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www.extravegetables.com

Control4® – Philips Hue® Lighting Driver

Version 8
Contents
Introduction ........................................................................................................... 3
What’s Special about Hue? ...................................................................................... 3
Designing a Hue Installation ..................................................................................... 4
Auto Color Changing ............................................................................................... 4
Relatively Random™ .................................................................................................................... 5
Bathe in Blue™............................................................................................................................ 5
Graceful Greens™........................................................................................................................ 5
Raging Reds™ ............................................................................................................................. 5
Purple Parade™ ........................................................................................................................... 5
Mellow Yellow™ ......................................................................................................................... 5
New in Version 7.1 ................................................................................................. 5
Lighting Groups .......................................................................................................................... 5
Predefined Colors ....................................................................................................................... 5
Presets ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Test before you install ............................................................................................. 5
Limitations ............................................................................................................. 6
Interface ................................................................................................................ 6
Friends of Hue Lightstrips & Bloom ........................................................................... 6
Add the drivers to your project ................................................................................. 7
Bridge Driver .............................................................................................................................. 7
Linking the Control4 System ..................................................................................................................... 8
Discovering the Lights ............................................................................................................................. 8
Setting Lighting Groups............................................................................................................................ 9
Adding the lighting drivers ....................................................................................... 9
Single Lamp Brightness ............................................................................................................. 10
Single Lamp Full Color ............................................................................................................... 11
Single Lamp On/Off Driver ......................................................................................................... 12
Lamp Group Brightness (was All Lamps Brightness)...................................................................... 13
Single Lamp White Warmth........................................................................................................ 13
Lamp Group White Warm – (was All Lamps White Warmth) ........................................................... 14
Scene setting ....................................................................................................... 14
Lighting Presets........................................................................................................................ 14
Saving Hue Scenes .................................................................................................................................14
Recalling Hue Scenes ..............................................................................................................................14
Enabling Customers to Store Scenes .........................................................................................................15
Custom Scenes ........................................................................................................................ 16
Scenes with Single Lamp Full Color Driver .................................................................................................16
Custom Scenes with Single Lamp Brightness driver ....................................................................................17
Showing the current lamp color ...............................................................................................................18
Automatic Color Changing Programs ....................................................................... 19
Starting Random Colors through Programming .............................................................................. 19
Selecting Color Changing Programs as Scenes on Touchpanels etc.................................................. 20

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Registered in England 7104729 VAT Reg. No. GB 984 4268 77
Registered Office: Old Mill Barns Chichester PO20 7LX
Simple ‘Standard’ Colors ....................................................................................... 21
Combining with a Physical On/Off Switch ............................................................... 21
Activating the Driver ............................................................................................. 23
Troubleshooting.................................................................................................... 24
Connections ............................................................................................................................ 24

Version 8 September 2013

© Extra Vegetables Ltd 2009-2014 All rights reserved
Control4 is a registered trademark of Control4 Corporation
Hue is a trademark of Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
Extra Vegetables and the Extra Vegetables logo are registered trademarks of Extra Vegetables Ltd

Extra Vegetables Philips Hue Lighting Driver V8 Page 2 of 24

Introduction

This driver is for the Philips Hue LED lighting system. The Hue system consists of
individual LED lamps that are direct replacements for standard lamps. The Hue lamps are
color changing and each lamp is individually addressable.

Although the Hue system uses a Zigbee mesh this is not directly compatible with
Control4. However by using the Hue bridge included with the Hue Starter pack and this
driver it is possible to control the Hue system from Control4.

We have provided different drivers in the package. These enable different levels of UI
control and enable you to choose the driver that best meets your customers’
requirements.

The Hue system is different from other color changing lighting systems that you may be
familiar with and it is important that you understand these differences and follow the
best practice integration methodology.

What’s Special about Hue?

The Philips Hue system is special (different) from other color changing lighting systems in
a number of ways.

The graph on the right shows a chart

of all visible colors. The green
triangle within this shows the colors
that the Hue is capable of producing.
As you can see it is designed to
produce a wide range of white colors
with a good range of reds and blues
but not deep greens. This gives rise
to the following

• It can be subtle
Many color changing lighting
systems such as RGB lighting
strips are good at producing
vibrant and dramatic colors.
The Hue system is designed for
more subtle lighting.

