Hello,
Just wanted to say thanks to Ben for making the Pixelblaze (it is super cool!), and share some of the home automation integrations I’ve been working on.
I’ve written a Pixelblaze device handler for the Hubitat Elevation. Hubitat is a Samsung Smartthings compatible (well, 99% code compatible…) home automation hub that does most of its processing locally - it can access cloud based services, but does not require a cloud connection to run your home. It supports a great many devices and has a very active user community.
With this driver, your hub can turn one or more Pixelblazes on & off, change patterns, control brightness, operate the sequencer - the normal set of things you’d want to do. The advantage of using a hub is that you get integration with the rest of your home automations - you can trigger Pixelblaze from motion sensors, sunrise/sunset, cameras, complex rules, or Alexa or Siri if you wish.
Hi Jon,
Wow, that’s amazing! This kind of thing is asked for often, and you’ve done a lot of work here! I can’t wait to check it out and give it a spin!
Thanks! If you try it out, please let me know about bugs and additional features that would make it more fun and interesting.
I’ve also got diyHue and OpenHab integrations in the “it works on my setup” stage. Guess, I’ll start cleaning them up. (diyHue lets me use a single app - the official Hue app - to control on/off, brightness, color and scene management for my entire setup. It’s pretty handy.)
By all means! Let me know if I can help. I’ve been living with the Hubitat for about a year now, and it has been really pleasant having Pixelblazes integrated with my home automation setup .
And from my experience supporting the Hubitat driver, the home automation crowd really embraces the idea of pixel addressable lighting. HA integration would give quite a few more users reason to try a Pixelblaze.
I’ve just updated the Pixelblaze driver for Hubitat to version 2.0! It’s available from my repository (at the top of the thread) or via the Hubitat Package Manager.
This version features many performance and reliability improvements, plus:
Support for color and speed controls in patterns. - if a pattern includes a color slider,
the driver will detect it and will allow you to the Hub’s normal color bulb controls. Similarly if the pattern includes a “Speed” slider, the driver will allow you to control the pattern’s speed via the “SetEffectSpeed” command.
Greatly Improved Multisegment support – You no longer need to modify the pattern code to make your segment settings persistent. Segment settings are now saved on the hub, and are loaded automatically. You can adjust the number and size of segments (up to 12) from the driver. Also, there are more cool effects - 18 in all. See the multisegment setup guide for details.
… gets on home automation soapbox …
I’d love to see more people try this. It’s so worthwhile. I look at home automation the way I look at a theatrical production. It’s set and lighting design, music and sound effects. Done creatively, it’s art that doesn’t draw focus. It’s job is to set the scene and enhance the action.
I’ve had several Pixelblazes as part of my household setup for a while now. Here are a few of the things I’ve done:
( living room lighting presets)
Well, @vutang50 came up with the idea to search the Web UI controls for the first color picker and have the HA driver use it as a color bulb control, so he’s due some credit here too!
We’ve got Home Assistant and Hubitat. Now we just need to get somebody to do OpenHAB, and that’ll cover the biggest diy automation platforms. OpenHAB’s Java, but it’s one of those projects with a build environment more complicated than the actual project. I haven’t had the will to bash my head on that learning curve so far.
