LED Strips

Please confirm, I should insert this command on top: luup.call_action("urn:dcineco-com:serviceId:MiLightRGBW1","SetOptions",{newOptions="ICT=200"},221)

Do you really need to extend the inter-command time? All my MiLights work fine with the default 50ms. In any event, you only need to set this once - it will be retained in the plugin through power cycles and Vera restarts.

Do you think I can sneak in the command when I press the power off switch? Meaning that it would accept the command before it actually powers down and it will turn on white the next time I turn it on.

I doubt it. By the time Vera gets the trigger, the lamp will already have lost power.

These things work best when you leave them powered on all the time and turn them on and off through the plugin. One trick is to use a Z-Wave switch just as a trigger for scenes and power the lamps directly from live. That way you don’t need to wait two seconds before the first command and you could also set the lamp to white before turning it off.

Should I also put a delay in between commands if I have more than one?

I haven’t found that to be necessary but it probably depends on what commands and how many. Try it out and, if commands get missed, add a one-second delay.

[quote=“RexBeckett, post:21, topic:185698”]Do you really need to extend the inter-command time? All my MiLights work fine with the default 50ms. In any event, you only need to set this once - it will be retained in the plugin through power cycles and Vera restarts.[/quote]I assumed 200ms = 2 seconds
Oops, now I just released that I need to put the delay in the PLEG, not as a command to the device. Duh…

The Strip Lights light up my patio between my house and my garage.
I currently have an Evolve LSM-15 Binary Switch paired with an Evolve LTM-5 Accessory Switch as a 3-way switch, so I can turn on and off the patio lights from the house or garage. The Luup code is so that the strip lights will turn bright white if I had previously changed color or mode.
If we have friends over, or just lounging outside, I plan to turn on one of the switches and then play with modes/color/hue with the remote.

I agree with you that it would be better to leave the power supplies on all the time and use the switches as scene selectors, but I can’t do that with my current switches… or can I?

I agree with you that it would be better to leave the power supplies on all the time and use the switches as scene selectors, but I can't do that with my current switches.... or can I?

Why not? All you do is take the power feed for the lights from the switch Live instead of Load terminal. Use scenes or PLEG to catch the on and off triggers and send the On and Off lamp actions. It will work with any switch that supports instant status.

Trying to get this work with my strip LEDs. I have the LED controller connect to wifi bridge and everything works. But it doesn’t seem to work via the plugin. Also I’m running UI7. Is that the problem? Any help would greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[quote=“smwein, post:24, topic:185698”]Trying to get this work with my strip LEDs. I have the LED controller connect to wifi bridge and everything works. But it doesn’t seem to work via the plugin. Also I’m running UI7. Is that the problem? Any help would greatly appreciated.

Thanks[/quote]

I have not yet released the version for UI7. The changes are required to fix the UI, though. Version 1.0 should work on UI7 although not all the controls can be used.

Here’s the debug checklist:

 1. You have lamps enrolled on the bridge and can control them with the smartphone app.
 2. The bridge has a constant IP address set on the bridge or with the router.
 3. You have set[b] ip[/b] in the plugin's [b]Advanced[/b] tab to match the bridge.
 4. The port number at the end of [b]ip[/b] is correct for the bridge. Recent bridges use 8899
 5. You have set [b]Group[/b] on the [b]Advanced[/b] tab to match where your lamps are enrolled (1 - 4).

Ok I have checked all the setting and everything is correct. I have v4 bridge if that makes a different. I still can’t control led via the plugin. I’m using the RGBW plugin because I have a RGBW led strip. Thanks

It works on my UI7 test system (Vera Lite) with an RGBW lamp on a V3 bridge. The MiLight RGBW LED Strip controller works the same as the RGBW lamp and the V4 bridge should work the same as the V3 one. Maybe wait until I release the new plugin and see if that makes a difference although I’m not convinced that it will.

I have downgraded to UI5 and it is still not working. I only have one led controller paired with my wifi bridge, so I’m assuming it is in group one. Are there any logs I can check?

