LIFX on Kickstarter: RGB LED mesh

Community Playground General Discussions
#1

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/limemouse/lifx-the-light-bulb-reinvented

It’s a screw-in replacement for your mains-voltage lights with an RGB light bulb. The description makes it look like a Zigbee-style mesh on top of WiFi protocols.

I’m backing them and I’ll definitely be hooking them up to Vera. Even at USD 50 each, that’s much cheaper than other options in my country.

Edit: and it’s already hit its funding goal.

#2

Good find, checking it out now. I just posted another kick starter project called SmartThings which looks very interesting as well.

  • Garrett
#3

Anyone else get their bulbs yet?

I did really happy with the colours and brightness of the bulb, fairly responsive colour changes as well. App connects straight away to bulb as well on latest version.

The only thing missing is the api and third party integration sadly :frowning:

#4

My two bulbs are currently being auctioned on eBay. They haven’t lived up to the hype. Physically they are too large and their light too directional for the purpose I had in mind. Also, they run very hot and draw too much standby power for my liking. On the software side, there hasn’t been an update to the firmware, which has a bug that stops them working at all on my WLAN. Also they’ve been too slow to publish their API.

So I won’t be writing that Vera plugin, sorry.

#5

Shame about the bugs. I believe they are supposed to run hot as the case is a heat-sink. Normal light bulbs run a lot hotter!

Out of curiosity what was the standby draw?

#6

Agreed, incandescent lamps are hotter. I wasn’t comfortable with the LIFX’s temperature, which was somewhere around 80 to 100 degrees C. Complicated electronics that run that hot tend to have short life spans, particularly if they are turned on-off-on a lot.

Out of curiosity what was the standby draw?

Close to 3 W per bulb, with the light at zero. They can draw up to 17 W at full brightness, which is impressively so, but not omnidirectional.

I’ve now got a Hue in the lamp and that is turning out to be more pleasant to use, though nowhere near as bright of course.

#7

API was released recently for anyone interested also found another app for android that the developer is expressing interests in more features.

LIFX · GitHub API

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glp.simplelifx Simple Lifx
http://greatlakes.uservoice.com/forums/240037-simple-lifx feature suggestions

Edit: Work around Found!

Manged a ugly hack/workaround but it is surprising quick and responsive method for controlling the bulb.
Using the Eventghost Plugin and Virtual switch for the bulb then linking the to a command line program to send commands to the bulb.

I may if I find time create scenes for different colors but this will do for now means I can incorporate the new bulb into scenes I already have in mornings for waking up.

The command line tool for controlling the bulb through eventghost can be found below

http://blog.striking.ch/archives/127-Version-0.3.1-and-LIFXcl-Released.html

And Vera Eventghost plugin here

http://forum.micasaverde.com/index.php/topic,7881.0.html

EDIT 2 Also works with the Lightpack eventghost plugin, very successful day. Shows the ability to tap into the power of vera.

#8

There’s also a basic opensource C++ API available here: lifx-api/code at master · kalimaul/lifx-api · GitHub
I’ve been testing it out on my PC and plan to cross-compile the executable for the Vera.

#9

Been using the LIFX for a few weeks now I like it very bright bulb and some cool scripts for Windows can be found here in the new version of Lifxtend.

#10

Is there anyone who is capable of creating a plugin for the LIFX bulb, since the API has been released?

#11

I think Imperihome is the only group to express interest so far when I emailed them.

#12

+1 I would love to see a plugin for vera to control these lights.

#13

It looks like LIFX is working with the AllSeen alliance for a standardized API…

Connected Lighting: The Next Frontier in the Internet of Everything
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lNzNj5ytqM]Connected Lighting: The Next Frontier in the Internet of Everything - YouTube

watch around 7:00

#14

Looks like Lifx has a RESTful API in beta.

I just took it for a spin and it works a charm on the vera.

As mentioned on the website, you can generate an access token from your account settings page. From there it’s trivial to issue commands by invoking curl on the vera:

The command to turn all lights on is:

os.execute('curl -k -u \"YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN:\" -X PUT -d \"state=on\" \"https://api.lifx.com/v1beta1/lights/all/power\"')

To turn on/off a specific lifx device you will want to run curl directly from the command line with “all” as the target (as shown above) and look for the REST response, which will contain the id of the devices.

Then to toggle the device:

os.execute('curl -k -u \"YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN:\" -X PUT -d \"state=on\" \"https://api.lifx.com/v1beta1/lights/DEVICE_ID/power\"')

(note no quotes are required on the id)

So, for example, using the dummy access token and “Left Lamp” device from the lifx developer website…

ACCESS TOKEN:
c87c73a896b554367fac61f71dd3656af8d93a525a4e87df5952c6078a89d192

LIFX DEVICE INFORMATION:
{
“id”: “d3b2f2d97452”,
“label”: “Left Lamp”,
“status”: “timed_out”
}

To turn on the lifx device “Left Lamp”:

os.execute('curl -k -u \"c87c73a896b554367fac61f71dd3656af8d93a525a4e87df5952c6078a89d192:\" -X PUT -d \"state=on\" \"https://api.lifx.com/v1beta1/lights/d3b2f2d97452/power\"')

To turn off the lifx device “Left Lamp”:

os.execute('curl -k -u \"c87c73a896b554367fac61f71dd3656af8d93a525a4e87df5952c6078a89d192:\" -X PUT -d \"state=off\" \"https://api.lifx.com/v1beta1/lights/d3b2f2d97452/power\"')

Building a Vera plugin around that should be a piece of cake!

Anyone willing to help?

#15

[quote=“aechelon, post:14, topic:172703”]Looks like Lifx has a RESTful API in beta.

[…]

Building a Vera plugin around that should be a piece of cake!

Anyone willing to help?[/quote]

You said the same thing two weeks ago. No bites? Maybe you’ll have to make your own cake.

I’d recommend starting with one of the other Vera lighting plugins (Hue or LimitlessLED) and adapt the webby bits to use the LIFX API. The Hue API uses PUT and GET so it’s probably the best fit; you’d just have to rip out the JSON parsing and replace it with some string-manipulation instead.

#16

Hi aechelon, Allready any luck with creating the plugin?

#17

Ya any luck? I am using lifx and Vera plus. Can not get any solution to integrate lifx to Vera plus from Internet search. :cry: