One of the fantastic perks of Philips Hue lights is how many devices and apps can work with or enhance the functionality of them. The developer community is gigantic. One platform that’s a bit more sparse on Hue support is the Mac. Wouldn’t it be great if while already using your Mac, you didn’t need to reach over to your iPhone and launch an app to control the lights?
Use the “Connect” tab in the app’s settings window to scan for the Hue Bridge on your network. You can also manually enter your Hue Bridge’s IP address. (You can find this information from within the Hue app. Head to Settings Hue Bridges and tap the “i” to the right of the bridge’s name.). Select Search for bridge. Once your bridge is found, place a checkmark to indicate you agree with the terms and conditions and privacy policy, then select Connect. You will be asked to press the button on your Hue Bridge. Press the large button on the center-top of your Hue Bridge. Select the entertainment area or room your computer is located in.
A few apps, most of which cost money, do exist for the Mac that can help out with this. But we’re going to focus on just one. It’s free and it has more features than even the official Philips Hue app for iOS supports.
Philips Hue Mac App
The best Mac app for Philips Hue is the Colors for Hue. Why? It’s free and it does nearly everything you could ask a Hue controller to do.
First, you have to pair the app as always with your Hue bridge. Launch Colors for Hue, then head over to wherever you put your bridge and press the center button to confirm the link.
Colors for Hue sits in your menu bar. If you click it, you’ll see a list of every light bulb connected to that bridge along with an indication of their current brightness level.
If you have Hue bulbs that support color, hovering over the name of your bulb will reveal an entire color palette to choose from. As for Hue bulbs that don’t support color, but just various color temperatures for white, you can adjust that here too using the slider. Since my bulbs are just pure white, I can only adjust the brightness from the main menu.
Grouping Lights
One the largest downsides to the official Philips Hue app is that it doesn’t support the grouping of several light bulbs into one control. Yes, you can set scenes that have brightness and color presets for all the light bulbs, but sometimes you just need a few grouped together.
For instance, my ceiling light is powered by three different lightbulbs. In the Philips Hue app, I’d have to control them either by turning on or off all the lights in the room (four for me total) or each lightbulb one by one.
Thankfully, in Colors for Hue, I’ve been able to group the three ceiling bulbs into a single Ceiling light. To do this, click Preferences in the menu then click Groups. Highlight the bulbs you want to group together by pressing either Command or Shift.
Tip: It helps if you give your lights specific names that can aid you in remembering which ones they are within the room, rather than just keeping them in default numerical order.
Click Group and you’re done. Now, the brightness slider in Colors for Hue controls all three bulbs on the ceiling at once.
Delayed Off
Colors for Hue also supports Delayed Off, which is basically a sleep timer for your lights. Hover over the light or group of lights you want to set a delay for, then in the secondary menu hover over Delayed Off. Choose which amount of time you want to keep the lights on for before they automatically shut off.
Tip: Preferences has an optional setting for slow dimming. This will dim the lights slowly before they go off instead of abruptly going dark. Select
Colors for Hue is available from the Mac App Store. Xda spotify mod apk.
ALSO READ:How to Hide Running Applications on Your Mac
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#mac apps #philips hue
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Follow 3 Easy Steps
Instagram for apple mac. Step 1
First make sure your bridge is connected to your network and is functioning properly. Test that the smartphone app can control the lights on the same network.
Step 2
Then you need to discover the IP address of the bridge on your network. Microsoft notes app mac. You can do this in a few ways. Magnet mac app download.
NOTE – When you are ready to make a production app, you need to discover the bridge automatically using Hue Bridge Discovery Guide.
1. Use a UPnP discovery app to find Philips hue in your network.
2. Use our broker server discover process by visiting https://discovery.meethue.com
3. Log into your wireless router and look Philips hue up in the DHCP table.
4. Hue App method: Download the official Philips hue app. Connect your phone to the network the hue bridge is on. Start the hue app(iOS described here). Push link connect to the bridge. Use the app to find the bridge and try controlling lights. All working — Go to the settings menu in the app. Go to My Bridge. Go to Network settings. Switch off the DHCP toggle. The ip address of the bridge will show. Note the ip address, then switch DHCP back on
2. Use our broker server discover process by visiting https://discovery.meethue.com
3. Log into your wireless router and look Philips hue up in the DHCP table.
4. Hue App method: Download the official Philips hue app. Connect your phone to the network the hue bridge is on. Start the hue app(iOS described here). Push link connect to the bridge. Use the app to find the bridge and try controlling lights. All working — Go to the settings menu in the app. Go to My Bridge. Go to Network settings. Switch off the DHCP toggle. The ip address of the bridge will show. Note the ip address, then switch DHCP back on
Step 3
Once you have the address load the test app by visiting the following address in your web browser.
https://<bridge ip address>/debug/clip.html
You should see an interface like this.
