What's happened to Hue-topia?

The Hue-topia Mac app goes back to November 2013. To be frank, it has been in a vicious cycle of very little interest / therefore very few updates, and has not kept up with changes from Philips such as additions to their API and dropping of support for the v1 (round) bridge.

From the start, Hue-topia had its own interface concepts which it shared with LIFXstyle. These didn't always align with the concepts of the Hue system. Therefore HT was doing a lot of conversion / bridging. This led to a lot of unnecessary complexity and inconsistency within the app,

Hue-topia version 4 is a new version for 2021 and way more of an overhaul than it may appear from the interface.  It is intended to be more of an interface with your bridge, and have concepts which align with the Hue system.

Key changes include:

• Presets are now Scenes. The scenes list is a nice way to control your lights (click to select a scene appropriate for the mood or time of day, using manual controls for creating those scenes). HT4 allows you to add your own photograph / icon to represent a scene.
• Uses newer additions to Philips' API, such as 'localtime' rather than 'time'. These changes tend to make HT less complex and more likely to work as expected.
• Sunrise and Sunset functionality used to be managed pretty heavily by HT. It calculated times using your location, allowed you to select from the various definitions of sunset/sunrise, and could regularly update scheduled times on the bridge accordingly. Now the Hue Bridge has its own daylight functionality with configurable offsets and it's more appropriate to make use of that. (not yet implemented in the v4 beta).
• Support for sensors. The motion sensor, besides detecting motion and having a little configurability, also has a temperature sensor which can be viewed in HT4.
• Effects and the effects designer are no longer a feature of Hue-topia. We feel it's more appropriate for this functionality to form a separate app, which we'll do if people ask.

Version 4 is just about ready for beta. ie most of the functionality (that's intended for v4.0) is there but is in the testing / fixing stage. It'll be freely available for public testing very shortly. 

Getting started - Hue-topia for Mac

After following these steps which will only take a couple of minutes, you’ll know how to make and use presets, set your lamps to turn on and off on schedule and use effects.

(This tutorial was written on 8 August 2018 and supersedes the previous version of the same tutorial.)

The latest version of Huetopia is available here

1.  If you’ve not already done so, make sure your Bridge and some bulbs are switched on and start Hue-topia. The first time that you start the app it will try to find your bridge and attempt to log in. Finding the bridge requires an internet connection.

The only thing that you should need to do is to press the button on the bridge when instructed, to pair it with the Hue-topia app. If there are any problems at this stage, see Troubleshooting in the Hue-ser manual. 

Make and try two presets

2. turn the brightness and the whiteness of all of your lamps all the way up and make sure all are on.

3. Click the [+] button (Save preset) and type ‘All white’ for the name of the new preset. OK that.

4. Turn the brightness and also the whiteness of all of your lamps to three quarters of the way up.

5. Click the [+] button (Save preset) and type ‘All warm’ for the name of the new preset. OK that.

6. You now have two presets and can use these from the Presets button in the toolbar and also from the status bar. Try this.

Make a preset that affects only certain lamps

7. Go to 'Manage presets...' from the Presets toolbar button or the Lamps menu.

8. Choose your preset from the window that appears, and press 'Lamps affected'. You'll now see a checkbox alongside each lamp in the main control window. Uncheck some of the lamps, press 'OK'.  Your preset will now only affect the lamps that remained checked.

Set your lamps to turn on and off on schedule

9. Press the Schedules button or ‘Show schedules’ from the View menu (command-2 also shows this window).

10. Press the [+] button at the bottom-left of the Schedules window.

11. Type ‘Daily’ for the name, select ‘On & Off’, select ‘group: all’, type 17:00 for on and 23:00 for off. Leave all days selected. Click somewhere outside of the small window to save and close those settings.

All lamps are now set to switch on at 5pm and off at 11pm. Note that this will work even when your computer and Huetopia aren't running, because Hue-topia copies its schedules to the bridge.

