Holiday Lights: 4th of July / Diwali / Halloween / Christmas - Your Pick

[Gietlt]

So it looks like you are not using a scheduler? combined the scheduler with the fade?

[bangali]

this is an older version of the piston that does not include the changes for sound. so if you dont need sound this would still work. off course the custom garage light on / off might not be needed for others.

[ptsere]

It would be even better if I can use a command on my google home to start and stop

[bangali]

i dont use alexa or home … so not sure here … but can you just tell alexa or home to run a piston on demand?

if you can this version should work:

[Gopack2]

Set up a virtual switch. Have Alexa/ google home turn on that switch. Use your piston to trigger when that switch turns on or off

[ApriliaEdd]

I know its an earlier version and i stated it in the post. but boarder replied to me saying they wanted to get the pausing set up. the garage lights are the 5 rgb lights in this piston. i can remove it if its going to cause confusion?

I have noticed that my other pistons do not fire as swiftly as they do when its not changing the lights. My kitchen lights fire on a motion detector in the evenings but while this is running I’ve made the tea and am back in the other room before the lights come on.

I was going to try to recreate this piston in another instance, do you think this would help?

[bangali]

for the record this version of the piston did not have any of the colour change issues reported above.

i was responding to this part with an explanation that it was an older version. there is no reason to remove it.

I was going to try to recreate this piston in another instance, do you think this would help?

yes that would help.

[Boarderc577]

Just throwing out another thanks for this piston. Been pretty solid since new one. Did have one day that it did not turn off and had to pause it then restart but no big deal. Loving it and more importantly wife likes it

[lanky8804]

Just trying this with Philips Hue bulbs. Have 2 Blooms and 1 Hue Go. The Blooms work fine but the Hue Go not working, any ideas?

I am assuming that you can have more than 2 bulbs for this piston? @bangali

[bangali]

I am assuming that you can have more than 2 bulbs for this piston?

yes you can. hue is direct connected to ST or thru hue bridge?

[lanky8804]

Connected to ST using Hue Advance (Connect)

[bangali]

someone else had issues with hue connected direct to ST. i dont use hue so dont know if they work direct connected to ST.

see this and above from there:

Holiday Lights: 4th of July / Diwali / Halloween / Christmas - Your Pick

I’m using hue lamps for mine but though the Hub. never tried to connect one direct to ST. @bangali congratulations you have managed the impossible and got a positive response from my wife about “that crap I’m always messing with”. I’m away with work right now but on the 1st December our garage outside lights started their Christmas colours and shortly after she rolled up from work I received an email saying she was not expecting that and that they looked great. I had to sit down! once again…

[lanky8804]

Hmm odd as the Blooms work all ok, but the Hue Go adjusts the level correctly and in sync but the colour doesn’t change.

[bangali]

yeah with the hue that the same issue other user had noted as well.

[ApriliaEdd]

it seems that the delays and things not firing immediately that I’m seeing are related to the hue bridge and how ST communicates to it. Its pretty well documented on the ST community that commands sent though ST activate lights in order whereas the hue app or even alexa can control groups together where all fade at once and there are no signs of this so called “popcorn effect”.

I have moved my holiday lighting piston to a new instance of webCore but this made no difference to the performance. I then did some testing and looking at the logs it seems that the motion detector is registering the movement and then sending the command to turn on the lights but they don’t turn on for around 8-10 seconds. I have increased the frequency to 90 and reduced the low level to 30, this reduced the delay slightly. So, tonight’s test will be increasing the wait time to 3 seconds in an attempt reduce the number of commands sent to Hue as the motion detectors work flawlessly outside of the hours that the colour scrolling is active.

Maybe 5 lights is too much for the ST to Hue bridge to cope with which seems odd as the Hue disco app can flash, fade and change colours of all (approx 35) of my hue lights at once in time with music… hopefully ST will get to the bottom if it

[bangali]

Maybe 5 lights is too much for the ST to Hue bridge to cope with which seems odd as the Hue disco app can flash, fade and change colours of all (approx 35) of my hue lights at once in time with music… hopefully ST will get to the bottom if it

ST probably handles all the hue commands via the cloud whereas hue handles them locally.

[ApriliaEdd]

I thought the same as my xbox was doing some major updating which was maxing out my internet connection. I thought that this was interfering with the pistons but it seems that they have changed the hue bridge to local execution.

just got back from cinema but so far things seem a little better with the wait time @ 3 seconds though.

[bangali]

things seem a little better with the wait time @ 3 seconds though.

there was another user having similar issues … recommended inserting a 5 secs wait for the user which is the same as what i use. but it depends a bit on the number of total pistons running.

[Boarderc577]

For what ever reason my piston is not stopping at 1159 as defined? Its suppose to stop and then at 12 am smartlighting is suppose to kick on lights followed but turning them off at sunrise. It worked for about a week and now the piston doesnt seem to stop at defined time? Changed stoped time to 1158 and will see what happens tomorrow

[lanky8804]

Just an update for any Hue users.

My Hue Blooms worked fine but my Hue Go did not. Not sure why. I also found that with this running my other Hue bulbs for basic light automations were extremely slow and would take sometimes 20-30 seconds after motion to switch on lights. As a result have now disabled this piston.