (fixed from previous release ,that needed a room switch)

But

The button does not take on the fancy colouring. It works fine. But colours are not picked up on the button.

Doing the room switch to another room and back fixes the button colouring.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GAKiRLlsdA4

[zacharylr]

Can confirm that I had the same problem. Whatever I did (restart Stream Deck, remove/re-add Bridge, etc), the color from the Hue scene would not apply to the button in Stream Deck.
I had to create a second empty Room in my Hue app (since I only had one) to be able to switch to it and back to my working Room for the colors to apply to the buttons in Stream Deck.

[rebel2k]

I confirm v2.0.0.42 works really better than the previous version. Love it! :)

[Navnedia]

When, if ever, will this V2 be open-sourced?

[tiptronic]

@Navnedia once we have a good state (which heavily depends on feedback ;))

[groove200]

May have hit a little snag tonight, been having the power on and off in the house last few days (refurb) and I noticed all my scenes had broken on my deck.

After much mucking about trying to delete and re-add bridges I found what the issue was. I hadn't set one of the hubs to a static IP, and DHCP had given it a different address. So obvs everything broke.

Easy fix for me (its static now) But I noticed other Hue apps like the Desktop Sync had a brief outage on IP change and then picked up the new IP and continued working ok. This may be a limitation of the app but I thought id bring it to your attention if not.

[tiptronic]

hi @groove200

thanks four your report, but sorry, I don't seem to understand properly...

What do you mean your scenes had broken?

The PhilipsHueStream Deck Plugin just saves the id of your bridge (not the IP) and the id (and some information about the action) of your scenes/lights/rooms. When your ip changes, the plugin will try to find the bridge using it's id - and if it can't find the bridge, it just shows a deactivated bridge in the property inspector (along with all bridges found). Your pairing information and other settings (like the scene-id) should stay intact (the pairing information is stored on the bridge anyway).

This may be a limitation of the app but I thought id bring it to your attention if not.

Which app do you mean?

[groove200]

Sorry that may have been jumbled I wrote it in a rush last night

When I say scenes had broken, it was because all the scenes were pointing to the original IP of the bridge. When I looked at the drop down on each one it had the original bridge name/ip and (disconnected) next to it. No amount of restarts of the SD app seemed to force it to see the new IP. It was like it wasn’t looking for an id and it was just stubbornly looking at the old ip.

Selecting add new bridge did then find the bridge on the new ip. But as I didn’t want to redo all the scenes on the SD it was easier for me to statically assign the original ip back to the bridge, restart everything , and we were back in business.

When I said ‘app’ I meant plugin.

As I said the Hue Sync app on my desktop only had brief outages of ‘hub disconnected’ but it fixed itself as you say , probably by using the ID and updating its Ip mapping.

[tiptronic]

hey @groove200

thanks a lot for the explanation. I thought I had fixed this a while ago... but it could be (from your description) it's a timing problem.

I will look at it... Thanks for taking the time to report!

[mcnahum]

Hi All,
Steamdeck support sent me here as I'm reporting an issue with macOS Sequioa (on beta 7 today and released in few weeks) and the pairing is not working since beta 1 for me.
It is the same issue with that one. the discovery is working, asked to press the button on the bridge (ver 2.0) and nothing is happening.
Worked perfectly on Sonoma.
Tried of course to re-install, clean, ect ... and not working.

anyone did a test on macOS Sequoia?

[mcnahum]

Sorry if I was not clear: but since my device is sequia the bridge informations are removed ( that is the issue)

As soon as I migrated, No bridge anymore ...

I click add new, discover Bridges, One Bridge found , Pair ...> I press the bridge button and nothing is working.

Please test on sequoia, that is the only way to know if it is on my side or something who will touch everyone who will migrate in 3 weeks (https://www.macrumors.com/2024/08/22/macos-sequoia-mid-september-launch-date/)

[tiptronic]

Hi @mcnahum
I installed Sequois Developer Beta 7 on the weekend on a M1 Macbook (I updated 14.6.1 to the developer beta).

For me discovery and pairing works as expected right after installation.

Since you already had other developer betas installed, could it be there's some access-rights or firewall things changed since then?

