(2014-07-06, 09:22)dannygee222 Wrote: Hi, I should be getting my hue bulbs and bridge shortly, and am really looking forward to pairing it with xbmc. However, ideally I would like the lamp behind my tv to be the ambilight, and the other 3 lamps to dim when I play a film on xbmc. Is this possible with the hue add on, or is it a case of one or the other? If anyone could let me know, I would be very grateful. Thanks
This is fairly easy. It took me some time to figure out how to do this, since the instructions on the internet are a bit lacking and fairly complicated, but I have found an easier way to do the setup.
SETTING LIGHTS TO BE USED AS AMBILIGHTS
The XBMC
Ambilight add-on allows one to select how many lights should be used as “ambilights”. You can control either 1, 2 or 3 lights. It took me some time to figure out where to get the “Light ID” that is required by the XBMC add-on, until I realised it is actually very simple – one simply has to use the number assigned to the light in the sequence your lights were added. To get this number, simply open up the (original)
Philips Hue App on your Android device and go to the “My lights” section under “Settings”. (This can only be done while connected to the same wifi network and since I’m away from home for a while, I’m unable to make a screenshot to explain). The lights are listed with numbers next to them – those are the numbers you want.
If you wish to control only one light behind your TV e.g., you’ll select the “1 light” option in the XBMC add-on under “How many lights to be controlled” (can’t remember the exact wording) and add the light’s number obtained from your mobile app as explained above.
That’s all there is to setting up the Ambilight.
DIMMING OTHER LIGHTS IN THE ROOM
To dim other lights in the room, you have to create a group on the Hue bridge and assign all the lights in the room to that group. (There is a default group “0” on the bridge, which includes all the lights connected to the bridge. So if you wish to dim all the hue-lights in your home, you could simply use group 0.)
To dim specific lights belonging to a group, a group has to be created on the bridge and the process to do that, is fairly complicated if the commonly suggested procedure on the internet is followed. (Light Groups created with most of the Mobile apps, are not created on the Bridge itself and cannot be used for this procedure).
There is however an app that will create the groups on the bridge itself and using this app to create the groups is a lot simpler than the procedure usually used to create groups on the bridge.
The app is called
Hue Control. Say e.g. you wish to create a group “Lounge” with 5 lights in the group (to dim the lights in your lounge when movie playback starts). To do this, create a group “Lounge” with the Hue Control-app and add the 5 lights/bulbs to the group (also in Hue Control) which will be members of this group. Since this is the first group you have created, the group’s number will be “1” on the bridge.
All that remains to be done is to go back to the Ambilight add-on in XBMC, select “Dim a group of lights when playback starts” and add “1” as the group number (under “Advanced Settings” if I remember correctly).
That’s it. Once your movie starts playing, all the lights of group “Lounge” will dim and only the light of which you have added the ID in XMBC to be controlled by it, will change colour.
If you have numerous groups or are uncertain of the group number, there is a fairly simple procedure to check the group numbers:
You first have to create a user on the Bridge: Follow all the steps on
this page to log into the bridge from a browser and to create a user.
Once that has been done, go to
this page for instructions on how to extract the group numbers of your Philips Bridge. (Remember to replace <username> with the name you have created in the first step i.e. “newdeveloper” if you followed the instructions in step one to the letter.)
Hope this helps.