Request: Much better usability Hue's in flows (I qualify it as unusable at the moment) [0.8.17]

Athomey

At the moment I have many issues with using Philips Hue ligts in the flows. In the living room of me (and my clients) there are about 20 Hue's. Let's say 10 should be reasonable. Let's say you want to control all 10 with one flow. Sounds reasonable, right?

Problem #1 (must-have freature) - For 10 Hue's, I have to add 20 (!) cards to the "then" colomn. That's the first problem. It would be much easier to add only 2 cards (one for brightness and one for color) and then in a checklist with the card check which lights you want to change. ((Supporting Hue Groups as others do also solves this, see https://forum.athom.com/discussion/comment/9661))

Problem #2 (should-have feature) - The shown name is too short. I have 8 Hue's in my bathroom, I cannot see at all what card goes to what Hue. See the screenshot.

Problem #3 (must-have feature) - Getting all 10 Hue's to show the exact same color is aa HELL to set up. You can turn and click the wheel all you want, but getting an exact kolor like #ff8800 for all of them is undoable.

Problem #4 (must fix bug) - The card for color appears in wrong z-order, below another card. I will submit this to Github as a bug as well.

Thx for the attention again and keep up the good work!  

bvdbos

Can't you group the lamps in one flow and start the flow from a trigger using variables for color and brightness?

Athomey

Nice suggestion! I haven't tried out variables yet, but as far as I can see Hue cards do not support variables. Could an Athom developer shed some light on this? Thx in advance?

DaneeDeKruyff

@Athomey I'd like to say you're doing a hell of a job testing, making well documented bug reports and good suggestions/requests here in the forum and at Github. 

I've +1nd quite some requests you made because they make sense, even though I haven't  gotten my homey yet. From your descriptons I'm starting more and more to see how it works so that's a good starting point for when I receive mine!

Kudos!

Athomey

Thank you @DaneeDeKruyff  Though I only deserve parts of your kudos, I really appreciate it. There are loads of people investing lots of time in Homey and together we will bring it to superb levels, also thanks to the expertise and endless effort of the Athom team itself!

What you people probably don't know, is that many of the first batch backers have done LOADS and LOADS of great work testing the ***** out of Homey, talking to the Athom team, testing and testing the 2 updates/day, feedback, being happy, being unhappy, etc..  Many of them have spend MUCH MORE time than I have.

There was a small group of people (first batch backers) in direct contact with Athomers as a think-tank (is that a word? "denk tank") with hyper focus, and lots of energy, with a mission. Like a secret society. ;-)  That stopped the second the Geek batch was shipped. At that time I contributed much less, and others a LOT more, but not in plain sight.

So having said that, I'd really like to give my kudos to all first batch backers and the work that has been done in the background without anybody realising it but Athom and the first-batch-backers themselves!  Thx again Danee!

B.t.w., I like the side effect that my reports and requests also give you a better impression of what is possible, what not, and what the state is, and that we are moving firmly towards the next level (and thus next batch). Though many times it's more time, effort en energy than thought in advance. :-)  Like always with new software and hardware, and like especially with a kickstarter project, no matter how succesful!

Athomey

I've started Homey again, to check where the software is at. I want to add my ~20 Hue's in my garden and ~50 Hue's in my Domotica demohouse in flows. I started to add a flow for sunset switching on lights, setting color and brightness. For my garden I'll need to add 60 cards to a flow. This is SOOO much work. Is there any alternative yet to perform this task, for example Better-Hue-App somewhere which only needs one card per light, reducing a LOT of work, or maybe using groups/rooms in Homey? I'm really how you all make this more convenient. I've used the search, but found no alternatives so far, but there are a LOT of posts, so maybe I'm not finding what is there. Thanks for helping!

MrDutchfighter

Hi, when you select the hue app in the flow (instead of the device card). You can toggle scenes (configured in your hue bridge) and also toggle on complete rooms.

Hope this helps you.

glijie

Athomey said:

At the moment I have many issues with using Philips Hue ligts in the flows. In the living room of me (and my clients) there are about 20 Hue's. Let's say 10 should be reasonable. Let's say you want to control all 10 with one flow. Sounds reasonable, right?

Problem #1 (must-have freature) - For 10 Hue's, I have to add 20 (!) cards to the "then" colomn. That's the first problem. It would be much easier to add only 2 cards (one for brightness and one for color) and then in a checklist with the card check which lights you want to change. ((Supporting Hue Groups as others do also solves this, see https://forum.athom.com/discussion/comment/9661))

Problem #2 (should-have feature) - The shown name is too short. I have 8 Hue's in my bathroom, I cannot see at all what card goes to what Hue. See the screenshot.

Problem #3 (must-have feature) - Getting all 10 Hue's to show the exact same color is aa HELL to set up. You can turn and click the wheel all you want, but getting an exact kolor like #ff8800 for all of them is undoable.

Problem #4 (must fix bug) - The card for color appears in wrong z-order, below another card. I will submit this to Github as a bug as well.

Thx for the attention again and keep up the good work!  

Problem #1
see answer on your other post:-/

https://forum.athom.com/discussion/719/request-support-for-philips-hue-groups-like-veraedge-and-hue-apps-support-0-8-17#latest
Use your groups you made in the Hue bridge

Problem #2
drag mouse over and you see the whole name 

problem #3
use copy past your settings here :-/


problem #4

Klik first on "Ok" then color is saved and then you can drag your other card.

Athomey

Thank you, very helpful. Will experiment with all that!

bvdbos

On Slack it's said "for color tint and saturation it is possible" to set these with dragging a global tag to the flowcard. For color you should either use a HUE-bridge-group or set these like @glijie says...

Squaretronics

Why don't you just use the Hue app to create the scene you want and then use a single flow card to activate that  scene?