Hue Control Pause When Overriden
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Hello,
Just wanted to first off say to the devs that I love love LOVE f.lux and especially the way Hue integration has improved over the years. Having lights that automatically change color based on sunrise/sunset, with minimal configuration, really feels like the future is here. My little gripes like color temperature offset between lights/screen and configurable brightness of bulbs have all been addressed, slowly but surely.
There is just one suggestion that I can make, and I do not know if it is feasible, but I think it is probably on many peoples' wish lists as well:
The automatic pausing of Hue control when a change has been made externally.
For example, if f.lux is controlling all of my lights, but I go into the Hue app on my phone and set my bedroom specifically to be all seven colors of the rainbow - I don't want that immediately overriden by the 1 POST API call f.lux makes a second. Or, say I have friends over and the living room is too dim - if I use my Hue dimmer switch and brighten things up I don't want f.lux overriding that the next second either.
The way I get around this currently is by setting an automation task via TRIGGERcmd which remotely calls either "taskkill /im flux.exe" or starts f.lux when it's off. But this is quite cumbersome. I propose an alternative approach, which is actually what Kelvin (https://github.com/stefanwichmann/kelvin) does:
A. When a light turns on, immediately start controlling it (I feel that f.lux does this already)
B. However, when the light setting is not the one f.lux last sent (i.e. ANY external switch/app has changed brightnes/color), discontinue f.lux control
C. The way to reset B then is intuitive: turn off that specific light and then turn it back on again....which activates ANow I do think the default user would want a set-and-forget method where f.lux does its continuous calls. So the above could be made a optional switch in the app.
One issue I foresee is: every now and then a f.lux request to Hue probably fails. So if, say, a light is going 2501K -> 2500K -> 2499K and the middle one gets skipped, naive logic in f.lux may think that the user manually changed it back from 2500 to 2501K. So a potential failsafe is to only terminate f.lux control if a bulb has changed a sufficient amount in brightness and/or color.
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I'm running into this same issue. Hopefully this solution can be considered.
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Thanks for the suggestion - Hue has recently added a "last used" setting for power-on (which may help us, but complicates this somewhat). So we can't just check for "default settings" - also some people mostly use Hue switches (or motion sensors) and rarely reset their lights with an actual power switch, so we have no good way to start working again in that case either.
Probably we should backoff for an hour, or leave a note on your screen during that hour so you can re-enable it. Plus the default override also.
https://huehomelighting.com/new-power-feature-to-retain-color-when-turned-back-on/
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@herf I believe this is also the issue that I'm experiencing, but @aeonflux seems to have more of a handle on describing his situation. I have connected my HUE lights to f.lux, and it works great. However, when I try to change the color of my colored bulbs, about a second later they will just change back to white. Is this the same issue? Either way, is there a current fix for this?
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I came here looking for something similar.
The ideal scenario that I had in mind is to be able to switch f.lux hue control on/off with a Hue button press, or in response to the motion sensor.
I don't know a lot about the Hue API - but would it be possible to have Hue constantly update a "f.lux scene" that I could then apply to a room?
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@dangermouse this is a very good idea - it could provide an on/off switch for f.lux that doesn't involve running back to your PC. I will look into it.
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@herf Was this ever accomplished? It'd be real neat if it was. Loving the functionality now, but agreed that having to run back to my computer to completely disable F.Lux to do the cool things with the Hue lamps is kind of a bummer. Alt+End doesn't seem to temporarily disable Hue control, just my monitor, so the only workaround I've found so far is to disable the entire program and restart it when I'm done.
