Can't just turn on a LIFX light

[HarpinBull]

1) Give a description of the problem
I can’t seem to execute a simple “on” command for a LIFX bulb without specifying brightness. The brightness & color temp is controlled throughout the day through LIFX’s day & dusk feature, so I don’t want to specify anything specific in the piston aside from the fade in duration. I have tried executing this “on” function through a switch as well without any luck. The piston’s log appears to think it turned it on, but did not. Interestingly, the “off” function works fine.

2) What is the expected behavior?
Light should turn on to previous settings. (LIFX bulbs support this.)

3) What is happening/not happening?
Nothing happens.

4)

Note: The above is an example of the action I’ve been trying to use. I don’t have the original because I am in the middle of upgrading my lights (upgrading existing LIFX lights to newer models and replacing Lightify lights with LIFX lights), and just retired the specific piston I was using when I first noticed this problem. It happened to be the first time I tried to use a specific LIFX light in a piston.

Below is also the screen for specifying LIFX state.

[whoismoses]

I’ve never tired on. I always use setLevel(). What DH are you using?

[HarpinBull]

Nothing particular. I was under the impression the LIFX/Webcore integration dealt directly with the LIFX cloud. I don’t generally authorize other smart apps to access LIFX bulbs via ST, relying instead on LIFX integration of the app.

[whoismoses]

ah, I never tried that but I can give it a try when I get home.

[HarpinBull]

Just got my new batch of LIFX bulbs tonight, and am trying to use one of them with a different motion sensor & piston than I tried before with the same results. I’ve replaced the bulb I was using (Lightify) with my new LIFX Day & Dusk.

Here’s the log.
> +1ms ╔Received event [WC MultiSensor].motion = active with a delay of 146ms
> +189ms ║RunTime Analysis CS > 16ms > PS > 67ms > PE > 107ms > CE
> +198ms ║Runtime (41072 bytes) successfully initialized in 67ms (v0.2.0ff.20171129) (196ms)
> +199ms ║╔Execution stage started
> +206ms ║║Comparison (enum) active changes_to (string) active = true (0ms)
> +207ms ║║Cancelling condition #5’s schedules…
> +207ms ║║Condition #5 evaluated true (4ms)
> +208ms ║║Cancelling condition #1’s schedules…
> +209ms ║║Condition group #1 evaluated true (state changed) (6ms)
> +210ms ║║Cancelling statement #27’s schedules…
> +2721ms ║║Executed virtual command lifxState (2507ms)
> +2723ms ║╚Execution stage complete. (2524ms)
> +2730ms ╚Event processed successfully (2730ms)

Here’s a log for when it shuts off, which works as expected.
+1ms ╔Received event [The Bull Homestead].time = 1512700717063 with a delay of -822ms
+233ms ║RunTime Analysis CS > 28ms > PS > 65ms > PE > 139ms > CE
+244ms ║Runtime (40941 bytes) successfully initialized in 65ms (v0.2.0ff.20171129) (241ms)
+246ms ║╔Execution stage started
+261ms ║║Cancelling condition #26’s schedules…
+262ms ║║Condition #26 evaluated true (2ms)
+264ms ║║Cancelling condition #25’s schedules…
+266ms ║║Condition group #25 evaluated true (state changed) (6ms)
+270ms ║║Cancelling statement #29’s schedules…
+2793ms ║║Executed virtual command lifxState (2516ms)
+2798ms ║╚Execution stage complete. (2553ms)
+2808ms ╚Event processed successfully (2808ms)

[anthonymorris]

Not sure what your problem is but I have a few lifx bulbs myself and have the integration with webcore over the ST portion. Mainly because through ST and webcore it will take almost 10 seconds to turn on just 6 light bulbs and set levels.

I have similar conditions just using a occupancy smartapp that you change to your motion sensor if so desired.

I can confirm mine is working as intended and turns on all lights in the group at once when I walk in (occupied) and off when room sets to vacant as you see in my piston. I am using the occupancy sensor DTH from bangali for my triggers. It shows as keypad in the anonymity format. If interested check it out here.

