Does anyone use the cync (GE brand smartbulbs) HACS integration? I have run into a frustrating problem where my lightbulbs aren't using the white channel at all, so when I set the bulbs to white, they are exceptionally dull and just set white with the RGB only. Alexa knows how to set them to "daylight" white, which is clearly displayed differently in the UI, but I can't figure out how to get this color setting. Do I need to set up an alias or something? Any other solution ideas?
#Cync by GE smartbulbs "daylight white" color selection
foggy trout
I should clarify that maybe the issue is that the assistant doesn't know what color "daylight white" is, but I don't know how to set that up
this might be of some use, it's the output when I set it to "daylight white" with Alexa:
min_color_temp_kelvin: 2000
max_color_temp_kelvin: 7000
min_mireds: 142
max_mireds: 500
supported_color_modes: color_temp, rgb
color_mode: color_temp
brightness: 255
color_temp_kelvin: 5350
color_temp: 186
hs_color: 27.545, 14.686
rgb_color: 255, 235, 218
xy_color: 0.358, 0.345
How do I get this to be a color that the assistant knows about?
weak citrus
the stock colours are hard coded. however you could create a scene using these settings and then use calling that scene to switch your light on to that colour
foggy trout
The problem seems to be that the colors don't include color temperatures
Am I wrong?
"white" is 255,255,255 in RGB but that ignores the white channel which i presume is the color_temp value
foggy trout
the stock colours are hard coded. however you could create a scene using these s...
Is there a solution apart from a scene to fix this?
I should have just bought Hue lights from the beginning. I can't use any of the funky color sequences in HA, and the Cync app sucks really hard... hahaa
weak citrus
the fixed named colors are controlled by THIS FILE
some of these random light brands are not really friendly to interface with so theres a limit to what can be done.
foggy trout
yeah, i think the issue here is that all the colors are defined only in RGB space, and there are a bunch of handy helpers here to convert from that to others like RGBW and HSV and kelvin and what have you, but all the color names are based on RGB only... maybe there is a similar RGB color i can use? i will experiment with that
I'll be darned, it turns out I can just say "set the lights to 5300 kelvin". It's too bad there's no way to set up aliases.
weak citrus
I'll be darned, it turns out I can just say "set the lights to 5300 kelvin". It'...
you can use a sentence automation
foggy trout
you can use a sentence automation
Will an LLM-powered assistant be able to pick up that automation?
weak citrus
as long as you have the prefer local processing then it will not even hit the llm
weak citrus
you could also make a script thats called "set the kitchen lights to white" that sets it and expose that to your llm
foggy trout
That would work if it weren't for the fact that I use the "daylight" color basically everywhere. It would be nice if there was a simpler way to just alias it, you know what I mean? Like, if I say "daylight" it means "5300 kelvin"
I could insert that into the prompt for the LLM, I guess, but that seems like the wrong approach.
weak citrus
you could try adding it to your llm prompt?
foggy trout
Yeah, we had the same idea there
Where does the local assistant find that list of hardcoded names? Are they defined elsewhere in a different form? Maybe wherever that place is, more names could be added?
I'm thinking that's probably not possible based on what you've told me, but it really seems like it would be handy to be able to define these kinds of things someplace.
weak citrus
they are in the python file i linked above. you could edit that yourself but it would not persist through updates
foggy trout
Oh I see, so there's some NLP trickery to match the names based on the spoken/typed text, yeah?
either way, I think the easiest solution is honestly to just start referring to "daylight white" as "5300 kelvin"
in my brain, I mean
weak citrus
if you have all your light automations on scenes then you never have to refer to them by color
foggy trout
I'm not sure I totally understand what you mean. Sometimes I'll just change the color of a bunch of lights ad hoc, but then if I want to change them back I'll have to specify what I want. Are you saying I'd just set up an automation to turn everything to "normal" mode or something?
Like, set to 5300k, keep off if off, keep on if on, that kinda thing?
And then the LLM can reference it?
weak citrus
in a "scene" you add entities and its like a snapsshot of a specific state
so when you activate that scene you bring all the entities to the specified state
foggy trout
Yeah I get the basic concept of a scene, but the problem with doing a scene where everything sets to 5300k is that all the lights will turn on if they're off, and it would switch all the lights on if I wanted to change all the lights uniformly to that default state. Am I wrong?
weak citrus
i used a work around automation on a couple of bulbs (i think its still being used) that when a light gets switched on it activates a default scene which sets that bulb to specified colour
say the scene is white
can turn the light to red
then when its turned off and on again the automation fires and sets it to white
foggy trout
That's an interesting workaround.
weak citrus
foggy trout
Well, in any case, thanks for the help. I think I have a number of different solutions to use here.
That's an especially interesting approach, resetting it each time it turns on
You can't turn to the on state, from the on state, right?
So you always turn them off then back on to fix it
weak citrus
i specifically trigger on moving from off -> on
its easy for other people to understand too. if color is strange then turn it off and on again
foggy trout
Yeah, that would work if the bulbs got overridden by being turned off then on again on the wall switch too actually, wouldn't it?
weak citrus
does the switch make the bulb go unavailable?
foggy trout
Yeah, it kills the power. So it would go from unavailable to on, no?
weak citrus
if so then you would want to trigger on unavailable -> on and unkown -> on too
foggy trout
Ah, gotcha
I must double check that it goes to unavailable
It should, since the power is off.
weak citrus
in theory just switching to "on" should work but there are some edge cases
because on->on shouldnt really trigger it but it could
foggy trout
Yeah, I was hoping that would not be the case. When can that happen?
weak citrus
components/integrations resetting and stuff
foggy trout
Pain in the ass
weak citrus
you could trigger for anything > on then put in a templated condition that checks the previous state was not "on"
foggy trout
I will keep this in mind for the future. I get the feeling it might not be worth the effort in the end since I'm realizing there are instances where I will want the lights to persist in their state even if turned off and on again. Like for example if I am watching a movie but want the lights to remain in darkened ship mode.
(i.e., red)
Do you know if there is any possibility of support with the Cync bulbs for the light sequences they support? LIke candle mode and whatnot
weak citrus
yeah for me thats not currently an issue but i can see it being an issue
not unless there's some custom integration that can deal with it
foggy trout
A custom integration is required to interact with these stupid lights to begin with
But I was already using these lights for a long time before I started using HA... 😦
weak citrus
you could try raising an issue on the custom integration repo to feature request it
foggy trout
It doesn't seem to be getting support. I've been working with a fork of it for some time, that fixes issues. None of them seem to have added any features AFAIK. It might be up to me to do it. I don't want to though.
Such is the price we pay for free software
weak citrus
yeah custom integration support can be hit and miss
foggy trout
Do you know if other lights also support things like candle flickering modes and things of that sort? One of the problems even if the integration supported it is that I don't think there is a standard UI element that would be able to represent that state properly
I know there is an animation add-on but it was extremely frustrating to work with and I gave up quickly. I don't plan to go back to it.
weak citrus
you could look for stuff that runs ESPHome then add support for effects
foggy trout
I don't quite follow what you mean, sorry
weak citrus
flicker effect for example
ESPHome is firmware that runs on esp based devices and you can add effects to lights in the firmware config
foggy trout
Oh, yeah, I think I get it. My impression is that the Cync lights do something similarly, they send a mini firmware update when you want to set the bulb to do a custom effect sequence
They are obviously not running on ESPHome though
So anything I wanted to do with keeping these bulbs would require them to expose the ability to get and set these sequences with an API, and then I'd need to find some way to represent that state in the HA UI
The former problem might not be solveable if their API does not expose this though, which I think might be the case since others haven't implemented it in the HACS add-on
weak citrus
yeah if it was accessible its likely someone would have added to it