Light Animation Add-On

keithcroshaw · March 8, 2021, 12:26am

This may exist, but I haven’t found it yet.
What I’m looking for and think many people would like is an Add-On that lets people create light color animations with a web interface. It would be nice if it could call HA scenes or create custom scenes in a web UI. I use Node-Red so it’s somewhat usable this way but I’m looking for something with a color picker and a little bit more magic.

The feature set I’m looking for is about what iConnectHue does but with support for any light in HA. There’s a DIY Hue add-on, but I’m having issues even getting web based activation button to be detected by the Hue app.

Sorry if this exists but I haven’t found anything that fits the bill yet.

Rob_H · March 11, 2021, 8:14pm

Hey Keith. I’ve been after this, too. I can’t offer a pretty UI, but I did write a Pyscript module that implements a HA service for long-running Philips Hue-based animations. It comes with some pre-canned color/timing schemes, but you can add more by modifying a simple JSON-like structure embedded in the script.

I use this in combination with a Lovelace widget that lets me pick the room and the color scheme and start/stop the animation. (See below.) Note that this requires the Pyscript integration, which is available in HACS.

Screenshot_20210311_150642

keithcroshaw · March 11, 2021, 8:46pm

That’s one way to handle it!

One issue is with Node-Red if I restart the container for an update or something I get knocked out of my loop.
I know I could add a input bool to check on startup maybe but it’s all so tiresome…

I’ll look at this later, like I said in our other chat if I could get something a bit more hands off going then I’d switch my bulbs over to deCONZ entirely.

Rob_H · March 11, 2021, 9:11pm

The above is using the Hue integration in HA, not deCONZ.

christoph2 · October 3, 2021, 3:16pm

I absolutely love your approach.
Installing pyscript and importing the script, works well.
But I’m struggling building the LoveLace and the scripts.
Maybe you could give me some help, getting this running?

Many thanks

Rob_H · October 3, 2021, 5:33pm

The Lovelace widget is just a couple of input_select helpers and two scripts that call the pyscript.color_swarm_turn_on and pyscript.color_swarm_turn_off services, respectively. This is the YAML for it:

type: entities
entities:
  - entity: input_select.color_swarm_group
  - entity: input_select.color_swarm_name
  - entity: script.start_color_swarm
  - entity: script.stop_color_swarm
title: Color Swarm

The first input_select is a list of rooms/zones exactly as they appear in the Philips Hue app. The second is a list of color swarm names from the JSON file. Ideally, I’d populate both of these lists automatically, but I haven’t found a simple way to do that so I just update them manually. They don’t change very often.

The scripts are also simple. They just call the pyscript services. Here’s the start script:

service: pyscript.color_swarm_turn_on
data:
  hue_group_name: '{{ states.input_select.color_swarm_group.state }}'
  swarm_name: '{{ states.input_select.color_swarm_name.state }}'

And the stop script:

service: pyscript.color_swarm_turn_off
data:
  hue_group_name: '{{ states.input_select.color_swarm_group.state }}'

Note that starting a new color swarm in the same room will interrupt any previously running swarm so you don’t need to worry about conflicts. Good luck!

christoph2 · October 3, 2021, 8:02pm

Thank you very much.
Everything is working great now.
I’ve added some ‘Northern Lights’ Scene to your script.

    "Northern Lights": {
        "transition_secs": 1,
        "max_hold_secs": 8,
        "palette": [
            {
                "rgb_color": (23, 35, 71),
                "brightness": 255,
            },
            {
                "rgb_color": (2, 83, 133),
                "brightness": 255,
            },
            {
                "rgb_color": (14, 243, 197),
                "brightness": 200,
            },
            {
                "rgb_color": (4, 226, 183),
                "brightness": 200,
            },
            {
                "rgb_color": (3, 132, 152),
                "brightness": 220,
            },
            {
                "rgb_color": (1, 82, 104),
                "brightness": 255,
            },            
        ],
    },

Rob_H · October 3, 2021, 11:45pm

Cool! I’m gonna try this out!

ewa8949 · October 25, 2021, 12:52am

This looks like a really great idea. I have been using an Android app called Hue Pro that has a GUI for achieving similar effects in the same way by setting color, length of transition, brightness etc. However you have to let the android app run which is a huge downside.

keithcroshaw · October 25, 2021, 1:39am

Huh that stinks it needs to be running. IConnectHue really is cool, it all runs on the Hue bridge.

christoph2 · December 23, 2021, 11:47am

Hi there

Since I updated HA to version 2021.12.4 the color-swarm script stopped working.
I got the error in the log:
This error originated from a custom integration.

Logger: custom_components.pyscript.file.color_swarm
Source: custom_components/pyscript/global_ctx.py:337
Integration: Pyscript Python scripting (documentation, issues)
First occurred: 12:20:20 PM (2 occurrences)
Last logged: 12:22:22 PM

Exception in </config/pyscript/color_swarm.py> line 7: from aiohue.bridge import Bridge ^ ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘aiohue.bridge’

Do you have any idea about that?
I didn’t have any success searching for the module ‘aiohue.bridge’

Many thanks…

Kind regards and Merry Christmas
Christoph

fheuer · January 26, 2022, 1:36pm

I was using the same script and ran into similar situation.
I manually installed the aiohue using the SSH & Web Terminal integration. I got it pre-compiled from https://pypi.org/project/aiohue/
Checking the aiohue repo I saw that they changed the functions structure, so I edited my scripts to update the calls.