Rooms Manager smartapp

Hope this helps you in some way.

[HarpinBull]

I know how to make it work by adding the “level” parameter, which is what I’m doing right now since all my motion sensors control LIFX bulbs, but that puts the motion sensor piston in control of the brightness, which is not what I want in this case.

My nighttime routine is:

1. Tell Alexa “Goodnight,” which triggers a routine in ST, sets the mode to Night, and triggers a piston.
2. The piston tells IFTTT to activate a scene over 5 minutes for the bathrooms & hallway that doesn’t change the on/off state. The change is from 100% brightness at 4000k to 2% brightness at 2500k (basically, nightlights). At the same time, another scene activated directly from WebCoRE is fading off all the downstairs lights and fading on the master bedroom lights over 2 minutes.
3. We go upstairs (sometimes with a baby in my arms), triggering the hallway motion sensor. However, the mode is now “night,” and since I have to specify a level in the piston to turn on a LIFX bulb, it turns on at 2%.
4. Like the hallway, walking into the bathroom turns those lights on to 2%, which is fine for middle of the night, but not so much right now since our eyes have not adjusted, which is the whole point of the long scene transition. The color transition is still happening as it was intended: LIFX bulbs continue transitioning parts of a scene that haven’t been interrupted. I’ve tested before just using IFTTT if I can fade a scene slowly and turn it on and off without interrupting the transition, and it works - but I can’t find a way to make it work in WebCoRE because I can’t just turn on a bulb without specifying a level.
5. In the morning, one of us (usually my wife) tells Alexa “Good Morning” which sets the mode to “home” and sets all the bathroom lights back to 4000k.

[HarpinBull]

Would I be mistaken to say the “on” feature of the LIFX/webcore integration isn’t working properly? I’ve played around with it some more over the weekend, and I can set any parameter alongside it, not just level, to get it to work, but it absolutely will not work by itself. I’ve also played around with different device type handlers, but got the same results. Meanwhile… the LIFX Toggle command has no problem turning on the light. I might play around with that later as a workaround.

At the moment, I’m just using the regular (non-LIFX) device on/off command where needed to get the desired results, but it slows down the overall motion sensor response noticeably. For example, my upstairs hallway light used to turn on when I reached the landing (about 5 steps from the top), but now turns on after I’m all the way to the top of my stairs (which is pretty dark).

Slightly off topic - how can I control color temp through the LIFX/webcore integration? About half of my bulbs are tunable whites, and I expect (though haven’t tried) that they will likely only respond to the “K” of LIFX’s “HSBK” color setting.

[anthonymorris]

I have myself mixed reviews with the lifx bulbs and response times. Not really a fix to anything your seeing but thought I would let you know your not alone in that.

I love the bulbs and their color capabilities. I only have about 9 total. I have a feeling it is because your traversing multiple clouds for the integration point.

However due to their RT’s I ended up with 53 sylvania (lightify) ziggbee bulbs for the rest of the house.

i.e. - example of motion piston with lifx:

motion (active) - tells hub - hub tell smartthings cloud - smarttthings cloud updates hub status - hub status starts piston - webcore tells hub to execute - hub tells smartthings cloud - smartthings cloud tells lifx - Done
(so depending on your latency to each cloud that time of day you are essentially introducing a extra hop that other devices do not see)

i.e. - example of motion piston with zigbee bulb

motion (active) - tells hub - hub tell smartthings cloud - smarttthings cloud updates hub status - hub status starts piston - webcore tells hub to execute - hub tells smartthings cloud - done

• in regards to color - when I want to set all bulbs to say 6500K I use " device set color temperature xxxx" which is a K value and seems to work fine.

[HarpinBull]

I actually used some of my new LIFX bulbs to replace some tunable Lightify bulbs I tried out. I thought the warm whites they produced looked more like an eerie sort of yellow than a warm orange, and I always had issues with fading they wanted to turn on to their last brightness and fade down to whatever was being called for in my piston. Even though I get slightly longer response times, I find LIFX easier to manage color settings overall with smoother response. For me, smooth lighting transitions are a big part of the smart home experience.