Re-evaluate CCT with WLED and the HA WLED integration

Feature Requests
1

Since 2022.2 HA’s WLED implementation has explicitly prevented any WLED devices reporting CCR capabilities from being used in HA.

I’ll be 100% honest and admit I don’t begin to understand everything that’s going on here. But I do know that myself and a ton of other Athom bulb owners (others as well) are being forced to cripple the functionality of their bulbs in order for them to be used in HA. All of the workarounds in WLED to allow HA integration prevent me from using the white channel in my bulbs.

I totally understand that there was an issue where some bulbs that had a white channel only were being displayed a color wheel, so it makes sense that the decision was made back in January to prevent them from being used in HA. However, it looks like most of the discussion between HA and WLED teams took place in Feb and March. On April 16th, Aircoookie/WLED#2500 (comment) shows that 0.13.0-b7 launched new functionality that may (or may not) give a pathway back to smooth integration between the two projects with regards to devices with CCT channels.

This feature request is to have the new WLED API functionality incorporated into the HA WLED integration and allow CCT LED’s to operate with HA again.

2

This pull request should add that support (work in progress at the time of writing this response)

7 Likes
3

Hi mate, what was the temporary solution to get the Athom bulbs working in HA? I just bought 3 without realising this issue existed

1 Like
4

Anyone struggling with a workaround since the WLED UI: I was able to add a new WLED instance by changing the following setting.

image

1 Like
5

Hey! Any news on this? Last night my WLED worked just fine. I woke up this morning to the same error message.

1 Like
6

You can also use PWM RGBW if you want to have some control over the white light. Tried it today.

1 Like
7

If you’re using the Athom 15W bulb, I flashed mine to ESPHome instead of waiting for WLED to be fixed.
Admittedly, not without initially bricking it and having to get the soldering iron out to recover it, but it works great now :upside_down_face:. For future reference, pinout is here.

The config published by Athom got stuck in a bootloop, but when I built my own from scratch (programming my WiFi directly, rather than relying on the AP) it worked great.

My config is below.

substitutions:
  name: "corner"
  friendly_name: "Corner"
  light_restore_mode: RESTORE_DEFAULT_ON
  color_interlock: 'true'
    
esphome:
  name: "${name}"

esp8266:
  board: esp8285
  restore_from_flash: true

preferences:
  flash_write_interval: 1min

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password
  domain: .internal

# Enable logging
logger:
  level: DEBUG

# Enable Home Assistant API
api:

ota:

mdns:
  disabled: false

output:
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    id: red_output
    pin: GPIO4
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    id: green_output
    pin: GPIO12
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    id: blue_output
    pin: GPIO14
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    id: white_output
    pin: GPIO5
  - platform: esp8266_pwm
    id: ct_output
    inverted: true
    pin: GPIO13

light:
  - platform: rgbct
    id: rgbct_light
    name: "${friendly_name}"
    restore_mode: ${light_restore_mode}
    red: red_output
    green: green_output
    blue: blue_output
    white_brightness: white_output
    color_temperature: ct_output
    cold_white_color_temperature: 6000K
    warm_white_color_temperature: 3000K
    color_interlock: ${color_interlock}
1 Like
8

Is there a solution to using SK6812 LED strips? I enabled white balance colour correction and since them am completely unable to add the strip (which was working fine before) to HA.

For what it’s worth, I have tried (with reloads of the WLED integration in between attempts), alone or combined, to enable / disable Colour Correction, auto CCT from RGB and played with the Auto-Calculate White with no luck. Which is odd, as I returned the LED strip to a state where it worked previously.

EDIT: I had to reboot both HA and the WLED to get them back. I was also able to get the white channel supported (I think?) by setting the Colour Correction but leaving the Auto-calculate setting disabled.

1 Like
9

I stumbled upon this since suddently with 2023.6.1 my WLED stopped working with the same CCT channel error. Nothing has changed in the WLED config before or after the HA update, so I guess this annoying breaking issue is making a comeback.