• It is not RGB
Most color changing strips use Red, Green and Blue LEDs (sometimes augmented
with white); Hue does not. It uses LEDs that are designed to mix the range
shown. Although our driver provides RGB sliders these are then converted to the
color space shown above.

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Designing a Hue Installation
When designing a Hue system for a customer there are a number of factors you should
consider.

• Ensure the Hue Bridge is installed within range of the Hue lamps.
Although the lamps form a Zigbee mesh the bridge must be in range of the lamps.

• Master On/Off control

If your customer requires a physical wall switch to turn the lamps On and Off then
you should ensure that this is also controllable via Control4. A Zigbee wall switch
(if appropriate in your region) is the easiest way to provide this.

• Consider the customer’s control requirements

We provide two distinct styles of driver. One provides the customer with Control4
light elements for Red, Green, Blue and Brightness with an optional On/Off control.
This would show 15 light elements on the Control4 UI with the standard Hue 3
lamp starter pack.

We also provide a driver which just enables a combined On/Off/Brightness light

element on the UI and enables color changing via scenes. So with the starter pack
of three lamps you would have one light UI element for each lamp. We imagine
that this is preferable for most customers.

• Hue App Scenes must be copied to Control4

The scenes that are created by the Hue mobile Apps are stored within the App; not
the Bridge or the Lamps. This means that if your customer wants to be able to
recall one of the iOS scenes from Control4 you will need to define that scene in
Control4. We make this a simple as possible and is much easier in version 7.1.

• Lights power on white

When power is removed and re-applied to a Hue lamp it will always come back on
as white – regardless of what color it was previously set to. If you want lights to
come back on at a specific color you will need to add programming to do so.

• Use in ‘White Light’ applications

One of the attributes of Hue is its ability to produce a wide range of ‘white’ light
from cool blue whites through to warm yellow whites. So a Hue installation could
just be for white light. The cost of automating three table lamps with the variety
of white colors is low compared with other solutions.

Auto Color Changing

Our Hue lighting drivers include functions to automatically change the colors on the
lamps. The good news with the Hue system is that these automatic color changing
programs have a very low Control4 processor load. Setting up color changing that fades
from one color to another over a minute has no more overload than fading over a second.

The driver includes the following programs

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Relatively Random™
More random than with our DMX driver, this program randomly selects one of 65,000
colors.

Bathe in Blue™
A subtle mix of cool blue colors. Ideal for pools and other water areas.

Graceful Greens™
An ideal way to start the day. Graceful greens to sooth the soul and provide a gentle
awakening.

Raging Reds™
A fireside companion. Hot, reds oranges and yellows.

Purple Parade™
Girls may not always like pink; they usually prefer purple! A selection of the finest
purples a set of LEDs can produce.

Mellow Yellow™
Especially for the Hue system to make use of its subtle warm pallet of yellows.

New in Version 7.1

We have made a number of improvements to the drivers in version 7.1 which make
installation faster and add additional features.

Lighting Groups
Previously Hue lamps could either be controlled individually or all the lamps on a bridge
could be controlled together. Now it is possible to create groups of Hue lamps and
control these together without a popcorn effect. So if you have lamps in different rooms
then this enables you to control them together. The previous All Lamps drivers now
enable you to select a group or use 0 as the All Lamps group.

Predefined Colors
We have introduced the ability to quickly set some basic colors and white light presets.
This enables some colors to be set without needing to define co-ordinates.

Presets
This is the real time saver. Presets make it easy to save and recall Hue scenes defined
on the Hue app. Now you set the Hue scene, press Store Preset and all the lamps will
save their current state. No more writing down numbers and transcribing them. This
also enables you to provide custom save buttons so if the customer edits a Hue scene on
the App they can save the changes to the Control4 system themselves.

Test before you install

You should test deploy using this driver with Control4 and Hue in your office or shop
before you should attempt to install on site. We strongly recommend that you follow the
examples presented here in a demo environment to gain confidence with the system.
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Remember if the lighting does not work standalone then it won’t work with Control4!

Please create a support ticket on our helpdesk at www.extravegetables.com/helpdesk if

you are having any problems with this driver.

Limitations

1. Color Limitations
The Hue system is capable of over 65,000 different colors. Control4 lighting
enables 0-100% variability and on the touch panels this is only available in 5%
steps. In order to provide the widest choice of colors from the UI we provide RGB
faders together with brightness. However this can only ever provide a more
limited selection of colors. The drivers however do enable an exact color to be
selected via custom programming.

