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Philips hue integration or add-on
Hi Skank

I made this script for my own use and since I have a lot of free time, decided to clean it up and share it. I really don't want to compete with anyone and couldn't say which is better. 

I listed the features at the thread I put in my signature, but my overall intention is pretty simple: to control Hue lights based on media playback to make my home theatre setup sexier, and not turn them on when it's sunny. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

It would be rude of me to speak for Kookie or his intentions. But when I did try his add-on, it lets you see all of your scenes in all your rooms and control them through the Kodi UI, in addition to triggering them with media. Being able to control your whole Hue system instead of just the living room on playback is cool - and I don't intend to do that.

You can install both at the same time - try them out and see what fits your needs. Just keep in mind not to configure both to set scenes at the same time. Hue has limits on how fast it can handle commands and if it gets two commands to apply a scene when you hit play, it may get confused and some lights might not update properly.

As for your question about support - I have free time and will for the next few months so I intend to make some improvements and if anyone posts bugs or ideas in the other thread I'll see what I can do. That said, the only other major feature I intended to add was ambilight support. The other things I want to add are more reliable discovery of the Hue bridge, and catching some bugs and errors that I ignore right now.
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Does anyone know how to use this with external players (such as mpc) when merged with Kodi?
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(2019-06-24, 21:06)Pet09 Wrote: 1 if the lights are not turned on nothing happens - is it right?
2 if I turn on the lights and deactivate for playback, the lights are still on - is it correct?
3 if I turn on the lights and activate only during playback (start, stop, pause) works perfectly and the transition time can be set in another application
4 I did not find out how to turn off the lights during playback because only the scene can be selected (the lights on the scene always shine to a minimum of 1%) - this function is not yet or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks for the great work 

 1. You can configure this behavior in the settings, just turn off the "Change only if lights are on" in the Hue Controller settings. By default this option is on, and then the lighting will only change if the lights were on when playback was started.
2. I'm not 100% sure what you mean, but if there is no scene set for a certain event, then nothing will happen on this event. (having no scene does not mean that the plugin will turn off the lights)
3. yup, that sounds right.
4. the "official" philips hue app for android (I'm mostly using that as well) forces you to create scenes with at least one light in the room at 1% power. Maybe other apps can create scenes with all lights off to work around this for now (see the suggestion by snapcase). I plan on creating an option for doing this in the kodi add-on at some time in the near future.


(2019-06-26, 14:09)Skank Wrote: Can someone please post the difference between the app from cookiemonster and snapcase...
In a simple way :p
As Snapcase already pointed out: the best thing is to try both and use the one that suits you best.
The two add-ons share some functionality, but are also quite different.
I've developed mine because I could not quickly find anything that did what I wanted to do with the latest Kodi versions. Since this was my first Kodi add-on project in many years, I kept things as simple as possible. Almost all the code I wrote is in 3 python files, and currently it is under 300 lines in total (the rest is the framework from the kodi addon generator: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=305664) . This probably also makes it pretty easy to extend/modify/hack/update by somebody else.

Some of the key differences I think are:
- Hue Controller (HC from now on) only works within the local network, Philips Hue Service (PHS) talks to the Philips servers to arrange connectivity.
- HC can only work with scenes already on the Bridge, there is no support for configuring new things. PHS can do both I believe
- HC has an option for checking if the lights were on before messing with them, PHS has options for daylight ours detection.
- HC can react to video playback, or audio&video playback, but not only to audio playback or use different scenes for each type. PHS has seperate setup for audio and video playback, so it is more flexible.

In the end me and Snapcase will probably learn a thing or two from each others code and maybe merge over some features. That's the beauty of open source! What's even better: you can also get in on the action! All you need is a text editor and a tiny bit of python knowledge, because most of the difficult work is now already done. Just download the code and hack away, and please share back if you managed to add some feature, no matter how bad you think your code is!
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Hi everyone, 1st of all thanks for your contributions to Kodi and its community/userbase.

I recentrly bought a cheap blutooth LED lightstrip controller like this for few bucks:
Image
Its (own ?) Android app it is called "duoCol Strip" and it's very basic but can't - of course - mimic Philips' Ambilight functionality (to be honest the seller don't exactly claims this, but it's often selled as a part of "DIY TV backlight LED Kit").

I don't know if it's possible to use/create a Kodi-addon to control it, anyway here are some interesting Web resources that may help/inspire you (sorry if you already know)
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Hi,

I ended up adding an ambilight clone feature to my existing Hue Add-on: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=344886

It doesn't take into account the position of lights, but it works surprisingly well and works fairly simply. I had a look at hyperion and the other solutions but I'm not interested in adding any more hardware.... My home media center set up is complex enough! Smile
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Hey Koekie – thanks for working on this. I got the ad-on half working last night (ambilight mode didn't work) then left it to overnight to work on today. When I opened up the settings today, I get the message 'no categories available'. This has error has extended to most/all other add-ons.

Any ideas? I've only had my NVidia Shield for a few days, hoping I don't have to wipe it so early ha!
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(2019-08-27, 12:22)ASDasfasfdasfas Wrote: Hey Koekie – thanks for working on this. I got the ad-on half working last night (ambilight mode didn't work) then left it to overnight to work on today. When I opened up the settings today, I get the message 'no categories available'. This has error has extended to most/all other add-ons.

Any ideas? I've only had my NVidia Shield for a few days, hoping I don't have to wipe it so early ha!

Hey, that's on android right?
I might be able to spot something if you send over your kodi.log file, but I'm not 100% sure where that lives on android. Also, you should put it on https://paste.kodi.tv and not straight into the reply box to keep the moderators happy :-)
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Hello, I installed the Hue Controller addon.

Unfortunately the bridge detection doesn't work.

The Kodi log file spews the following:

https://paste.kodi.tv/ugumeyagic.kodi

What can I do?

Thanks in advance,
Hasenbein
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(2020-09-05, 07:54)hasenbein1966 Wrote: Hello, I installed the Hue Controller addon.

Unfortunately the bridge detection doesn't work.

The Kodi log file spews the following:

https://paste.kodi.tv/ugumeyagic.kodi

What can I do?

Thanks in advance,
Hasenbein

Sorry to hear the detection is not working for you!

Are the Hue Bridge and the Kodi machine on the same local network?
Have you tried entering the IP address of the Hue Bridge into the addon settings?
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Now, after a reinstall, it somehow works.
No idea what has changed.
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One feature request, though.
I would very much like as an option that the addon queries the state of the involved lights (on/off, brightness, color) before the video starts, saves that somewhere, then dims to a chosen scene and then, when stopping the video, returns to the exact state before the video ran (not to a static scene).
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Such requests would need to be made in the support thread of the addon if you want them to be seen and potentially acted upon.
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My request was directed at Koekiemonster and his own addon.
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Philips hue integration or add-on0