So I installed the MiLightRGB plugin and everything started to work. Any ideas why the RGBW isn’t working.

Thanks

[quote=“smwein, post:29, topic:185698”]So I installed the MiLightRGB plugin and everything started to work. Any ideas why the RGBW isn’t working.

Thanks[/quote]

No. If you have a four-channel MiLight LED controller, the RGBW plugin should work - it does on mine.

There are a couple of different wifi controllers on ebay and Amazon. I’m trying to make sure I purchase the correct one and to see if it will do what I would like it to with the plugin. I’m hoping you guys can help me.

Currently I have a strip of 5050 RGB with the supplied IR remote. They’re under cabinet lighting only controlled by the remote that came with it. I’m looking to hook these up to my Veralite but wanted to buy right, and buy once so I’m coming here to ask before buying. If there’s an existing thread covering these I haven’t been able to find it.

  1. If I’m only going to control these via iphone/android app or Vera scenes do I need a controller or just the wifi unit?
  2. If I shut off the light and it’s set to a certain color, when I power the light on does it go to the last saved color, or does it go to a default?
  3. Can I assign RGB values individually? I use that to set a white that matches my kitchen lighting and don’t want to lose that function.
  4. Can you save preset colors? White for cooking, red for night time, blue for morning etc.
  5. Is the dimming functionality gradual or in steps? I’d like to have it fade in as the sun rises etc. With the IR remote and controller it fades up “gradually” without going in set steps.

Thanks,

I’ll tackle what I know from my experiences.

In order to control the LED strip using Milight you would need a Milight LED controller and a Milight wifi bridge/hub. Now I am unsure if it is just RGB what the limitations are. I know you can do 4 zones (4 seperate milight controllers and led strips) using RGBW.

2. If I shut off the light and it's set to a certain color, when I power the light on does it go to the last saved color, or does it go to a default?
In my experience when you turn on the light it goes back to the last color unless you tell it to otherwise.
3. Can I assign RGB values individually? I use that to set a white that matches my kitchen lighting and don't want to lose that function.
Individually as to each zone? yes. You can LUA (I havent done this), to change the light based on different scenes.
4. Can you save preset colors? White for cooking, red for night time, blue for morning etc.
Again like above you would use LUA to set the color. Do note you turn on the lights, they go back to the last color, than you must command them to turn to another color. Possible work around I havent tried would be to turn on the lights at like 5%, change color, than turn the to 100%.
5. Is the dimming functionality gradual or in steps? I'd like to have it fade in as the sun rises etc. With the IR remote and controller it fades up "gradually" without going in set steps.

I believe this is all handled by the controller. It doesnt dim up or down all that slow.

I"m only going to be using this on one zone, I should have clarified. On the IR remote there’s buttons for R, G and B that let you increase the saturation of each color to make a custom color all in the same zone, (not one on the remote) then you can save it to a button on the remote to switch back and forth easily. that’s more of what I was looking to retain. I might have to dig into LUA sometime soon to figure out how to do it.

The dimmer was more of a wish than anything, I haven’t found anything other than a HUE that can do the increase over time. And those strips are too pricey to justify it at this point.

Thanks for the answers. Hopefully I can get it working soon.

@monkeydance, these plugins only work correctly with MiLight lamps and LED controllers. None of the MiLight products support individual setting of RGB levels - they use a single colour code value. You can set the colour (Hue) using a scene action or luup.

Neither the MiLight lamps or the plugins have a ramp up/down function. You could achieve one using luup code to send a series of brightness changes over the required period.

Hi all, first and foremost thank you Rex for all your hard work. I recently received my V4 Wifi bridge and RGBW LED strip controller. Followed the instructions here and read through this thread twice now and it’s working great! Kudos on a job well done.

My wife and I are building a house and we started looking at what “real” under counter lighting might cost and let me just say we were pretty horrified. This little plug in with this hardware is honestly saving us thousands…which honestly we simply would not have spent. For less than the price of one boxed off-the-shelf Z-wave undercounter light fixture we can do under counter, floor level, and even over cabinet LED strips and get a lot more out of them.