2. Brightness Varies with Color

One driver style provides RGB faders together with brightness on the Control4 UI.
A selected RGB color needs to be translated by the driver into an approximation on
the Hue system. This involves automatically adjusting the brightness. This is not
an error but is something you need to explain to your customer.

3. Hue Scenes do not automatically sync

Scenes created by the Philips Hue Apps are local to the App. Changes to scenes
will not automatically sync but you can add custom programming to enable the
user to save scenes from Control4 UIs.

Interface
This driver has been tested with the standard Philips Hue Bridge. It is not designed,
tested or supported with any other interface.

Friends of Hue Lightstrips & Bloom

Philips has introduced LED lightstrips that are compatible with the Hue system. These
are known as ‘friends of Hue’ as they do not have all the features of a Hue lamp. In
particular they do not support color temperature. If you open the Philips Hue App on the
iPhone or Android you will see that it is not possible to move these to the color
temperature area when defining a scene and they cannot be included in the Philips white
light ‘recipes’.

Consequently these lamps will not react to the color temperature drivers either. These
can be controlled either using the full color driver or the brightness driver. For simplicity
we would recommend the brightness driver with colors being set via lighting scenes.

These lamps always set light color via the xy method and the drivers will report these co-
ordinates via the Action in the same way as the Hue lamps.

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Add the drivers to your project

Bridge Driver
There are a number of drivers included in the zip
package. Copy all of these to your My Documents
– Control4 – Drivers folder.

The main element of the driver is found under --

others -- manufacturer Philips.

You should only bring one copy of this into your

project per bridge. If you have more than one
bridge add multiple copies of the driver.

The driver has a number of properties that need to

be set up for your individual project

Please note that from Version 8 onwards you will not see Activation Key fields as there is
no longer a requirement for an Activation Key.

Automatic Updates is set to Off by default. However we recommend that you turn this
On so that your drivers automatically update if a new version is available.

You should then type in the IP address that you set for your Philips Hue Bridge. You can
find this from your routers DHCP table or by typing www.meethue.com/api/nupnp when
your computer is connected to the same network as the Hue. It is important that you set
up a MAC address based reservation on the router for your Hue Bridge. This will ensure
it always receives the same IP address if the router is rebooted or there is a power
outage.

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Polling for changes enables you to keep the Control4 system in sync with scene
selections made from the Philips Hue Apps. If you enable this then the driver will seek
the status of the Hue lamps every two minutes.

Debug mode is only used if we request you to switch this on when diagnosing any
problems you may be having.

Linking the Control4 System

You then need to link the Control4 system to the Bridge. This is a one off procedure per
bridge that would only need to be repeated if the Bridge is changed. It does not need to
be redone if the Control4 system is updated, nor if the controller is changed.

When you first type in the IP address of the bridge you will receive a message in the
Driver Information box that the bridge has been found but not linked. If you don’t see
this message then the IP address you have entered for the Bridge is incorrect.

To link the Control4 system to the Bridge, switch

to the Actions tab and press the ‘Link with Bridge’
button.

Switch back to the Properties page and the Driver

Information box will now ask you to press the Link
Button on the Bridge. Go to the Hue Bridge and
press the Link button.

Now switch back to the Actions tab and press the

‘Confirm Link’ button. Switch back to the Properties tab and the driver will report that
the two systems have been linked correctly.

IF NOT REPEAT THE PROCESS. THE DRIVER WILL NOT WORK UNTIL IT IS LINKED
WITH THE BRIDGE.

Discovering the Lights

Each Hue Lamp has an address and a name. Use the Philips Hue iOS or Android App to
set the names of each of the lamps in your system. If you have many lights naming
them makes it easier to set up and maintain the system. Make sure you have named the
lights before setting up the lighting drivers!

Select the Actions tab again and press the Show Lights Available button. Now switch to
the Lua tab and you will see all the available lamps and their addresses. Copy and paste
this to a text editor as you will need this information to set up the lighting drivers.

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Setting Lighting Groups
If you want to control lamps as a group then you must define these groups on this driver
first.

There are 13 groups that you can define. There is also a Group 0 which will control all of
the lights attached to a bridge.

To define a group, type the addresses of the lights into the property for each group
separated by a comma. You can then use these groups in the Lamp Group Brightness
and Lamp Group White Warmth drivers.

