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Can not Turn Lights off While Sycned

Open Dracrius opened this issue 6 years ago • 5 comments

Idk if this is an issue with how Philips implemented the Entertainment system or something that just easily get's over looked but if I enable sync I can no longer turn off my lights using my dimmer switches. I noticed the same thing with Razer Chroma though it actually bugged me so much I had wrote off the new hue entertainment system all together but with your app the response time is just so much better then Screen Bloom that I don't want to use Screen Bloom anymore. It had started to be meh anyways but at least with Screen Bloom I can always still use my Hue Dimmer switch even with sync enabled. It was great I'd enable Screen Bloom and just leave it running as I could come and go/Turn the synced light on and off and it stayed synced. With your app/hue entertainment I have to open up your program and disable sync before I can turn off my office light which will frustrate me so much it's not funny. I really don't understand why every implementation of Hue Entertainment seem's to have this issue and I doubt Philips really thinks you shouldn't be able to turn off lights just because your using hue entertainment. Thanks for all the hard work btw this finally seems like an effective, reliable way to get ambilight on windows 10 for all my games!

Dracrius avatar Mar 16 '18 17:03 Dracrius

That is really a downside of the new API. If you open up the hue App on your smartphone, you see that it will tell you on all lights which are controlled by the Entertainment Group which is currently running, that they are controlled by it. So I think this actually is by design. There is also nothing this app here can do against it, as it is an API thing.

Drommedhar avatar Mar 16 '18 18:03 Drommedhar

I just had to check as to me this seems super broken!!! Thanks for confirming it is an API issue I'll have to send Philips a message pointing out the flaws and frustration this causes. Can you give me any reason they may have it this way? It really makes my lighting system feel broken and disconnected when I can all of a sudden no longer control my lights from my switches. What if my partner turns on Sync and then leaves. She's very unlikely to remember she has to disable it to turn off the light and I will get a message saying our switches don't work or maybe we are going to bed and I use my all lights off OpenHAB switch now I'll have to get up out of bed turn on the TV and disable whatever Hue Entertainment app and then turn off the lights if we ever forget our suddenly not so smart entertainment lights.

Dracrius avatar Mar 16 '18 18:03 Dracrius

Could probably make it listen to dimmers (#22) and turn off streaming if it gets an Off. Probably a ways away though. I get the pain though, I have a dimmer switch too and I've already made this mistake.

BradyBrenot avatar Mar 17 '18 22:03 BradyBrenot

Awesome thank you I can definitely wait for it and it makes me happy to hear you may be able to do it without Philips patching it themselves as part of me doubts they will.

Dracrius avatar Mar 17 '18 22:03 Dracrius

Try this out to see if it makes a difference, go into the Hue app, settings, entertainment areas, select whatever entertainment area you are using, then scroll down to advanced settings and disable automatic detection for performance, and select a light out of the group to be the "main" light.

I remember reading somewhere that hue dimmers can be used as a zigbee coordinators, as in they can create and send commands to other zigbee devices in the mesh. If the bridge auto-detected your dimmer as the best option, that would lead to the dimmer being locked down as it is actually the item on the network that is sending commands.

Now if it's affecting all your dimmers then that's probably not going to fix anything, and is probably just a bug on phillip's end, but it's worth a try.

The thing that kinda sucks about this is that @BradyBrenot will probably not be able to workaround this potential issue as he will not be able to pickup any dimmer usage while they are locked down.

Collisionc avatar Mar 26 '18 01:03 Collisionc