Using this debugger utility you can populate the components of an HTTPS call – the basis of all web traffic and of the hue RESTful interface.
1. URL: this is actually the local address of a specific resource (thing) inside the hue system. It could be light, a group of lights or many more things. This is the object you’ll be interacting with in this command.
2. A body: this is the part of the message which describes what you want to change and how. Here you enter, in JSON format, the resource name and value you’d like to change/add.
3. A method: here you have a choice of the 4 HTTPS methods the hue call can use.
GET: this is the command to fetch all information about the addressed resource
PUT: this is the command to modify an addressed resource
POST: this is the command to create a new resource inside the addressed resource
DELETE: this is the command to deleted the addressed resource
4. Response: In this area you’ll see the response to your command. Also in JSON format.
3. A method: here you have a choice of the 4 HTTPS methods the hue call can use.
GET: this is the command to fetch all information about the addressed resource
PUT: this is the command to modify an addressed resource
POST: this is the command to create a new resource inside the addressed resource
DELETE: this is the command to deleted the addressed resource
4. Response: In this area you’ll see the response to your command. Also in JSON format.
So let’s get started…
First let’s do a very simple command and get information about your hue system.
Fill in the details below leaving the body box empty and press the
GET
button.
URL | /api/newdeveloper |
Method | GET |
You should see a response like below:
https://tampatree897.weebly.com/blog/is-there-a-mac-app-for-group-me. Congratulations you’ve just sent you first CLIP command!
Now this is the command to fetch all information in the bridge. You didn’t get much back and that’s because you’re using an unauthorized username “newdeveloper”.
We need to use the randomly generated username that the bridge creates for you. Download game dragon nest labyrinth. Fill in the info below and press the POST button.
URL | /api |
Body | {'devicetype':'my_hue_app#iphone peter'} |
Method | POST |
This command is basically saying please create a new resource inside /api (where usernames sit) with the following properties.
Sony xperia x compact unlock code free. When you press the POST button you should get back an error message letting you know that you have to press the link button. This is our security step so that only apps you want to control your lights can. By pressing the button we prove that the user has physical access to the bridge.
Go and press the button on the bridge and then press the
POST
button again and you should get a success response like below.
Congratulations you’ve just created an authorized user
(1028d66426293e821ecfd9ef1a0731df)
, which we’ll use from now on! Now if you do the first GET command again you should get a whole lot more information about what lights you have and their states. This data is all in JSON format so can be easily processed by your applications.
Hue Bridge App Mac Pro
Turning a light on and off
Okay now that we have a username with permission to use the system lets start having some fun.
Each light has its own URL. You can see what lights you have with the following command:
Address | https://<bridge ip address>/api/1028d66426293e821ecfd9ef1a0731df/lights |
Method | GET |
You should get a JSON response with all the lights in your system and their names.
Now let’s get information about a specific light. The light with id 1.
Address | https://<bridge ip address>/api/1028d66426293e821ecfd9ef1a0731df/lights/1 |
Method | GET |
In this response you can see all of the resources this light has. The most interesting ones are inside the state object as these are the ones we’ll have to interact with to control the light.
Lets’ start with the “on” attribute. This is a very simple attribute that can have 2 values: true and false. So let’s try turning the light off.
Address | https://<bridge ip address>/api/1028d66426293e821ecfd9ef1a0731df/lights/1/state |
Body | {'on':false} |
Method | PUT |
Looking at the command you are sending we’re addressing the “state” object of light one and telling it to modify the “on” value inside it to false (or off). When you press the
PUT
button the light should turn off. Change the value in the body to true and the light will turn on again.
Now let’s do something a bit more fun and start changing some colors. Enter the command below.
Address | https://<bridge ip address>/api/1028d66426293e821ecfd9ef1a0731df/lights/1/state |
Body | {'on':true, 'sat':254, 'bri':254,'hue':10000} |
Method | PUT |
We’re interacting with the same “state” attributes here but now we’re modifying a couple more attributes. We’re making sure the light is on by setting the “on” resource to true. We’re also making sure the saturation (intensity) of the colors and the brightness is at its maximum by setting the “sat” and “bri” resources to 254. Finally we’re telling the system to set the “hue” (a measure of color) to 10000 points (hue runs from 0 to 65535). Try changing the hue value and keep pressing the
PUT
button and see the colour of your light changing running through different colors.
Hue Bridge App Mac Ios
Now you understand the basics of the commands you can send to hue through this tool – but we can also send the commands as part of an app. Intrigued now? Read more at Core Concepts (developer account required).