Adding the lighting drivers

You now can add the lighting drivers to the project. If you are using Hue for colored light
applications then there are two distinct style of driver available and you should discuss
the most appropriate choice for your customer before proceeding.

For ‘White Light’ applications you can use the color temperature drivers which have the
same attributes as the Lamp Brightness except they provide color temperature rather than
brightness control.

Feature Lamp Brightness Full Color

Brightness Control Y Y
Pseudo RGB color setting on UI N Y
Exact color setting fort x,y scenes Y Y
Exact color setting for Hue and Saturation Scenes Y N
Exact color setting for Color Temperature scenes Y N
Can replicate all scenes created by Hue Apps Y N
‘Mellow Yellow’ auto color change Y N
On/Off function built into driver Y N
Light V2 Proxy (Advanced Lighting, Groups) Y N
Ramp Up and Down from Keypad or Remote Y N

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Single Lamp Brightness
We think this is the best choice for most customers. It
provides a simple single fader on the Control4 UIs for each
Hue lamp which controls the Brightness and the On/Off
function. Colors can be set in programming.

This driver also enables any lighting scenes that have been
set up on the Hue App to be re-created exactly in Control4
with simple custom programming.

You will find this under Light V2, manufacturer Philips

It will appear in your project as a single light.

You now need to provide the address for this Hue lamp in the
box provided.

Once you have pressed ‘Set’ to confirm the address then you
should see the name of the Lamp shown below the address.

Check that the name of the lamp is what you expect – otherwise you may have typed
and incorrect address.

The Switch Off at Zero function enables you to decide if you want the Hue lamp to
switch off when it is at Zero Brightness. With the Hue system 0% brightness does not
mean Off, however by setting this option to Yes the driver will turn the lamp off at 0%
Brightness which is what many customers will expect.

There are also standard Control4 properties for the initial Preset Level of the lamp and the
Ramp Up and Down rates associated with On and Off.
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Now when you refresh the Navigators you will see the light on your Control4 UIs. You
should test by setting a scene using the Philips App and then using the Control4 fader to
adjust the brightness of the light.

Scene setting is discussed in the next section and this driver can be used in advanced
lighting scenes.

You can ramp this light up or down from a keypad or remote control. If can also be
ramped in a Lighting Group. Hue does not have a dedicated ramp command so these are
sent as a series of commands to the Hue system. Ramping may not be as smooth as you
might like. Setting a level for a group from a touch panel or mobile app sends the new
level in turn to each lamp.

Single Lamp Full Color

We also supply a driver in the package that enables
the customer to have control over the color of the
light from the C4 UI. This will provide the customer
with easy to understand faders for Red, Green, Blue
as well as brightness. We suggest that you discuss
the use of this driver with your customer as there are
a number of points that should be explained.

• Color affects Brightness

Because the Hue lights don’t use Red, Green
and Blue LEDs when translating from the RGB
settings on the C4 UI there will also
automatically be a change in the Brightness
fader. This is not an error but may seem
confusing.

• Only xy scenes can be monitored and set

Colors on Hue can be set by a xy co-ordinate in CIE color space, via Hue and
Saturation levels or by a Color Temperature. When the driver monitors the Hue
system the RGB faders will only update if the scene currently set was via an xy co-
ordinate. A number of the built in scenes on the Hue App are not defined as xy
co-ordinates.

• Brightness 0 is not Off

A brightness of 0 does not mean the light is turned off. If you want to have
individual Hue lamp On/Off control you need to add the optional On/Off driver to
the project. This means you have five Control4 UI faders per lamp.

We suggest that this driver is only used for customers who insist they need color control
on their C4 interfaces. Even so be prepared to swap to the Single Lamp Brightness
Driver if they get confused.

This driver is also found under Light, Manufacturer Philips and is the Philips Hue Lamp
driver.
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When you add it to your project it will appear as four items as shown below.

You need to set the channel

number of the light on the
Properties tab. Shortly afterwards
the name of the lamp will appear in
the Lamp Name box. Check that
this is the name you are expecting
for this address.

When you refresh the Navigators

you will see four Control4 UI
elements for each of the RGB and
Brightness levels. As you adjust
the R, G or B level you will see the brightness element change to provide the closest
possible match to the RGB color requested.

