Posted by Update: I will no longer be continuing development on any LIFX modules or applications. Sorry guys..
As much as I like what LIFX bulbs could ‘potentially’ do; LIFX, as a company, are lazy, don’t support their customers and don’t even bother to reply to people on their forums but then expect you to pay over $100 for a singular bulb that barely works.
Their IOS/Android applications work sometimes, most days the bulbs need to be turned off and on so that they reconnect to your Wifi network to actually start working.
Overall just a really shitty experience and would not recommend them to anyone.
I have a few Lifx Bulbs from Lifx Labs which are a pretty awesome (well when they stay connected to the wifi network – which hopefully they’ll fix soon with an update) wifi connected multi-coloured lightbulb which can be controlled from your smartphone. Spiffy.
Being from Australia I love to support other Australian Technology companies who are trying to build innovative products. These things are great if you are thinking about replacing a room/lamp/office with a set of led lightbulbs with multi-color support.
For anyone that already has Lifx bulbs let me introduce you to LifxCMD – a command line tool to control your Lifx bulbs.
Very similar to my existing tools IncontrolCMD & WemoCMD this utility allows you to call one, or many bulbs, and set them to a specific colour.
LifxCMD.exe --list
List all bulbs found on the network.
LifxCMD.exe --poll
Poll for bulbs every 5 seconds and show them on screen.
To control a bulb you can select it by name or ip address. Multiple bulbs can be separated by commas. Names with spaces need to be enclosed in quotation marks.
LifxCMD.exe --name "Lounge Room","Bedroom Lamp",Lamp1,192.168.1.41
Couple this with one, or all, of the following options:
--brightness [0 to 65525 or 0%-100%]
Set a bulb(s) brightness between 0 and 65525 or as a percentage e.g. 50%
--hue [0 to 65525]
Set a bulb(s) hue between 0 and 65525.
--saturation [0 to 65525]
Set a bulb(s) saturation between 0 and 65525.
--kelvin [2500 to 10000]
Set a bulb(s) kelvin between 2500 and 10000.
Some optional options:
--transition [milliseconds]
Set a bulb(s) transition to the defined color in milliseconds. e.g. 50000 will trasition to the defined colour over 50 seconds.
--colour [system.drawing.color]
Set a bulb(s) to a System.Drawing Color e.g. AliceBlue, Green, LightBlue.
A list of System.Drawing Colors can be found here.
--rgb [r,g,b]
Set a bulb(s) RGB Color separated by commas e.g r,g,b.
Example
Let’s set the ‘Lounge Lamp’ bulb to AliceBlue over 30 seconds:
LifxCMD.exe --name "Lounge Lamp" --colour AliceBlue --transition 30000
or shorthand:
LifxCMD.exe -n "Lounge Lamp" -c AliceBlue -t 30000
Set the all lounge bulbs brightness to 50%
LifxCMD.exe --name Bulb1,Bulb2,Bulb3 --brightness 50%
I hope someone find this useful – If you do you are welcome to donate to my tshirt fund.. 🙂
Enjoy! Any problems hit me in the comments. 🙂
– TheNinja
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Update: I have also added the source code below if someone wants to see if they can get it to work with the new Lifx Firmware(s).
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