Hue integration: colorloop effect cannot be started

[froogl]

The problem

Until HA 2021.12 the colorloop effect was available for all lights (or at least for all color lights). This is gone in 2021.12.

• The effects colorloop and random are no longer selectable through Lovelace UI by clicking on a color light
• When using the light.turn_on service with the effect colorloop the device turns on, but the color loop is not started

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

core-2021.12.4

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

core-2021.11

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant Core

Integration causing the issue

Philips Hue

Link to integration documentation on our website

Philips Hue

Example YAML snippet

No response

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

No response

Additional information

No response

[ianfretwell]

The new API doesn't support those commands - so they're just gone.

I'm using Dynamic scenes where possible to get a similar effect (but it's no help if you're only wanting to do this for a single bulb - which I did). The other caveat is that it is more effective the more bulbs you have in the scene because of the way it cycles between the colours initially set on the bulbs in the scene.

Downsides -the bulbs will all be showing different colours (i.e. the colours cannot be the same on each bulb at the same time). -doesn't appear to support 3rd party bulbs because of the way dynamic scenes are partially dealt with by the bulb firmware.

[probot-home-assistant[bot]]

Hey there @balloob, @marcelveldt, mind taking a look at this issue as it has been labeled with an integration (hue) you are listed as a code owner for? Thanks! _{^{(message by CodeOwnersMention)}}

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[marcelveldt]

The answer of @ianfretwell is 100% correct. Colorloop no longer exist natively within the Hue ecosystem. You can ofcourse add a similar effect yourself with some automation magic.

Personally I just switched to "Dynamic scenes" which are executed on the lights themselves. Downside is indeed that if you want a single light to colorloop, you'll have to create a zone with just one light

[ianfretwell]

Hi @marcelveldt Have you actually got that to work with a single bulb? I tried and the bulb just sits at the colour selected when the scene is set up. As a result my understanding is that if you have a zone with two bulbs and set one to red and one to blue in the scene - the end result is that each bulb just transitions between red & blue - one starting on each colour. If you set them both to red - again - nothing happens. That's why I mentioned above that the more bulbs you have in the scene the more effective the end result is, since you can set more 'starting' colours.

[froogl]

Well dynamic scenes only work for Philips Hue lights. Colorloop however is a native ZigBee thing which works with many other color lights (OSRAM in my case). And as @ianfretwell mentioned the colors in dynamic scenes are not in sync when using multiple lights either.

Why not use the v1 API for this? As far as I know the v2 API is in early-access state for developers only and is (obviously) not feature-complete yet.

[marcelveldt]

@ianfretwell I actually have a few zones with only 1 color light in it but didn't actually watch if the colors change. Most of my zones are multi lights zones and the effect is pretty nice. I'll have a look later.

[marcelveldt]

Why not use the v1 API for this? As far as I know the v2 API is in early-access state for developers only and is (obviously) not feature-complete yet.

A few reasons:

• The V2 API is pretty feature complete (Hue uses the new API in own apps for some time now).
• The V2 code is very clean as is it only executes the V2 api, so far everything is managed with pure V2 logic. I do not want to offense anybody but a colorloop effect is not important enough to bake in a workaround falling back to V1 logic, unless Signify states that the colorloop will be back in the V2 API (in that case its just temporary and we can fix it afterwards).
• We're not helping Signify (and ourselves) by writing new code that still uses the old API, for which they clearly state it will be phased out at some point.

My main point is, we've come so far with only V2 API usage. If the colorloop is really important for multiple people we can find a way to reinstate it, for example with a (temporary?) custom component or whatsoever.

Maybe first thing to start is ask Signify (on the developer forums) if the colorloop effect will be back in the V2 API. If so, I have no problem in creating a temporary method in the V2 code that calls the legacy V1 endpoint to execute the colorloop because we know that at some point we can replace that code with V2 logic and it keeps working.

[balloob]

We are using the V2 API and will not be using any V1 APIs anymore. If you are missing features in the V2 API, open a feature request with Signify.

If you want to use the V1 API in Home Assistant, you will need to create a custom component.