Single Lamp On/Off Driver

If you are using the Single Lamp Full Color Driver, then
remember that a brightness of 0 does not mean the lamp
turns off.

If you want to be able to switch each individual Hue

lamp On and Off you can also add the optional On/Off
driver to the project for each lamp.

You assign this a channel number as before and it

provides a switched light on the Control4 interface. This
allows the lamp to be switched On and Off. As power is
not being physically removed from the lamp it will switch
back on to its previously set color.

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Lamp Group Brightness (was All Lamps
Brightness)
This driver enables you to control the brightness of
all or a group of lights connected to the Hue bridge
simultaneously. Whilst this functionality is also
achievable with the Control4 dimmer group driver
that solution will produce a popcorn effect; whilst
this will not. You can also use this driver for auto
color changing applications where you want all the
lamps to change to the same color. In fact this
driver has all the functionality of the single channel
brightness driver; except that it will alter all or a
group of the lamps connected to the bridge.

You will find this under Light V2, manufacturer Philips and will come into the project as a
single lamp.

You need to set the number of the group that this driver will control. 0 is All Lights and
the other numbers refer to the groups defined on the main driver.

Custom Programming commands are available to set the exact color in all possible ways
and to start the auto color changing programs. See the Single Lamp Brightness Driver for
more details on how these work.

Single Lamp White Warmth

This driver is designed for applications where you are using
the Hue lamps primarily for ‘white light’ applications. It
provides a fader on the Control4 UI which allows the
customer to select the white ‘color’ from cool to warm. You
can combine this with the Single Lamp Brightness driver so
that the customer has control of both of the color and
brightness of the lamp. This is a light V2 driver and can be
found under Light V2, manufacturer Philips.

The channel number of the light needs to be entered into the

Properties of the driver and then the name of the lamp will
be shown.

On the Control4 UI 0% (or Off) is the coolest white and

100% (or On) is the warmest white. You can also set an exact color temperature in
custom programming.

This driver doesn’t turn the light On or Off it just adjusts the white ‘color’. To control the
brightness of the light and to turn it on or off then add the Single Lamp Brightness Driver
to the project.

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Lamp Group White Warm – (was All Lamps White Warmth)
This driver provides a single UI element that will simultaneously adjust the color
temperature of all or a group of the lamps connected to the bridge without a popcorn
effect.

You can add this driver and the Lamp Group Brightness driver to provide full simultaneous
control of the color temperature and brightness of all or a group of lamps connected to
the bridge.

You can also set an exact color temperature in custom programming.

You must provide the group address, 0 is all lights and other numbers refer to the groups
you define on the master driver.

Scene setting
As the Hue system is all about different colors, lighting scenes are an important part of
the integration.

Lighting Presets
The most common use of scenes with the Hue drivers is
to copy the scenes defined using the Hue App. In
version 7.1 we have introduced the Lighting Preset
concept into the driver which makes this process very
simple.

It is possible to save and recall up to ten lighting presets

using the driver. These can be saved and recalled either
for each lamp or across the whole system.

Saving Hue Scenes

Saving a Hue scene is easy:

• Set the lighting Scene on the Hue App

• Save the scene using the Store Preset Action on
the master driver.

All Hue drivers in the project will now store their current
levels in the preset you have selected.

These Store preset actions are also available on the individual light drivers in case you
only want to store the levels of selected lights in the preset.

Recalling Hue Scenes

Once you have saved a preset it is possible to recall this in custom programming. This
ability is provided in the master driver and for the individual lights.

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You can define the ramp speed to the new scene in milliseconds.

Note these lighting presets do not automatically appear on the Control4 UI as lighting
scenes.

You can link a preset to a Control4 scene by adding in some programming when the
Control4 scene is invoked.

In the example above we have created a macro that would stop any color changing that
was running on the Hue system and then recalled a Hue preset.

Enabling Customers to Store Scenes

If a customer changes a Hue scene on their Hue app you can provide a custom button
that saves the new levels to the Control4 system.

The customer needs to set the revised Hue scene using the Hue App and then press the
custom button you provide.

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Custom Scenes
You can use the methods below if you want to create custom lighting scenes which are
not equivalent to scenes created with the Hue App.

Scenes with Single Lamp Full Color Driver

With this driver you have two options for setting up the lighting scenes. You can either
use a setting of the each of the Red, Green and Blue channels or you can use custom
programming to set and exact Philips Hue color.

