I have successfully created a custom light component for the Ambilights on Phillips Android TV’s (2016+) using the JointSpace API.
If you have already paired your TV for the philips_2016.py custom media_player component, you can skip the pairing process and refer to the same username and password in your configuration.yaml
First Pair your TV, and generate the username and password using this tool and enter the details, along with the IP address of your TV into your configuration.yaml as follows:
Place the ambilights.py in you config/custom_components/light/ directory, and restart Home Assistant
Features
This component has the following features:
Power Ambilights ON/OFF
Brightness
RGB color
Effects
Manual (custom RGB color for all LED’s)
Standard (Follow Video)
Natural (Follow Video)
Football / Immersive (Follow Video)
Vivid (Follow Video)
Game (Follow Video)
Comfort (Follow Video)
Relax (Follow Video)
Lumina / Adaptive Brightness (Follow Audio)
Colora / Adaptive Color (Follow Audio)
Retro (Follow Audio)
Spectrum (Follow Audio)
Scanner (Follow Audio)
Rhythm (Follow Audio)
Party / Random (Follow Audio)
Individual effects can be easily removed from the Front-End by removing them from the AMBILIGHT_EFFECT_LIST (line 53 of ambilights.py )
Known Issues
The light component can turn the Ambilights on when the TV is off, however, after the TV has been in standby for a long period of time, the component will loose connection, and will be unable to turn the lights on again until the TV is woken up and reconnects - this can be solved by manually turning on the TV and then changing the ambilights, or through the use of an IR blaster connected to Home Assistant to achieve the same result.
Older Philips TV’s
Older (non-Android) Philips TV’s with ambilights, which use the JointSpace API, may be controllable through this component, try changing the BASE_URL on line 20 to http://{0}:1925/1/{1} . Note: as the older API does not use HTTPS, there is no need for the username and password fields to be generated or placed into your configuration.yaml , there may also be changes needed to the _getReq() and _postReq() sections to accomodate this, If anyone is successful with this, let me know and I will update this section.
Brilliant, glad its working for others, seeing as it was my first attempt at a component I wasn’t sure! As for making it official, firstly I would have no idea where to start, but more seriously, It probably couldn’t be an official component as-is, mainly due to the extra step needed to get the pairing code at the start - perhaps if I were to combine the code that generates the username and password into the component, with a persistent notification on the front-end when it first runs with the pairing process - but as this requires the input of the user (typing in the pairing code displayed on the TV) I’m still not sure this is possible.
I also created an input boolean to activate this feature or disable it.
If you don’t want it, you can just remove the ‘condition statement’ from the automation.
input_boolean:
ambilights_follow_room:
name: Ambilights Follow Room Lights
initial: off
Would love to install this component to control my Philips 55PUS7502/12 Ambilight, but I always fail at the first step, to pair my TV and get the username/password:
As far as I understand I have to download the philips.py and copy in configcustom_components/media_player
but then? Do I have to restart to get the username/password? Or do I have to run this file manualy, but if so, how do I do that?
You need to download philips.py from repository https://github.com/suborb/philips_android_tv/blob/master/philips.py and run it on local environment. So you need to instal Python and some other python components required by this script. When you try to run it everything required will be displayed in console. I don’t remember exactly every step
Hey thanks for your reply! Sorry I´m absolutely not into Python or Coding in general, but does it mean I can start the philips.py from my Mac for example with this program here ? And what are the other python components?
Yes, you need to instal for example the newest version of python and run command “python philips.py --host 192.168.x.x pair” in folder where you downloaded. I’m using windows, so I’m not sure how exactly run it on Mac.
For sure you will be needed to instal some component required by this script, don’t remember what was that. If you don’t known how to instal correct component just google python component name install and instruction should be in the first position.
@Nizm0 has given the command you’ll need, it is the same on Mac OS, you’ll need to download and install python on your Mac from the link you provided if you have yet to do so, then open a terminal window in the folder with the philips.py file inside.
cd /path/to/folder
then run the command
python philips.py --host 192.168.x.x pair
As you will be installing python afresh, there may be some dependencies you need to install, for example, this was posted on the GitHub issues page for the philips.py script:
Requests is not a built in module (does not come with the default python installation), so you will have to install it
Use: $ sudo pip install requests
if you have pip installed
Alternatively you can also use: $ sudo easy_install -U requests
if you have easy_install installed.
