Nanoleaf Essentials Bulbs - Really no transition support?

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TL;DR
After Nanoleaf Essentials are added to HASS via the HomeKit Device integration, they lose the ability to create scenes in the Nanoleaf iOS app. It seems the only way to get buttery smooth scene support is through the official Nanoleaf app on Desktop. Couldn’t we leverage an installation of this through Home Assistant to spin up custom made intricate scenes with very little overhead?

The Basics

  • Nanoleaf Essentials are able to smoothly transition with the same scenes (effects) as Nanoleaf Shapes
  • These scenes are created in the Nanoleaf App. If given permission, they will create scenes in HomeKit allowing you to retrieve dynamic scenes with the push of a button, or even a request from Siri
  • The Nanoleaf app is a dream for creating effects. It even has a gimmick that generates scenes based off of keywords you entered (sort of a psuedo-AI thing) which generally makes the experience faster and and more visually accessible than building in YAML.

The Problem

  • Because Essentials are Thread-only (especially my HomeKit versions), they must be paired directly to HASS and then bridged to HomeKit. This is unlike the Shapes, which can remain paired to HomeKit and be paired to HASS through the Nanoleaf integration
  • Once the Essentials are on HASS I can no longer transfer scenes to them through the iOS app. I’m not sure the reasoning for this, but whenever I create a scene with the Essentials it gives me an error with a different code each time.
  • As a result, there’s no way to quickly call on the scenes that I’ve come to love with Nanoleaf.
  • To top this all off, Nanoleaf Essentials don’t work with the standard transition data used in the light.turn_on service! I’ve already encountered someone who remedied this with a custom script, but it is still far from desirable and and has no color support.

The Question

  • Could we not leverage whatever tools the Nanoleaf Deskop App is using to create and call on scenes for bulbs that are paired to HASS through the HomeKit Device Integration?
  • I can manually manage this, but it literally requires me to pull out my laptop each time.’

Thanks for reading!

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Hello! We know some of the technical details on how Nanoleaf implements scenes: HomeKit Accessory Protocol (HAP) over CoAP/UDP (was: Nanoleaf Essentials bulb via Thread/CoAP) - #68 by lambdafunction There just hasn’t been someone to wire that up. We may be able to fake lightbulb fade using Nanoleaf’s scenes - it isn’t something that HomeKit supports natively, sadly.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

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Oh wow I had not seen this! So we could potentially create an integration to call scenes for Nanoleaf essentials? That would be a true game changer. Have you been able to force a color fade on the bulb from HASS or any other troubleshooting software?

I’d love to help if there’s some sort of grunt work that needs to be done to decode how scenes are handled. I dream of creating a singular scene in Home Assistant that can be pushed to the bulbs, rather than the current infrastructure that requires you create the scene within the nanoleaf app and then “share” it to the other bulbs. Is it actually storing the scene within in the bulb? There’s no way, right? So then WHY does the bulb have it’s own version of the scene that does not get updated if you tweak it on another bulb? It’s an iterative nightmare that would be much more manageable if you could leverage HASS and Node Red to help.

Sorry for the late reply, I had no idea anyone even read this.