If you set the scene using the standard faders you can use the standard Control4 Lighting
Scenes Agent. If you want to include channels in an Advanced Lighting Scene you
should first create the scene as a normal Lighting Scene and then convert it to an
advanced lighting scene. Note you cannot use advanced properties like delays or
repeats.

You also have the opportunity to set and exact color for each channel using the xy co-
ordinates.

There is a device specific command for

this function.

You select the x, y co-ordinates as a

number between 0 and 1.

The Brightness is a number between 0

and 255.

The Ramp time is in milliseconds so in

the example on the right the ramp is 8
seconds long.

See the section below on retrieving the

xy co-ordinates of a current color set on
a Hue lamp.

To then set an exact scene you can set the scene up on the Control4 agent so that it
only includes the Brightness channel of the Hue lamp. Then add in additional
programming when the scene is activated/executed.

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Custom Scenes with Single Lamp Brightness driver
With the Single Lamp Brightness Driver you can use the standard Control4 lighting
scenes agent to set the brightness part of the scene. Then you can add in the color
changing part via custom programming.

With this driver you have three different ways to set the color on the Hue lamp which
enables you to mimic any of the scenes set up on the Hue Apps.

xy co-ordinates
This is as per the setting on the Single Lamp Full Color Driver.
Hue, Saturation and Brightness
The Hue is a setting between 0 and
65535. Both 0 and 65535 are Red,
25500 is the purest Green the lamp can
produce and 46920 is Blue.

The Saturation is a number between 0

and 255 where 255 is the most
saturated (colored) and 0 is the least
saturated (white).

Brightness is set between 0 and 255 –

remembering that 0 does not mean Off.

The ramp is in milliseconds.

Color Temperature
This setting is for setting a white color
from cool to warm (effectively blueish,
white and yellowish). This is the Mired
Color temperature of the light. 2012
Hue lights are capable of 153 (6500K)
to 500 (2000K).

Again you are also able to set the

Brightness and the Ramp Rate in
custom programming.

This enables you to set an accurate

color temperature to match any regular
‘white’ lamp you can purchase.

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Multi Step Advanced Lighting Scenes
With multi step Advanced Lighting Scenes you may want to change the color at each
step of the scene. To enable you to do this there is a variable in custom programming
that is updated at each step of the scene. So you can add programming when this
variable changes.

The logic is to add this programming when the variable Scene Step changes. Then check
which step of the scene is active and from there select the exact color you require by any
one of the methods available.

Showing the current lamp color

In order to accurately set a scene to match one defined on the Philips Hue App you need
to know how that scene is set for each lamp and what color they are displaying.

First set the scene using one of the Hue Apps

and ensure that it has settled into its final
color and brightness.

On the Actions tab for the lamp driver press

the ‘Show Current Color’ button.

Now switch to the Lua tab to see the result.

Color X is 0.5522 Color Y is 0.3773

Brightness real value is 211
Brightness is 83% Red is 100% Green is 77% Blue is 38%

For the Single Lamp Full Color Driver the color can only be displayed if the scene was set
as an xy co-ordinate. In this case it will show the exact co-ordinates and brightness and
the closest possible 4 Fader percentages. You can then use these figures to set the
Control4 scene using the Lighting agent and then the exact color using custom
programming.

If using the Single Lamp Brightness Driver then if the setting was via xy you will see the
exact co-ordiantes and brightness figures.

Color X is 0.5522 Color Y is 0.3773

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Brightness real value is 211

If the setting was made using Color Temperature then that will be shown along with the
Brightness

Color temperature is 462

Brightness
Brightness real value is 207
If the color was set using Hue and Saturation settings then those levels will be displayed
on the Lua tab.

You can then use the appropriate custom programming command to match the colors.

Automatic Color Changing Programs

One of the most popular requests with color changing lighting is for it to automatically
sequence between colors.

The Hue system lends itself to this application and on this system running automatic
color changing from Control4 has a very slow system overhead. You can run long slow
fades between colors as all the fade processing is handled by each lamp.

These random color changing programs are available on both the 4 Fader and Single
Lamp Brightness Drivers. The Mellow Yellow effect is only available on the Single Lamp
Brightness Driver.

Starting Random Colors through Programming

Setting up random color changing is selected in the Programming area of Composer and
can easily be programmed to a keypad button.