Once you have your username and password, and they are in your home assistant configuration, you are done with the philips.py script, from then on all that is needed is the ambilights.py in your /config/custom_components/light/ folder
Awesome! That was pretty much my exact motive for making the component, I wanted it to match my RGB LED strips in the same room, making it a full light component also means you can use light groups to have the ambilights integrated into the rooms lighting controls without an automation (although you do forgo the ease of a toggle switch to disable it)
An interesting automation I have built on top of this is one that uses both this light component, and an updated version of the philips_2016.py media_player component (which adds the ability to detect what TV Channel or App is currently on the TV), I have it so that if the source changes at all, the Ambilights will be automatically set to the “Standard” effect (Follow Video), meaning that if I have previously set the lights to a certain colour, but then say, open Netflix with the remote, the ambilights will automatically default back to follow the video on the screen, it works brilliantly!
- alias: Amiblights Auto-Standard
trigger:
- entity_id: sensor.tv_source
platform: state
condition:
- condition: state
entity_id: media_player.philips_tv
state: 'on'
action:
- data:
effect: Standard
entity_id: light.bedroom_ambilights
service: light.turn_on
Thanks for your reply! Did all the steps to install Python and components, and after I typed in the command
python philips.py --host 192.168.x.x pair in the folder where the philips.py file is, I got this here:
Starting pairing request
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "philips.py", line 123, in <module>
main()
File "philips.py", line 90, in main
pair(config)
File "philips.py", line 41, in pair
r = requests.post("https://" + config['address'] + ":1926/6/pair/request", json=data, verify=False)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/requests-2.19.1-py2.7.egg/requests/api.py", line 112, in post
return request('post', url, data=data, json=json, **kwargs)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/requests-2.19.1-py2.7.egg/requests/api.py", line 58, in request
return session.request(method=method, url=url, **kwargs)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/requests-2.19.1-py2.7.egg/requests/sessions.py", line 512, in request
resp = self.send(prep, **send_kwargs)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/requests-2.19.1-py2.7.egg/requests/sessions.py", line 622, in send
r = adapter.send(request, **kwargs)
File "/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/requests-2.19.1-py2.7.egg/requests/adapters.py", line 513, in send
raise ConnectionError(e, request=request)
requests.exceptions.ConnectionError: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='192.168.178.41', port=1926): Max retries exceeded with url: /6/pair/request (Caused by NewConnectionError('<urllib3.connection.VerifiedHTTPSConnection object at 0x102f939d0>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno 60] Operation timed out',))
Are you sure that you write correct IP address for your TV? It’s look like your TV is not responding, and the script can’t connect to it to display data required do generate user.
Hm, don’t know. Maybe you have no access to internet on the TV or your tv is on different sub net and you have no access to it from your PC/Laptop. Verify if your PC IP have the same 3 thirst part of IP address as the one on TV. Maybe you have set on router isolate Wireless devices that they have no access to each other.
Try to ping your tv to verify if you have access to it.
Ha! It finally worked!! you were right, I used the wrong IP adress, but now everything works fine, thanks so much for your help and this component! One last question: Is it possible to control also the Ambilight+Hue function with this component or with a command line switch?
Unfortunately I have no hue lights to test that functionality with, so cannot add it myself. I would guess it is possible though, if you find the command needed to be sent to the tv, and test that it works, it should be simple to add to the component.
I have a problem with this component. It really changes the color of the LED strip behind the TV. I cannot seem to be able to change the brightness with automation.
I can set brightness from the light manually. With automation it does not work. Here is the code:
####################################################
# Philips Ambilight leds low on TV off #
####################################################
- id: ambilight-low-brightness-when-tv-off # <-- Required for editor to work.
alias: Amiblights at low brightness when TV off
trigger:
- entity_id: media_player.philips_tv
platform: state
condition:
- condition: state
entity_id: media_player.philips_tv
state: ‘off’
action:
- service: light.turn_on
entity_id: light.philips_ambilight
data:
brightness: 30
effect: Manual
transition: 2
rgb_color: [‘255’,‘105’,‘180’]
It does change the color to pink, but brightness stays at 255. What’s wrong?
As for making it official, firstly I would have no idea where to start, but more seriously, It probably couldn’t be an official component as-is, mainly due to the extra step needed to get the pairing code at the start - perhaps if I were to combine the code that generates the username and password into the component, with a persistent notification on the front-end when it first runs with the pairing process - but as this requires the input of the user (typing in the pairing code displayed on the TV) I’m still not sure this is possible.
