Strobe effect not working

[snehalpachigar]

Hello, I am trying to get the strobe light effect with my hue bulbs, but for reason the result that I get are not satisfactory. I don't see a smooth strobe effect. Sometimes light gets stuck at a state and lags in giving the strobe effect. Every time the behavior is random. Is it difficult to have strobe effect? Here is the code that I use.

public void strobe(final int timeInMillis, final int speed) {

    Thread t1 = new Thread() {

        @Override
        public void run() {

            long startTime = SystemClock.uptimeMillis();
            while ((SystemClock.uptimeMillis() - startTime) < timeInMillis) { // Strobe for the amount of time specified. 
                if (flag) { // True initially
                    flag = false;
                    lightState.setOn(true);
                } else {
                    flag = true;
                    lightState.setOn(false);
                }
                lightState.setTransitionTime(1); // max 65500
                lightState.setBrightness(254);
                Log.e("TAG", "State is" + lightState.validateState());
                bridge.updateLightState(light1, lightState, listener);
                try {
                    Thread.sleep(20);
                } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
            }
        }
    };
    t1.start();
}

Am I doing something wrong? I do get the log that the state is validated, but light bridge doesnt update everytime as I want. Why am I not getting expected results?

[SteveyO]

Hi,

At a quick glance of you code I can see a few improvements:-

• The most important is your sleep time of 20 is much too low. You can send approx 10 light commands to the bridge a second, this varies depending on the number of light state attributes also but a good approximation. So your first step would be to experiment with higher values, maybe 100. Using a value of 20 will result in the bridge getting flooded and some commands will be lost.
• Also the brightness is needed only when turning the lights on, this will reduce the number of zigbee commands the bridge sends to the lights, so this will help also (see code below).

I have cleaned up the if/then else condition a bit, but of course this has no bearing on the performance:- while ((System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime) < timeInMillis) { // Strobe for the amount of time specified. flag=!flag; lightState.setOn(flag); lightState.setTransitionTime(1); // max 65500 if (flag) lightState.setBrightness(254); // Only send brightness when turning light on.

        bridge.updateLightState(light1, lightState, lightListener);              
        try {
            Thread.sleep(100);
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {}
    }

This works a bit better, but not completely smooth. I will get back to you as soon as I find a better way.