Control Phone Light Via API for Smart Homes

Controlling your phone's light via API is a game-changer for smart homes. This feature allows you to adjust the brightness and color of your phone's screen remotely, making it a seamless addition to your home automation system.

With the right API, you can integrate your phone's light control with popular smart home devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home. For example, you can use the API to turn on the lights in your living room with just a voice command.

The API can also be used to schedule the screen's brightness and color to match your daily routine. Imagine waking up to a warm and cozy screen in the morning, or dimming the lights for a movie night.

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Obtaining Light Information is a crucial step in controlling your phone's light via API. You can send a GET request to retrieve an object containing various information about the light.

The response consists of four main objects: state, info, effects, and palettes. These objects provide valuable information about the current state of the light, general device information, available effect modes, and palette names respectively.

You can access each object individually using specific URLs, such as /json/state, /json/info, /json/eff, and /json/pal.

To get an authorization code, you need to construct a URL like this: https://api.meethue.com/oauth2/auth?clientid=ClientId&response_type=code&state=anystring&appid=AppId&deviceid=DeviceId&devicename=DeviceName.

You can use Postman to construct this URL, but you won't be able to run the query directly from there.

You'll need to copy the URL from the code view on the right and paste it into your browser.

Logging in with your Hue Developer account and granting permission to your app registration is the next step.

After granting permission, you'll be redirected to the Callback Url you specified earlier.

Copy the authorization code from this URL and paste it into the environment variable for AuthorizationCode.

Getting light information is a straightforward process. You can obtain it by sending a GET request, which will return an object with four main parts: state, info, effects, and palettes.

The state object contains the current state of the light, and all its values can be modified by the client. This is useful if you want to adjust the light's settings on the fly.

The info object, on the other hand, contains general information about the device, but its values cannot be modified using this API. It's more like a static description of the device.

You can also obtain the effects and palettes objects individually using specific URLs. For example, you can get the effects list by using the URL /json/eff.

Some effects may be unsupported in certain builds, like audio reactive effects that only work on ESP32. If you call an unsupported effect, it will fallback to the Solid effect.

To improve user experience, it's a good idea to remove effects with the names RSVD or - from the UI effect selection.

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You can control your light's state with a simple PUT request to the specified light number. For example, to turn light number 12 off, you'd send a request to https://api.meethue.com/bridge/{{username}}/lights/12/state with a body of {“on”:false}.

To turn the light back on, you'd send a similar request with a body of {“on”:true}. The response will confirm success, and you should be able to visually confirm the change as well.

You can also control brightness and color with PUT requests. For example, to change the brightness of light number 12 to a certain level, you'd send a request to the same URL with a body specifying the new brightness value.

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To start controlling your lights remotely, you need to create a new Remote Hue API app. First, go to the Hue Developer account and create a new app on the my-apps page.

You'll need to specify a few required fields, including the app name, which should be a display name for your remote app. The callback URL should be specified as https://app.getpostman.com/oauth2/callback.

You can also add an optional application description and contact details. After submitting your new app, it will be ready, and you'll receive an AppId, ClientId, and ClientSecret.

These variables will be used later in the process, so make sure to save them in your environment variables for safekeeping.

To enable the link button for Remote API, you need to create a PUT request.

You'll remember this from the Hue setup, where you'd press the link button on your bridge to add new users.

The request should include the Authorization header with the value Bearer {{AccessToken}}, which retrieves your environment variable from the access token you previously obtained.

Set the Body of the request to {"linkbutton": true}.

Sending the request should yield a success response.

You can control the state of a specific light by doing a PUT request to your specified light number, for example light number 12: https://api.meethue.com/bridge/{{username}}/lights/12/state. This is a simple way to turn a light on or off.

To turn a light off, just include a body with {“on”:false}, and the response will confirm success. You can visually confirm the light is off as well.

You can also change the brightness of a light by specifying a value between 1 and 254. For example, a value of 20 represents 20% brightness.

Light color is primarily controlled by the CIE color space, where you specify an array of two values between 0 and 1 expressed as x and y. This allows for a wide range of colors to be set.

You can use GET to get the light state color settings, and then experiment with different colors to find the one you like. A good tip is to use your Hue App on your mobile phone to set the color you like.

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Light State Management is a crucial part of controlling your phone light via API. You can obtain light information by sending a GET request to the API, which will return an object with four main components: state, info, effects, and palettes.

The state object contains the current state of the light, which can be modified by the client. The info object contains general information about the device and cannot be modified using the API. Effects and palettes are arrays of effect mode names and palette names, respectively.

In WLED versions 0.14+, some effects may not work on certain builds, such as audio reactive effects on ESP32. To improve user experience, it's recommended to remove unsupported effects from the UI effect selection.

To control the light state, you can send a PUT request to the API with a Request Body that specifies the desired state. For example, to turn a light off, you would send a body with {"on":false}. The response will confirm success, and you should be able to visually confirm the change as well.

You can also control the light state and colors using the API. This involves changing brightness, going from cold white to warm white, or setting a color scene for the millions of colors available if your light supports color. More information on this can be found in the API documentation.

Here are some key parameters to keep in mind when controlling light state and colors:

You can also use the Hue App on your mobile phone to set the color you like, and then use GET to get the light state color settings. This can be a helpful way to experiment and learn about light state management.

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To control your phone's light via API, you need to understand the different light settings.

You can obtain light information by sending a GET request, which returns an object with four main parts: state, info, effects, and palettes.

The state contains the current light state, while info provides general information about the device.

You can also get individual objects like effects and palettes using specific URLs.

Some effects may be unsupported on certain devices, so it's recommended to remove them from the UI effect selection to improve user experience.

To control light state and colors, you can send a GET request to get the current state, then modify it to change brightness, color, or other settings.

Light brightness is controlled by a value between 1 and 100, where 20 represents 20% brightness.

Here's a quick reference to the different light settings:

You can also control light color using the CIE color space, where you specify an array of two values between 0 and 1 expressed as x and y.