I was very excited to hear about the improvements to Twinkly in 2022.12.0 as up to know I can only power on/off and adjust brightnes.
Yesterday updated Twinkly to 2.8.15 firmware and HA to 2022.12.0. Already had the twinkly integration. When defining an action I can select on/off, toggle or increase/decrease brightness (5 choices). Read in documentation to apply effects first in twinkly app so have done that a couple of times. Also restarted Home Assistant a few times but don’t see effects. May be looking in the wrong place, would like to get this working.
Integration works, has one device and one entity.
Not an expert in HA, so many things to choose: devices, entities, states etc so perhaps it’s found elsewhere? Tried making a scene but also have no new options there
I was puzzled by this but figured it out. You need to choose the effect in the Twinkly app and press apply (bottom right) in order for the effect to show up in HA.
Thanks! Just made a similar card and can confirm I can set colors and effects there
Now HA can serve as an alternative remote. What I was trying was to get automations to use these features. E.g. play effect on tree when doorbell rings, have different colors scheduled for morning/day/evening and so on.
In the automation section I can find no effects or colors. also there is no category “effects” - more stuff like device, entity, scenes, actions and so on. Any clue on how to use these effects and colors in automations?
No, there is no service call like twinkly.set_effect implemented, I played around with light.turn_on and trying to pass it color or effect but it doesn’t seem to work.
I think there still some outstanding bugs being worked on, for example -
Hopefully we will get a release with some bug fixes in the next few days or week…
You can create your own effects in the app, and call them whatever you want, and you can easily have more than one effect with the same name, so the names are not unique. That is why I need to have the number as well.
The integration is completely usable today, the reported bugs are pretty minor.
“Missing None effect” only means that from the GUI, if you have switched from an effect to a static color, you can’t swich directly back to the previous effect. You first need to select another effect and then back to the previous one. If you use the regular service call light.turn_on() there is no issue.
There is a PR already that will fix that (and a few other issues).
“Twinkly doesn’t turn on” has been tracked down, and can happen if you do not have any movies (effects) saved to the device. This only happens if you use the GUI or of you try to use light.turn_on() whthout setting a color. It can easily be worked around by just saving a movie (effect) in the app.
There are two PRs open that each fix different parts of this problem. Either of them should be enough for 99% of the cases. Both of them together should fix every corner case.
So how does this updated integration work? To my understanding effects (or movies, as Twinkly call them) are uploaded to the controller every time you change these in application and click apply. Sounds to me like that only one effect can be stored on the device. Now, from what I understand integration allows to load several different effects and switch between them using service calls. So the questios are:
Is Twinkly controller capable of storing more effects? If so how many?
Altrnatively is integraton intercepting the movie files as these are uploaded to controller and reply as needed? Or downloading them somehow from contrloller and storing localy in HA for reuse?
As more complex effects are dependent on particular location of LEDs, what about changes? Eg. if create some effect today, it gets its unique index in integration, how will this play next year, when the Christmass tree is dressed differently? Do I need to reset configurastion somehow? Especially if I want to use the same effect, with different layout of LEDs on the tree, how to update it? Or alternatively remove previously store one and be able to upload a new one with the same name (ideally index too)?
Sorry for these somehow technical questions, I’m just very much curious! I love Twinkly lights and I’m really excited to try this integration in coming days!
I agree the integration is useable, maybe better than before. But for RGBW lights the color picker is broken. Using 2022.12 it seemed I could only select pastel colors, white being full on. Now, on 2022.12.1 (or just plain by coincidence) I again can’t use the white channel as it is always completely off. That is slightly better, except I cant use warm white now.
At least with version 2 lights, the controller is capable of storing multiple effects. How many will probably depend on the complexity of the effect and the number of lights in your string. For my icicle I now have 4 effects taking up almost half the controller memory. On my 240 light strings I have 3 effects taking up only 9%.
The new integration is capable of selecting the effects that are uploaded to the controller. Uploading happes for example when you create a playlist. The playlist itself is not (yet?) useable from HA. But in my experience, if you turn a running playlist off using HA, and on again, most times it will continue.
You will always need to keep the Twinkly app if you reuse the lights in a different setting, or want to change the effects you uploaded to the controller. That will also mean the effects in your automations may have gotten different meanings (the 3rd effect may not be the same effect it used to be, or may even no longer be set).
When you reuse the lights the next year, you use the Twinkly app to remap the positions of the lights. The app will then recompile the effect using the new layout of the individual lights. The twinkly app can save and reuse more effects than your controller can hold, but they are stored on the device. So if you switch between Android phone and iPad for example, own creations from the phone are not there on the iPad.
Thanks a lot for explanation! Makes a lot of sense! So seems now I need check what about mine strings… I have one with 250 LEDs, but no clue what generation it is… I’ll learn this in few days though!