As I said, I’ve read this thread front to back and back to front now, so forgive me if this was answered and I just happened to miss it.

  1. You’d mentioned there are just 9 discrete levels of dimming between off and full intensity. Could you let us know what LoadLevel these correspond to? If I wanted to do a slow fade in Luup code setting load levels with a delay in between, what are those 9 load levels which count? I’ve played with For loops running from 1-100 but I feel like it would be cleaner to just hit those key values.

  2. This was mentioned before, but I know that when you turn a light on, it goes back to the last color and LoadLevel it had been at when it was turned off, is that still true?

  3. Also, if you hit the contoller with a SetHue command while it’s off, does it have any effect? It doesn’t seem like it does. My use-case would be creating a scene in which you bring the lights up from zero at a pre-determined color regardless of the last color they were set at when they were turned off.

Someone a while ago was talking about making “off” actually a dim-down to the lowest setting before going off, such that when you turned them on at least they wouldn’t pop back to life very high. Next time it turned on, it would be very low, then you could set a color and have it come up to an operating level. Does that make sense or am I going about this all wrong?

Thanks again for everything this has been a great way for me to learn Vera/Luup without costing me a bundle.

Sincere Regards,
Adam

Hi Adam and thanks for the feedback.

1) You'd mentioned there are just 9 discrete levels of dimming between off and full intensity. Could you let us know what LoadLevel these correspond to? If I wanted to do a slow fade in Luup code setting load levels with a delay in between, what are those 9 load levels which count? I've played with For loops running from 1-100 but I feel like it would be cleaner to just hit those key values.

The RGB lamp has nine levels. The plugin calculates the number of steps to change by taking the difference between current and required level, subtracting four and dividing by eleven. Then it adds 0.5 and takes the integer value. You could just increment LoadLevelTarget by eleven.

2) This was mentioned before, but I know that when you turn a light on, it goes back to the last color and LoadLevel it had been at when it was turned off, is that still true?

That is true for all of the MiLight lamps and LED controllers that I have tested.

3) Also, if you hit the contoller with a SetHue command while it's off, does it have any effect? It doesn't seem like it does. My use-case would be creating a scene in which you bring the lights up from zero at a pre-determined color regardless of the last color they were set at when they were turned off.

The lamp must be on before the colour can be changed. The plugin ignores the SetHue command if the lamp is off.

Someone a while ago was talking about making "off" actually a dim-down to the lowest setting before going off, such that when you turned them on at least they wouldn't pop back to life very high. Next time it turned on, it would be very low, then you could set a color and have it come up to an operating level. Does that make sense or am I going about this all wrong?

If you set the dim level to zero it will step down to minimum and then turn off. When turned back on, it will start at minimum level.

Hi thanks for the plugin

I have an issue. I have 3 led on group 2 and another led on group 1

But when I send a command they mismatch event if I send the command for group 2 it’s group 1 who close. Not sure how to fix that

[quote=“destinet, post:37, topic:185698”]Hi thanks for the plugin

I have an issue. I have 3 led on group 2 and another led on group 1

But when I send a command they mismatch event if I send the command for group 2 it’s group 1 who close. Not sure how to fix that[/quote]

So you have created two devices: one for group 1 and another for group 2. When you click buttons on the group 2 device the group 1 lamps change. Is that correct?

Do the groups work correctly when you control them from the smartphone App or the remote control?

Group 1 has one rgb and group 2 has 3 rgb

On the app if I close group 1 only that one close and same for group 2 so it’s working correctly but not with the plugin

[quote=“destinet, post:39, topic:185698”]Group 1 has one rgb and group 2 has 3 rgb

On the app if I close group 1 only that one close and same for group 2 so it’s working correctly but not with the plugin[/quote]

Are using Mi-Light RGB lamps or RGB+W ones? The RGB lamps only work on a single group. The Mi-Light RGB LED-strip controller supports four groups but behaves like an RGB+W lamp. Which plugin name and version have you installed? Can you capture and post the part of the Advanced tab for each of the two devices that starts with Variables?