Make and try an effect

12. Press the Effects toolbar button, and press the [+] button below your list of effects.

13. Type the name 'Pastels', and press the [+] below the timeline strip a couple of times to add a couple more nodes. Space them out equally


14. Click inside the colour swatch of the first node and choose a nice pastel colour. Do the same for the other two. Adjust the cycle time to a value that you like and make sure 'Loop' is selected. The preview swatch should show the effect animating. When that's working as you like, OK the sheet.

15. Return to the main window. Choose a light or group that you want to apply your effect to. Look for the little 'effect' icon in the control strip (ringed below). Click that and a menu of your effects will pop up. Choose your new Pastels effect and Hue-topia should start animating that effect for the chosen bulb or group. While the effect is running, the little icon will rotate.

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
SaveSave

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

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

Philips Hue bulbs, see your Hue-topia schedules as a gantt chart

The gantt chart mentioned in the previous post (as a new feature in LIFXstyle) is now built into Hue-topia

Hue-topia gives you a number of ways to schedule your lamps; groups, presets, dawn/dusk, and with a number of schedules set up, it may be difficult to see what's going on. The chart shows you any day or a week (bearing in mind that schedules can be set to happen on particular days).

It will be ready for beta testing soon. If you're interested in running it, please let me know.

Panic button for switching on connected bulbs

Problem: There have been occasions when I've been woken up in the middle of the night by a sound, maybe something innocent, but it hasn't always been. In a half-asleep state I want to be able to reach out and hit a button to switch on all of my lights.

I have many connected bulbs, some LIFX, some Hue, so this shouldn't be a big deal.

Here are the options I can think of:

iPhone: This is the most obvious solution, but is actually the most clumsy. There are two apps I have to get into to switch on all of my lights. (Though I could make a single app to do this.) From a locked state that's a lot of pressing and tapping, and doesn't touch-ID always fail to work when you most need it to? It's certainly a long way away from simply reaching out and fumbling for a big 'on' button.

A great solution would be to make an app that would respond to the phone being picked up and shaken. Can an iOS app respond to a shake from a locked state? I don't think so. This solution might work but would probably need the phone to be 'armed' at night by bringing the app in question to the front and turning auto-lock off.

Hue Tap: This is exactly the kind of solution I'm looking for, but a/ it would only operate my Hue bulbs and b/ they're fifty quid. Seems a bit much for four programmable buttons purely dedicated to the Hue bulbs.

Laptop: I usually have one within reach when I'm asleep. In theory this is pretty slick - reach out for it, lift the lid and hit one of the F keys that I've programmed to mean 'all on'. In practice it takes more seconds than you'd think to fumble for it, lift the lid, wait for it to connect to the wireless network before hitting the key. (When you wake up in the early hours, it's almost painful to squint at a screen.) It would be possible to leave the laptop close to the bed with the lid open and prevented from going to sleep but again this requires some bedtime preparation.

Some kind of bluetooth button: Here we're getting closer, I believe it'll be feasible to buy a cheap bluetooth device pair it with the computer (I didn't mention that I have an 'always on' mac looking after various household things) and write an app to receive that button press and toggle the lights on / off

That last option reminded me of this:

It was under my desk covered in dust. (I love the old white extended keyboards with big clunky keys). It's essentially a bluetooth controller with loads of programmable buttons. Even better is that LIFXstyle and Hue-topia can already respond to F-key presses, with or without a modifier key.

Here's how to get things set up:

1. pair the keyboard with the 'always on' mac

2. set the f-keys to work as f-keys without pressing the fn key (System Preferences > Keyboard)

3. in Hue-topia and/or LIFXstyle, go into Preferences>Hotkeys and choose which presets you want to trigger with each F key.

That's it - I can reach out and bash one of the first few f-keys. A single keypress triggers a preset in both apps. (I've assigned the first couple of F keys to the same 'all on bright' preset). Other f-keys trigger other presets including 'all off'. It works beautifully, immediately and from anywhere in the house, and even outside.

Next steps:

One of these:

It could be fastened to the wall within reach of the bed. These can be had for much less than a Philips Tap, also much more versatile - it also has plenty of other keys for controlling other things in the future. (Any future app could listen for any of the keys on this keypad). LIFXsyle and Hue-topia would need an enhancement for assigning those high-number f-keys (this improvement is already on the enhancement list.)

