Interfacing Philips Hue Lights With Everything

The Internet of Things is eating the world alive, and we can’t buy incandescent light bulbs anymore. This means the Internet is now in light bulbs, and with that comes some special powers. You can turn lights on and off from a botnet. You can change the colors. This is the idea for the Philips Hue system, which is well respected among people who like putting their lights on the Internet. There are other brands — and you can make your own — but the Hue system does work pretty well.

This is what led [Marius] to create software to interface various electronics with the Hue system. It’s a project called diyHue, and already there’s a vibrant community of devs creating their own smart lights and connecting them to the Internet.

The software for this project is built in Python, and is designed to run on certain single board computers. This allows the SBC to connect to the Hue bridge so Hue bulbs can be controlled, a MiLight hub so MiLight bulbs can be controlled, or, with the addition of a ZigBee radio, all those ZigBee devices can be controlled. Right now the only thing that doesn’t work is Google Home because it requires a remote API, the Home & Away feature from the Hue app (again, remote API), and the Eneco Toon.

There really are a fantastic number of devices this software works with, and if you’re building out your Internet-connected home lighting solution, this is one piece of software you need to check out. Thanks to [cheesemarathon] for bringing our attention to this. He also liked it so much he’s now contributing to the GitHub. Very cool.

46 thoughts on “Interfacing Philips Hue Lights With Everything

    1. I run both Home Assistant and this project. The biggest advantage of this project is all of my custom ESP8266 lighting controllers can be controlled by diyHue and treated as just another Hue bulb in Home Assistant.

  1. One of the biggest draws to Hue for me is the the fact that it is not fully internet connected. Mine only exists within my own network, and if the internet fails, Hue keeps working. Most other smart lights (mostly using Wifi) need an internet connection to work.

    1. My internet provider is updating and rewiring the whole towns main lines and my hue based system keeps quitting every time my internet stops working. So if I what my lights on I have to turn off my lights off at the wall switch then turn the swicth back on to have light. Then all lights on that curcuit come on @100% with no dimming or color control.

  2. “We can’t buy incandescent light bulbs anymore”.
    Is that so?
    Here in Europe, where the “the incandescent bulb will kill us all” – Bullsh*t basically started you can buy incandescent bulbs nearly everywhere. Thank god! I absolutely hate people who want to tell me how to light my house and try to outlaw stuff like light bulbs. Get a life!
    Disclaimer:
    I use a lot of LED-Lighting in my household.

      1. What else?
        Why should I use this ancient heatbulbs where I am stuck to one color temperature? I prefer 4000K or 6000K in rooms like kitchen, workroom or office. In the living room I use warm white LEDs mixed with some 12V halogen bulbs which have not yet burned out. But also there I don’t necessary need light and heat together and for the heat gas is cheaper then electricity.

        1. First reason is for more light. I have some lamps/receptacles that are only rated for a 40W incandescent. I can put a 75W LED equivalent in there without worry. Also, I find LED bulbs operate better under adverse conditions. I have a porch light in which an incandescent only lasts about a month. LED bulb is still going after about a year.

      1. And you want to call this “extreme”? That’s comparable with a 75W bulb. I also have similar (let it be 60W) power above the desk – but as 4000K LED spots. THAT could be considered extreme :-) And there are several fluorescent tube lights distributed across the room, ceiling, wall and an older desk lamp.

    1. I just bought 1400 watts of incandescent bulbs, right here in the good old US of A. Needed load resistors for my generator-testing loadbank. Found some 200-watt rough-service bulbs that will actually let me increase the bank’s capacity without adding sockets!

      I may need to add a fan, however…

    2. Major retailers in the US like Home Depot have committed to (largely) stop sale on incandescent bulbs in the next year or so. Already at my local Home Depot the incandescent bulbs are limited to a small “specialty” section, and the main bulb aisle is all LED and CFL.

      1. CFL’s days are numbered as well. They are prone to early failure and extreme color temperature shifting/mismatch from age. While they are cheaper than LED’s (as of this post) they are still a pain to replace for as often as they need to be. Yes, it’s not difficult to unscrew a light bulb–unless it’s in a fixture out of reach! Also, they sort of contain lots of nasty compounds that like to leak out if you drop a bulb. Probably not enough to give you cancer after the first blowout, but over a lifetime…at least dropping an LED is a matter of catching it on the bounce up. The local super centers in North America carry 4-bulb 60W LED packs for around 5 freedom bucks.

  3. Mhh, there are 13 well established home automation broker standards, let’s just create another one that will do everything even better.

    I for myself use openhab.org which is a hardware and software agnostic home automation server with about 320 integrations in existing home automation products:
    https://www.openhab.org/addons/

    It is fully open source and configurable via a webui or via configuration files. You can deploy openhab either on windows or linux as it is just a j2ee application.

    I control my tradfri, osram, hue and mi lights with openhab for the last 4 to 5 years (except for tradfri which isn’t that old).

  4. The company, and hence the product name, is called “Philips” (with one ‘L’). Maybe there is a mixup with the “Phillips screws” ( totally not related with eachother, though)

  5. “This means the Internet is now in light bulbs,”

    I once questioned (18 years ago) the need for IPv6, when it provided more than enough IP addresses for every square centimeter of the Earth’s surface. My Data Communications instructor told me that many will allow every bulb in every skyscraper to be addressable, and then I saw the light (pun intended?).

  6. “and we can’t buy incandescent light bulbs anymore”

    You must be shopping at the wrong store. I’m in the USA and I saw a huge display last week at a local grocery store. Open your eyes.

  7. Lights of selected frequencies,miss the others that continue good health, Everone thinks that light is just light – wrong, interactive set frequencies have matching inturpretations in the brain.
    An example is girls at school are smarter than boys under fluorescent lights, case study proven.
    The fequency 50-60 cycles per second creating two tone shadows for boys*, girls dont have this brain wiring, * A LEFT OVER FROM HUNTING DAYS.

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