As an example we will use a Control4 three button keypad and will use the top button to
switch the Relatively Random color changing on and off. We will also need a Control4
Boolean variable that we have called ‘Random Colors’. So the basic programming of the
button when it is pressed would be as shown below.

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So if when Key 1 is pressed if Random Colors is false it is set to true and the LED button
color is set to Red. If Key 1 is pressed again Random Colors will be true so the LED will
be set to Blue and Random Colors set to false again.

Now we need to add the auto color fading commands to the program. If you select one
of the RGB fittings on the right hand side in the Actions pane you will see the usual
commands associated with a light plus some specific commands for this device. Note it
doesn’t matter whether you select the Red, Green, Blue or Master Channel.

The command we need to use is Start

Random Colors.

This has three parameters that need to be

set. The Hold for field allows you to set
how long in seconds a color will remain
static in seconds. The Fade Over field
allows you to select how long it will take
for each color to change to the next color.

So if you set Hold for to 3 and Fade over

to 40 then a color will be displayed for 3
seconds, then it will fade to the next
color in 40 seconds. This new color will be displayed for 3 seconds before fading to the
next color over 40 seconds and so on.

The Style drop down box allows you to choose one of the available effects.

Once you have chosen the fade and hold times for the effect add this to the
programming. Then add the Stop Random Colors code to the ‘off’ click of the switch.

So an example of completed programming would be as follows:

Selecting Color Changing Programs as Scenes on Touchpanels etc

If you would like to offer the color changing programs as a lighting scene proceed as
follows: Create a scene – but don’t add any lights to the scene. In programming

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program so that when the scene is recalled you start the appropriate color changing
program. Don’t forget to create a scene to switch the color changing off!

You will then need to make sure these lighting scenes are ‘visible’ in the room on the
Navigators. By default Control4 will hide these as they have no real lights in them.

Simple ‘Standard’ Colors

It is now also possible to set Hue lamps
to a number of simple standard colors.
These function are available in custom
programming for the Individual and
Lamp Group Drivers.

A number of standard colors are

defined. There are four ‘White’ colors.
WHITE is available for all lamps and will
set the Friends of Hue lights to the
closest they can provide to white.
WARM_WHITE, COOL_WHITE and MID-
WHITE will only function with the true
Hue lamps and will set a color
temperature.

The Brightness is a Hue brightness

figure from 0 to 255 and the Ramp is in
milliseconds.

Combining with a Physical On/Off Switch

One of the advantages of a Control4 integration with Philips Hue is the ability to integrate
and control the Physical On/Off switch in conjunction with the Hue lamps.

Consider a Living Room which has a single circuit of light for table lamps which are
controlled by a wall switch. If you simply replaced the lamps in the table lights with Hue
lights you would still need to make sure that the master wall switch was on. Horror of
horrors this may involve getting off the couch!

Integrating with Control4 enables you to replace that wall switch with a Control4 wall
switch as well as changing the lamps to Hue Lamps. This now enables complete control
whilst retaining the ability to manually switch the circuit On and Off at the wall.

When setting up any of the lighting scenes for the room make sure that you include the
master wall switch in them and set it On. This means that whenever the scene is set the
table lamp circuit is energized. You can include the master wall switch in any ‘Room Off’
scene too.

You need to remember that the Hue lamps do not retain their color state when they are
power cycled; they will power as white.

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If you use the 1 Fader version of the driver we also enable you to save and recall the last
color. So when the switch is turned ‘Off’ you can save the color and when it is switched
on you can recall the color.

Alternatively you could get more involved and depending on the time of day set one of
the lighting scenes. So if the customer switches on the lamps in the morning they get a
bright wake up scene, whilst if they switch it on in the evening they get a relaxing warm
lighting scene – all from their Control4 switch.

Remember you must NEVER connect the Hue lamps to a dimmer or dimmer switch.

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Activating the Driver
From Version 8 it is no longer necessary to purchase a license key in order to activate the
driver.

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Troubleshooting
There are three main causes of most problems with the operation of the interface.

Connections
Check also you connected the driver both physically and in Composer to the correct IP
address.

Can you control the lights using the Philips Hue software? If not check your Hue bridge
and installation.

Now check by double clicking on one of the Lights in system design to see if it can be
switched on and off.

If the lights switch On and Off from the Composer interface the problem lies with the
programming of the keypad. Work through the examples again.

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