hue-lights-flux

A hacky Node module for simulating Flux for my Hue "Bathroom" light group

Getting started

1. Get the IP address of your Hue Bridge and generate a username
2. Install dependencies: npm install
3. Run the script, passing in the IP address and username from step 1:

HUE_IP={IP_GOES_HERE} HUE_USER={USERNAME_GOES_HERE} npx hue-lights-flux

Running the script daily

To run the script automatically, I've setup a crontab job. My $HOME directory is structured similar to this:

~
└── cron.txt
    └── cron/
        ├── hue-lights.sh
        └── hue-lights-flux/
            └── index.js

1. In cron.txt:

   5 7,20 * * * $HOME/cron/hue-lights.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

2. In cron/hue-lights.sh

   #!/usr/bin/env sh
   PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin"
   
   HUE_IP={IP_GOES_HERE} HUE_USER={USERNAME_GOES_HERE} node cron/hue-lights-flux

3. chmod +x cron/hue-lights.sh
4. Then I create all Cron jobs by running: crontab cron.txt

---

Messy development notes

Hue documentation

• https://developers.meethue.com/develop/get-started-2/
• https://developers.meethue.com/develop/get-started-2/core-concepts/
• https://developers.meethue.com/develop/hue-api/lights-api/

API endpoint: http://192.168.1.2/api/{{username}} (the IP address needs to be discovered through your router – yours might be different)

Tips

Don’t Always Send ‘ON’

Once you have sent the ‘ON’ attribute to a light, it will stay on. Do not repeatedly send the ‘ON’ command as this will slow the responsiveness of the bridge.

Max. Number of Commands per Second

You can send commands to the lights too fast. If you stay roughly around 10 commands per second to the /lights resource as maximum you should be fine. For /groups commands you should keep to a maximum of 1 per second.

API

Creating a new user

1. Send POST /api with body {"devicetype":"foobar"}
2. You'll get an error in return, that's okay.
3. Press the button on the Hue Bridge
4. Send the request again

Listing lights and groups

GET http://{{ip}}/api/{{username}}

Updating a light

PUT http://{{ip}}/api/{{username}}/lights/{{id}}/state

{"on": true, "bri": 77}