1 Like
10

Running into the same issue as well since updating.

2 Likes
11

I’ve confirmed that this error only happens when you have “White Balance correction” checked in the WLED LED Preferences menu. If you uncheck that, though not ideal, then force reboot of WLED you can reload the integration in HA and it’ll be back to normal working state until the bug is fixed.

my testing was done on:

  • NodeMCU with WLED 0.13.3
  • WS2815 12V RGBWW strip
2 Likes
12

I can confirm disabling white balance and adding to HA works with 0.14.0-b3 and HA 2023.8. But i think CCT and White Management should be working as well

3 Likes
13

If this helps anyone else as a work around, and it seems very much like a “hacky thing” - I did the same “enable checkbox for Calculate CCT from RGB” which then allowed me to add my bulbs into Home Assistant fine.

I then went back to the bulbs, disabled this checkbox and rebooted them - and Home Assistant still sees the bulbs and you can control them.

Guessing the initial check blocks you from adding them, but once added by adjusting their config - you can “revert them back” and keep them in HA. Assuming the behaviour will be intermittant as per frenck’s notice about this - but for me - I can turn them on/off, change brightness etc via HA and automations, and they are kept on their original “WarmWhite” LEDs to match the rest of the house temperature (not using RGBs).

This will do for me while/if the updates to WLED/HA are worked on. :+1:

Athom GU10 running 14.v0.14.0-b1, and HA 2023.11.2

2 Likes
14

@frenck Any news on the progress for integrating PWB RGB +CCT?
I just bought 4 Athom RGB+ CCT thinking it would work in HA…
I was about to use the DDP Feature to create a Light strip from those bulb…

Thanks

3 Likes
15

Holy crap this sucks. I can do the workaround of turning on the “Calculate CCT from RGB” to get the integration working and then turn it off again, and it works fine until I reset HA, at which point I have to reset the integration with the workaround again.

The integration should definitely include an option to ignore this constraint. Let it be a user opt-in setting, but it seems like this goes against the spirit of HA giving users control to make this decision categorically because some people have experienced problems. I mean unless the problems were causing damage to equipment, but it’s hard to imagine that would be the case.

2 Likes
16

Considering switching away from Home Assistant because WLED is a really cool project that HA wont fix CCT. At least give us an override? I am about to build my own version of core.

17

Confirming still an issue. Using WS2812b strips connected to esp32 D1 Mini. Using Hyperion as controller.

Also confirming the “disable white balance correction” trick still works.

18

From an end-user’s perspective, this is highly frustrating. The relevant tracking issue has been locked on the HA tracker.

Frankly, I find @frenck’s comment here quite disheartening:

image
image2084×644 78.7 KB

I can respect that @frenck has no use case for this feature, which is totally fine.
However, Home Assistant is a community project.

I have no idea if there has been previous conflict between the maintainers of WLED and HA.
Both tickets indicate that communication broke down for some reason, and @frenck gave up on resolving the issue together with the maintainers of WLED for personal reasons.

Can we, as a community, find a modus operandi where we can find a working implementation that:

  1. follows HA’s requirements for integrations,
  2. benefits users with CCT LEDs who want to integrate them via WLED?

I am willing to contribute to help get this working, as long as HA maintainers indicate that they are willing to revisit this issue and work with the community on a resolution.

4 Likes
19

With the State of the Open Home livestream coming up and someone from the WLED project is going to be speaking, I hope that this will be addressed or hopefully someone can bring it up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa__fLArsFk

2 Likes
20

I too would like this functionality added back in so that I can have lighting temperature control on my WS2814 strip. I thought I’d add that @frozen2077 created a working integration that does include this functionality if anyone would like to look into it: Modded the official WLED integration with color temperature support (not CCT)

Perhaps some of this work could be incorporated into the main WLED integration?

1 Like