TouchDesigner | Hue Control

a tox for controlling phillips hue devices
clone or download from github

matthew ragan
zoe sandoval

TouchDesigner Version

099 2018.26750

OS Support

Windows 10
macOS

Dependencies

phue

Summary

Philips Hue smart lights are intended to be used in homes / studios. The devices come in many varieties – individual lamps, outdoor lights, LED strip lights, etc. These are synchronized by communicating with an additional device called a Bridge. A single Bridge can control up to 50 lights. There are many stand alone applications to drive Hue Lights, and this repo aims to provide some additional control by exposing those controls through TouchDesigner. In order to do this, we use the phuelibrary. There is some additional set-up required in order to use an external library, though hopefully much of this is now streamlined.

This TOX provides global control for all lights, or individual control for single lights.

Set-up

This module module has some additional requirements in the from of dependencies, as well as some set-up requirements for working with hue devices. To begin we need to ensure that we’ve collected all of the requisite external dependencies

Install Python3

Ensure that you’ve installed a Python 3.5+ variety.

Installing Dependencies for Windows Users

For Window’s users a convenience script is provided here:
\dev\dep\update-dep-python-windows.cmd
In order for this to operate correctly, right click and run this .cmd file as an Administrator. This should first ensure that your python package manager is updated, and that your additional python modules are added to a newly created directory in your project dependencies\python.

Installing Dependencies for macOS Users

For Mac users a convenience script is provided here:
\dev\dep\update-dep-python-mac.sh
In order for this to operate correctly, open a terminal window and drag the file above into the command line. Press return / Enter to run the bash script. This should first ensure that your python package manager is updated, and that your additional python modules are added to a newly created directory in your project dependencies\python.

Connecting to the Hue Bridge

Before being able to control lights you’ll need to ensure that you can connect to your Hue Bridge. You’ll need to know the IP address for your Hue Bridge. You can locate this IP address by looking at the Hue app on your phone, or by setting your Bridge to have an assigned IP on your router.

You’ll need to enter the IP address of your Hue Bridge onto the component itself, and then press the large center button on the Hue Bridge. After doing this you’ll need to pulse the Set-up Individual Lights button on the base_hueControl TOX.

Parameters

Hue Admin

Set-up Individual Lights

This parameter will retrieve the dictionary of lights that are currently configured on the Hue Bridge. This will then loop through all of the lights provided by the Bridge and create unique parameters for each light. Specifically it will create pars for:

Color
Brightness
Transition Time
Power
Pulse to Update

This gives the user the ability to control each light individual – constructing parameters for each light currently configured on a given bridge.

Bridge IP

The IP address for the Hue Bridge – this is used for communicating with the lights by way of the Hue Bridge.

Use Threads

Python operations can sometimes be blocking – meaning that it causes touch to stop responding. By moving to threaded approach we can achieve a result where we can ensure that we don’t totally stall. Lights can sometimes run slightly out of sequence when using threads, though in some cases this is well worth the fact that touch wont completely stall.

All Lights

All Color

This color will be sent to all lights – you can think of this as a global color control. Color is expressed as normalized range of 0-1, with red, green, and blue channels.

All Brightness

Similar to color, this is the brightness control for all lights. This is expressed in a range of 0-1.

All Trans Time

This is the time between the issued command the settings sent to the light. This is expressed in seconds. If you enter a value of 0, the instructions will be sent immediately, though this often produces results that are stuttered.

All Power

This is the power command, the equivalent of “on” and “off”.

Update All

After changing the settings for lights, you use this pulse button to send commands to the lights. This ensures that you can set the parameters before issuing a command to the lights.

Individual Lights

Update by Settings

This pulse button is on the top of the Individual Lighting control page. Unlike a global control, this will send instructions for the configuration of lights based on what’s set ont this page – this in effect lets you send unique settings to each light.

Light n Name

This is a read only parameter that is the Name for a given light that the user has configured in one of the Hue Apps.

Light n Color

The color to send to a given light. Color is expressed as normalized range of 0-1, with red, green, and blue channels.

Light n Brightness

Similar to color, this is the brightness control a given light. This is expressed in a range of 0-1.

Light n Trans Time

This is the time between the issued command the settings sent to the light. This is expressed in seconds. If you enter a value of 0, the instructions will be sent immediately.

Light n Power