I looked at communication and logs and I didn't get any error...

So maybe first check, if you allowed Stream Deck to detect/find your network devices and http-communication is not blocked

[tiptronic]

@mcnahum We investigated further on your logs and we think the problem is something else. I would like to investigate that a bit further (which may require a special build to investigate), if you're interested in that.
If that's the case (and to not clutter this discussion with any intermediate steps): Are you on Discord, Twitter or Reddit, so we can share some data back and forth?

[mcnahum]

@mcnahum We investigated further on your logs and we think the problem is something else. I would like to investigate that a bit further (which may require a special build to investigate), if you're interested in that.

If that's the case (and to not clutter this discussion with any intermediate steps): Are you on Discord, Twitter or Reddit, so we can share some data back and forth?

Of course ping me on X (removed)

[mcnahum]

@tiptronic The issue is now fixed! there is a new Privacy & security option in Sequoia: Local Network and of course it need to be on for Elfato Stream Deck. Not sure why it wad off on my device

[sebastiangrueter]

Hi, I have installed the lastest Beta. It did work fine for a day, now the plugin is still installed but the buttons are not working anymore.
If I go into the shortcuts of the buttons on the Elgato Software, It ist just showing me the Title, but no other options anymore. So it doesn´t show any bridge, rooms ect.

Is that a common error? Anything I can do to fix that permanently? Or just try to install it new?

[tiptronic]

@sebastiangrueter We've seen this error sporadically, but can't reproduce it... Re-installing will not change much here...

I guess, this happened after a system-sleep or screensaver-activation (yes?). Most likely it will be fixed by a re-launch of the Stream Deck application.

If you can somehow reproduce the error, please let me know, as I'm going to prepare another version which adds more logging about potential root-causes.

And then, it would be great to know, which version of the Stream Deck application you're running and which version of the operating system (Mac/Win)... The more info we get, the better...

[arikankainen]

Thanks for developing this plugin! Unfortunately I have many issues with it:

1. I have 38 lights added to my bridge, but this plugin sees only 33 of them.
2. It does not pick correct names for all lamps. I have named all of my lamps, but this plugin lists most of them as "Hue color lamp n". It's very difficult to choose a correct lamp.
3. Brightness control does not work at all with rooms or zones. If I select a room, it tries to control all lights, but its SUPER laggy and it is adjusting the brightness slowly many seconds after I release the knob. Also the percentage number jumps up and down while adjusting.
4. Why the brightness control does not work same way as official Philips Hue remotes? I have set different initial brightness for almost all of my lamps in the same room, but when I adjust a room with this plugin, all lamps gets the same brightness. Philips Hue remotes changes the relative brightness of all lamps and not forcing the same absolute brightness to all lamps.

Stream Deck+ was not a cheap device, and right now it's completely unusable with Philips Hue Rooms/Zones - and that was the main reason I bought this. I'm using plugin v2.0.0.42 on Windows 11.

[uded]

I would like to point out (just as a reminder) that this plugin is an open-source, community effort and not a commercial product. You bought and used what was on offer; the plugin is just a plugin.

This pre-release version has not been updated for a while. It works generally fine for me, but not without some glitches. You get what the author can offer, as he is working on this for free/fun.

Sorry, I forgot to add that it's an open-source project. Wrap up your sleeves, update/fix the problems you mentioned, and create a pull request. I am confident that the authors of this plugin will be super-excited to merge it if it fixes those...

[CustardFD]

I've just found this update and even it's pre-release form it's a massive improvement over the original plugin. However, I've noticed a few oddities in 2.0.0.42:

1. When using a dial to change brightness/temperature quickly, the result still jumps around. I think the updated "state" value is being read back from the hub after a few steps, and the next delta this then applied to the last read update. For example, when turning the brightness down quickly, it seems to go 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 (read 90 from hub) 80 70.

2. The colour temperature is the wrong way round, compared to every other app I've got. In everything else, cooler temperatures are on the right, and would be a clockwise turn.

3. The meaning of Step is not entirely clear: does it means the number of steps from 1 to 100, or does it mean the size of the steps? I suggest using the phrase Step size.