Bag a bargain! Scrutiny included in Creatable bundle

The Creatable Pick A Bundle 2018 contains 28 varied utilities, including our own Scrutiny website scrutineer. You can choose ten for $39 or all of them for $99.

If you're a user of Philips Hue or LIFX bulbs, our own Mac apps for these lighting systems are also included.

So that's Scrutiny plus nine other useful apps for less than half the regular price of Scrutiny.

Check out the bundle now
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Lifestyle for LIFX and LIFXstyle - what's going on?

This post has the relevant keywords in the title for the benefit of anyone who uses Google to find clarification.

For some years now (since Oct 2014) my app for controlling LIFX bulbs has been called LIFXstyle (pronounced Lifestyle by me but no-one else would know that and is free to say it how they like). Incidentally it's based on Hue-topia (for Philips Hue bulbs) which goes back to 2013.

I started the year with some optimism, as you do, determined to spend the time and jump through the hoops and publish more of my apps on the Mac App Store. This 'can-do' attitude was quickly knocked into touch after two rejections of this app (technically one 'more information' and one rejection). One of the reasons for rejection was the name.

It's frustrating to be faced with an imperative to change the name of something so well-established (and well-selling). So I'm not changing the name of the version sold outside of the Apple Store, unless LIFX themselves complain, which they haven't to date.

"XXXX for LIFX" was the format suggested by Apple in the rejection. The rejection was under their 'copycat' policy, I guess it was too similar to "LIFX" which is the name of LIFX's own app. Anyway, of course I went with their suggestion, keeping the new name as similar as I possibly could to the original name of my app.

That's the reason why the version available for web download is called LIFXstyle and the version on the App Store is called Lifestyle for LIFX
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Drag and drop colours from and to LIFX and Hue bulbs

If you're an existing user of LIFXstyle or Hue-topia you may think "that's not new". Versions 1 and 2 did allow you to drag colours around but with version 3 and much new functionality, the drag and drop has been missing.

The drag and drop does now carry the warmth / colour temperature value. (And of course brightness and saturation.) So if you've found a nice setting for one lamp, whether that's white with a little warmth or a full-on colour, you can drag the colour to other lamps / groups / locations.

This will be in Hue-topia 3.0.9 and is already released in LIFXstyle 3.1.1

How a LIFX Z strip looks behind stained glass

Here's a personal story; I was a stained glass artist for some years and have a few pieces in my home and office now.

LIFX have recently released their 'Z' multizone light strips. I must admit that at first I thought it was a bit of a novelty. I bought some because I had to add support to PeacockMedia's LIFXstyle app.

After playing around a bit and trying strips in various places, I tried lighting this particular stained glass panel in my office. I tried various placements before I tried sticking a metre of the stuff behind the thick vertical line down the middle.

 And here's how it looks after putting it back up and switching on:

It really works well, I'm chuffed to bits with it. But even better than that - you can change the light from warm white to cold white, and all the colours of the spectrum:

 At first, LIFXstyle (v3.0) was capable of switching the entire strip to the same colour / brightness. One of the great features of the lightstrip is that it's divided into 'zones' (hence Z, multizone). After a little work on LIFXstyle we were dialling up different colours / settings for each 'zone'.

 Version 3.1 allows you to mess around with colour and save the settings you like as a preset, apply cycling effects to the whole strip or parts of it. (An early version of 3.1 will be available very shortly.)

Finally, because I can't resist another picture, here are some pretty pastels.

Effects Designer for LIFX and Hue bulbs

Here is the first look at a new drag and drop lighting effects designer for our Hue-topia and LIFXstyle light controllers.



You'll be able to create more sophisticated versions of the false dawn / dusk or go the whole hog and create a 24hr daylight simulator (blue hour / golden hour etc)

And you'll be able to get creative and design mood effects such as flickering fire, colour cycling for party effects or mood.

I think all bases are covered, you can set the length of the whole cycle from 1s to 24hrs, whether it's 'one shot' or loops, the length of the transitions.

You can apply effects to a single bulb, groups or rooms, manually or on schedule.

This feature is now in version 2.0 (beta) of  LIFXstyle and Hue-topia