#from aiohue.bridge import Bridge
from aiohue import HueBridgeV2
...
#bridge = Bridge(host, session, username=username)
bridge = HueBridgeV2(host, session, username=username)

Finally restarting HomeAssistant made the script available again.
Hope it works for you.

d8ahazard · October 19, 2022, 12:48am

So, in the past, I tried the hass-animated-scenes integration to control a group of Wiz bulbs I have around the exterior of my house with little success.

The colorswarm idea struck me as interesting, so I modified the existing pyscript so that it should (theoretically) work with any color changing bulb.

Instead of a room_id or whatever the param was, supply the script with an “area_id” param instead, which is obv. the area id of the area containing the lights you want to control.

This should also do away with the requirement for the aiohue library, as I’ve just hacked the device registry to supply area ID’s for entities when not present, which then lets us find all entities in the light domain which have the “hs” flag in supported color modes.

Mileage may vary, but it definitly works with my Wiz bulbs, so mission accomplished on my end.

Also, added a “Halloween” swarm, as this was my main goal in getting it working in the first place.

github.com

d8ahazard/ha-pyscript/blob/78922f526611a6fdeb05da2180894ae48caf5c7a/color_swarm.py

"""
A collection of lighting effects that runs asynchronously on Philips Hue rooms/groups.
Pyscript must be configured to expose the "hass" global variable and allow all imports
so that we can access the Hue bridge configs and entity registry.
"""
import heapq
import random
import time

import homeassistant
from homeassistant.helpers import device_registry as dr
from homeassistant.helpers import entity_registry as er

devreg = homeassistant.helpers.device_registry.async_get(hass)
entreg = homeassistant.helpers.entity_registry.async_get(hass)

swarm_groups = {}
# Swarm definitions. Add your own here. To favor a particular color, add multiple instances of it to the palette.
# Max hold is the maximum number of seconds a bulb will hold its setting before transitioning to a new random color.
# The other attributes are self-explanatory, I hope.

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d8ahazard · January 22, 2023, 7:59am

One more time. Now I’ve added a schedule function where I can define what times of the year I want what swarms to run, and then just define a routine that starts and stops the swarms at a specific time:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/d8ahazard/23c2f211b7002d52d346dd890718af94

color_swarm_schedule.py

"""
A collection of lighting effects that runs asynchronously on Philips Hue rooms/groups.
Pyscript must be configured to expose the "hass" global variable and allow all imports
so that we can access the Hue bridge configs and entity registry.
"""
import datetime
import heapq
import logging
import random
import time

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freddeh · February 6, 2023, 8:25pm

Does this still work for you? I am using the first built of 2023 of HA and it seems that due to some changes related to the configuration of bridge credentials it does no longer work. Did you perform some additional adjustments?

keithcroshaw · February 6, 2023, 8:46pm

Not that I really mind the info, but I’m not overly interested in Color Swarm.
Can we move it to it’s own topic?
Perhaps this one?

It’d be good to keep the initial explanation of what it is and what it does but it’s not really what the topic is intended for, even though it’s dead.

fheuer · February 7, 2024, 3:35pm

Sorry, I can’t confirm anymore as I’m not using this script for a long time now.

keithcroshaw · June 18, 2024, 6:31pm

I’m going to bump this. I’m surprised there isn’t more interest in creating a way to automate colors and animations directly in Home Assistant.
I used to use iConnectHue but that’s limited to Hue lights and requires a Hue hub.
Here’s an example of what the UI looks like.
It’s pretty intuitive, just pigeonholed into the Hue ecosystem.

VPC · June 18, 2024, 6:46pm

I use this one myself. It works very well and is not hue specific. It installs with HACS.

Here are the “presets” that it supports to whichever lights you target.

github.com

Hypfer/hass-scene_presets/blob/3b62b2701ce944a525e01cd50fc08dda4a99a9cc/custom_components/scene_presets/assets/Readme.md

# Assets

For legal reasons, these aren't the real images used by Philips Hue to symbolize the scenes.
Instead, these are AI-generated reimaginations that try to capture the mood and overall feel of them.

Given that most of the images used by the official app are CC0 or similar, this likely wouldn't be necessary, but it's cool and neat.

## Ethics

While there aren't any legal issues, it would be wrong to not mention the currently (2023-09-30) still ongoing debate regarding
the ethics of using AI technology like this.

I believe that this specific use here is morally okay, because it's non-commercial, free, libre and happens in an effort
of open-ness and interoperability.
Judging by the open license of many of the pictures used for inspiration, I assume that this is in spirit of their respective authors.

Still, if you're one of them and feel unhappy about this, I'm sorry about that. That wasn't the intention of this.
Feel free to contact me, and I'm sure we can find a solution.

## Presets

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keithcroshaw · June 18, 2024, 6:47pm

Thanks a lot! I’ll take a look later.