Are there other wireless ways of triggering lights / sending a message to a mac that I've not considered? As always, I'll be grateful for thoughts in the comments.

Scripting to create effects with your Hue / LIFX bulbs

This tutorial uses Hue-topia (for Philips Hue bulbs) or LIFXstyle (for LIFX bulbs)

It also uses Applescript. Code is provided below (which you'll be able to modify and develop) and you'll need Applescript Editor which you'll find on your Mac.

This previous article explained how to send a command to switch to a named preset. As from version 1.4 of LIFXstyle and v1.8.1 of Hue-topia it's also possible to read and set the state of individual bulbs or groups (on/off, hue, brightness, whiteness) from a script.

Accessing a bulb / group

To get started, type:

tell application "LIFXStyle"

# or tell application "Hue-topia"

get properties of first lamp

end tell

The result should be something like:

{class:lamp, hue:39, whiteness:225, brightness:225, title:"Living A", identity:"d073d500cc1c", state:true}

You can access a bulb / group by its name or ID. We're using name here (actually called  'title' when scripting). But of course you can easily change this, so to futureproof your script, you might like to use the ID instead (actually called 'identity' when scripting). You can find the identity of a bulb by using the example above.

To access a particular bulb, use something like:

properties of first lamp whose title is "Living A"

(Obviously one of my lamps is called 'Living A' - change that for the name of one of your lamps) 

lamp  is one of your lamps

group  is one of your groups

lamps  gets you a collection containing all of your lamps

groups gets you a collection containing all of your groups

Accessing individual bulbs within a group 

(since HT v1.8.2 and LS v1.4.1)  group contains lamps so:

        set collectionOfLamps to a reference to lamps of (first group whose title is "AllBarSecurity")

        set brightness of first item of collectionOfLamps to 80

Changing the colour of a bulb

This example switches the bulb on and sets the colour to red:

set state of first lamp whose title is "Living A" to 1

set hue of first lamp whose title is "Living A" to 0  # zero is red

set whiteness of first lamp whose title is "Living A" to 0

Note a lamp must be on when you send hue, whiteness or brightness, otherwise the instruction will have no effect. That's just the way the bulbs work. 

Note also that the state being off isn't the same thing as the brightness being 0 (LIFX bulbs fade right down to nothing with the state still set to on. Hue bulbs' minimum brightness is still quite a bit of light.)

whiteness, brightness and hue can be an integer between 0 and 255. state is a boolean so can be true/false or 0/1

Some approximate colour values:

Red: 0
Green: 85
Blue: 170
Yellow: 32
Orange: 20
Purple: 200

Loops and pauses 

All the usual Applescript program flow applies here. The script below will cycle all of your lamps randomly red, green and white. (Perfect for Christmas)

tell application "LIFXStyle"

#or tell application "Hue-topia"

repeat

set n to (number of items in lamps)

set i to (random number from 1 to n)

set whiteness of lamp i to 0

set hue of lamp i to 85 # green 

delay 0.5

set i to (random number from 1 to n)

set whiteness of lamp i to 0

set hue of lamp i to 0 # red 

delay 0.5

set i to (random number from 1 to n)

set whiteness of lamp i to 255 # white 

delay 0.5

#press cmd . to stop

end repeat

end tell

This script cycles a given lamp through the whole colour spectrum:

tell application "LIFXStyle"

# or tell application "Hue-topia"

repeat

repeat with hueValue from 0 to 255

set (hue of first lamp whose title is "Living A") to hueValue

delay 0.1

end repeat

end repeat

end tell

For more documentation see AppleScript Editor's File > Open Dictionary... (choose LIFXstyle or Hue-topia)

If you write a cool script, do share.

Hue-topia is now scriptable

Hue-topia now offers limited scripting support (Hue-topia version 1.7.1 + ). It makes your presets available from other apps or triggered by certain actions.

Below is a brief explanation and then an example of how to control your bulbs remotely by sending yourself an email.

