Philips Hue Color Picker

Hue Picker is a bare-bones web server and application that controls a single Philips Hue light.

It gives control over an individual Hue light without opening up the entire home automation network. For instance, it allows children to manage the light in their own room without being able to mess around with all other lights or home automation appliances.

The Hue Picker web application can be installed as an App on the iOS or Android home screen to simplify its usage further.

Installation

Pre-built binaries are available on the release page. Download the binary, make it executable, and move it to a folder in your PATH:

curl -sSL https://github.com/tja/hue-picker/releases/download/v0.2.0/hue-picker-`uname -s`-`uname -m` >/tmp/hue-picker
chmod +x /tmp/hue-picker
sudo mv /tmp/hue-picker /usr/local/bin/hue-picker

Setup

Hue Picker requires to be registered with the local Hue bridge. This is done as follows:

hue-picker register

The tool instructs you to press the button on the Hue bridge. Once the button is pressed, three pieces of information will be printed; the Hue bridge's Host address, the Bridge ID, and the User ID.

The next step is to find the ID of the light that should be controlled. Using the Host address and Bridge ID, simply do:

hue-picker list --host="192.168.0.40" --user="YDbjwv...4arRIk"

The tool will output the list of rooms and associated lights. Each light is prefixed with the light ID in brackets (e.g. [00:17:88:01:02:07:21:13-0b]). Note down the light that Hue Picker should control.

Usage

Hue Picker serves a web application via its built-in web server. Using the previously gathered information, the server can be launched like this:

hue-picker serve --host="192.168.0.40" --user="YDbjwv...4arRIk" --light="00:17:...:21:13-0b"

Once started, the web application can be opened at http://localhost:80/ . Note that the port number and network interface can be changed via the --listen parameter.

Run hue-picker serve --help to see the list of all available options.

Configuration

Hue Picker will look for a configuration file config.yaml at several places in the following order:

• /etc/hue-picker/config.yaml
• $HOME/.config/hue-picker/config.yaml
• $PWD/config.yaml

Command line parameters and configuration file options are named the same.

Furthermore, Hue Picker can be configured via environment variables. Simply take the upper-cased command line parameter and prefix with HUE_PICKER_ — e.g. --host becomes HUE_PICKER_HOST, --bridge becomes HUE_PICKER_BRIDGE, etc.

Command line parameters override configuration file options, which override environment variables.

License

Copyright (c) 2022–23 Thomas Jansen. Released under the MIT License.

Smart light icons created by Freepik - Flaticon