[Release] Holiday Lighting

It's cool to use colored lights for holiday displays. I just got RGBWW lights for my porch, and set out to configure them for holidays.

Surprisingly, there are relatively few apps that allow scheduling different color palettes for different holidays. I found one lighting app which had a "holiday" mode, but it only allowed selecting a single set of colors; it would need to be manually changed for each holiday.

So I wrote one.

This app performs two related functions with a set of RGB lights:

  • Because these lights are probably also used for normal illumination, it provides a simple lighting-triggered-by-sensors option. If you want to do something more complex, designate a switch as your trigger; illumination mode will follow that switch's on/off.
  • On scheduled holidays, a holiday-themed set of colors is applied to the selected lights.

Install options:

Please try it, add your own holidays, and let me know what you think!

25 Likes

This looks awesome!! I've been looking for something like this for a while! I will install it when I get home and play with it.

I have two Inovelli RGB bulbs on my Garage. Something like this is what intended to do, but didn't see any apps for it, so I've just sorta been stuck with remembering to change each bulb. A couple questions:
Can you set the schedule to run for longer times? For example Thanksgiving through New Years for the holidays? or multiple days for other holidays like memorial, Law Enforcement memorial Week, etc.
When using multiple colors, Does it just randomly set the colors, or does it let you specify colors for each bulb ?
Can you use just a single color , For example just blue for LEO Memorial week, or just green for Military Appreciation day?

1 Like

Can you set the schedule to run for longer times? For example Thanksgiving through New Years for the holidays? or multiple days for other holidays like memorial, Law Enforcement memorial Week, etc.

You can set either a single date or a range. Single dates run the night before and night of the specified date, since I'm assuming this will normally be used at night. An explicit range runs exactly those dates (plus spillover to the next day if your active range crosses midnight) .

When using multiple colors, Does it just randomly set the colors, or does it let you specify colors for each bulb ?

A couple of modes. You can choose to put all bulbs to the same color or different ones per bulb; you can choose to apply the colors randomly, sequentially, or always stay the same color.

Can you use just a single color , For example just blue for LEO Memorial week, or just green for Military Appreciation day?

Absolutely. If there's only a single color, it doesn't matter whether you select single versus multiple.

3 Likes

This sounds like just what I have been looking for! I will give this a try when I get home this morning.

1 Like

When I get my floods setup I'm gonna give this a whirl. Looks good... Now if I could find zigbee/zwave rgb patio string lights

Cool! I am in the middle of installing 9 Hue outdoor flood lights around my house... your timing is perfect. Just in time for the 4th!

1 Like

I'm getting an unexpected token error when trying to import the code to add it to my apps.

Summary

It looks like you're trying to paste in the Javascript code. You want the one that ends in .groovy.

(The JS is also embedded in the .groovy file as a giant string, but I have a copy in a separate file so I can edit with syntax highlighting et al. Would love a cleaner way to maintain this, but... :man_shrugging:)

1 Like

Yep.. that was it. I didn't even notice.. shoulda taken a nap first!

You should add this to HPM

Probably will, but would like one or two other people to poke it with a stick first. Shake out the most egregious bugs. :wink:

1 Like

I'm receiving my govee patio lights tomorrow so I will test those along with my gledopto flood lights

Set this up the other day (Perfect timing for July 4). So far seems to be working very well!! Thank you!!

2 Likes

This is something I've been trying to figure out how to nicely automate. Playing with it now.

You should add this to HPM!

As I said above, I'd like a few people to have poked at it. But if everyone who's said they're going to in this thread is using it with no problems, I'll look at it next week.

2 Likes

I believe there is a beta section in HPM aswell.

My only issue so far (and I'm pretty sure it a minor thing , and I just haven't gotten into it yet). It seems to be turning my lights off early (should be sunset - sunrise, central time in North Texas) . But its one of those hummm, that's odd things that I just noticed and haven't done a deep dive into yet. I also have an event engine cog to turn them on and off same times. might be conflicting with each other.

check your long/lat in settings..

Significantly, or just a few minutes? I haven't found a good way to get tomorrow's sunrise time from the previous day, so when I initially schedule, I take the current day's sunrise/sunset times with tomorrow's date.

I know that results in a minor error, but it seems tolerable. If it's a major error (or someone can point me to the right way to fetch the time!), I'll take a closer look.

Can you not use the hubs built in scheduling in the api? Or is that not part of hubitat's api?