Your presets are available using the command preset:

The name of your preset is case-sensitive. The result will be 1 if the preset was found and triggered, or 0 if there was a problem.

In addition to your named presets, you can use "All on", "All off", "All blink" (the latter could be used to alert you to something like new email coming in).

Control your lights remotely

This example allows you to send an instruction to your lights from anywhere and any device. It sets up Mail to trigger a script when an email is received with a specific subject line.

1. Create a script that says:

tell application "Hue-topia"

preset "All on"

end tell

2. Save the script somewhere.

3. Create a rule in Mail (Preferences > Rules. You will need to add the new script to Mail ( to ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail. Or choose “Open in Finder” from the rules window to open the folder so you can copy a script into it.)

4. Create a new script and rule for each preset you want to control by mail.

5. To test, send yourself an email with the subject you've specified in the rule.

Hue-topia and the Apple colour picker

Since version 1.6, the Philips Hue home lighting controller for OSX, Hue-topia, has had a colour picker built in rather than previously a circular slider. (improved in 1.6.1 and 1.6.2)

Hue-topia now displays the colour in a way which is more akin to the bulb itself, but the colour picker itself is the standard OSX colour picker. The tips below apply to Hue-topia and any other app which uses the standard colour picker.

1. Favourites

When you've found a colour you like, save it as a favourite. Just drag and drop from the large swatch near the top (or from another colour well) to the little palette at the bottom. From now on you can just click on the little palette square to select the colour. Bonus tip - grab and drag that little handle just below the palette when it gets full.

2. drag and drop between colour wells

You don't even need to open the colour picker to copy a colour from one well to another. This works in any app that uses standard colour wells.

3. Other ways to choose colour

You're not limited to that colour wheel. The picker has several options built in - sliders, palettes, image (you can even drag your own image in there) and the very old favourite, crayons.

See the magnifying glass just below the toolbar? Click that to pick a colour from anywhere else on your screen.

If all of this isn't enough, you can add third-party plugins to the picker.

I bet there are some tricks that I've missed. Write them in the comments below.

Getting started - Hue-topia - Philips Hue home lights controller for Mac

This tutorial is now out of date, and has been superseded by this newer version of the same tutorial.

After following these steps which will only take a couple of minutes, you’ll know how to make and use presets, set your lamps to turn on and off on schedule and set it to listen 

The latest version of Huetopia is available here

1.  If you’ve not already done so, make sure your Bridge and some bulbs are switched on and start Hue-topia. The first time that you start the app it will try to find your bridge and attempt to log in. Finding the bridge requires an internet connection. 

Make and try two presets

2. turn the brightness and the whiteness of all of your lamps all the way up and make sure all are on.

3. Click the [+] button (Save preset) and type ‘All white’ for the name of the new preset. OK that.

4. Turn the brightness and also the whiteness of all of your lamps to three quarters of the way up.

5. Click the [+] button (Save preset) and type ‘All warm’ for the name of the new preset. OK that.

6. You now have two presets and can use these from the Presets button in the toolbar and also from the status bar. Try this.

Set your lamps to turn on and off on schedule

7. Press the Schedules button or ‘Show schedules’ from the View menu (command-2 also shows this window).

8. Press the [+] button at the bottom-left of the Schedules window. 

9. Type ‘Daily’ for the name, select ‘On & Off’, select ‘group: all’, type 17:00 for on and 23:00 for off. Leave all days selected. Click somewhere outside of the small window to save and close those settings.

All lamps are now set to switch on at 5pm and off at 11pm.

Set your computer to listen for sound while you are out and respond by switching on the lights

10. Select t’he All warm’  preset and make sure that the ‘Listen’ button isn’t pressed in.

10. Click the Settings button in the toolbar or ‘Hue-topia > Preferences from the menu bar (command - comma is the standard keyboard shortcut for Preferences)

11. If you make a noise, you should see flashing lights in the level indicator. This uses your sound input source set in System Preferences > Sound > Input, so check there if you can’t see a sound level being indicated.

12. Adjust the slider so that you see red lights if you walk around the room or open a door.

13. Choose ‘All white’ 

14. Close that window

15. