Snippet - Philips Hue driver (via the bridge and REST api)

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I just posted Philips Hue driver (via the bridge and REST api) on Codeshare. Feel free to discuss and make suggestions here.

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NICE!

Any info on how it works? What is it used for?

Sure got my curiosity.

I would guess measuring how much water a plant is using but… Not sure.

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@ willgeorge :

Is your question about the installation or the driver ?

About the driver :
philips hue api is relatively well documented there :

http://developers.meethue.com/

it needs some update and refinements since latest firmware update, but everything could be found on everyhue’s community forums there :

http://www.everyhue.com/vanilla/

The installation is about expressing the own vitality of the plant with the lighting around, by measuring in real-time its sap velocity and changing colors and dimming speed of the lights.

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@ fradav -

about the installation…

I will check your links.

I was wondering if the philips hue was somehow used to measure (as a sensor) or if for display only.

“The installation is about expressing the own vitality of the plant with the lighting around, by measuring in real-time its sap velocity and changing colors and dimming speed of the lights.” told me what I wanted to know.

Thanks for the reply!

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@ fradav - Interesting installation.

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Very interesting. Never really looked into these wireless lights before. WiFi right? Are there other devices or just bulbs?

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@ Gus : not Wifi, it’s plain ip/ethernet to the bridge, and the bridge is talking directly to the bulbs in 802.15.4 with zigbee stack + ZCL (zigbee cluster link) stack + ZLL (Zigbee Light Link) stack. So theoritically we can don the same thing directly with an xbee, but assimilating 400 pages about zigbee/ZCL/ZLL is a bit over my head for the moment (but I will eventually come to it). The advantages of zigbee over wifi are numerous, and especially the mesh networking capability which means each node acts as a repeater for the others.
Philips only sells bulbs for this bridge and does not really document or advise any other devices, but in theory (and in practice it has be done) any ZLL enabled device could work, as long it can be “factory reset” to some point, to join your own custom of aftermaket zigbee coordinator.

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Makes sense. I wonder if anyone has it working with xbee modules.

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@ Gus - Apparently, (checking everyhue.com on a weekly basis), nobody has, at least publicly. A commercial company, Dresden Elektroniks at :
http://www.dresden-elektronik.de/funktechnik/products/radio-modules/oem-derfsam3/?L=1

is selling custom avr chips + radio modules, and got a software (running linux/windows) which has some success in getting Hue bulbs directly in an HA network. But it’s proprietary software, and even if the main developper (cryo on everyhue.com) is very helpful, he won’t publish sources. So, it’s terra incognita for now. At least, we know it is possible, but that’s all. I even managed to make an Hue bulb join my xbee pro in coordinator api mode, but how to pass this point to actually do something with the light is little over my head.

The problem is that people are usually satisfied with the bridge access, which got a nice REST api, so it seems there is little interest to hack the bulbs directly with xbee modules. (even it has obvious advantages from a gadgeteering/embedded developpement). We need a real xbee/zigbee ninja to settle the score on this, but I don’t know any.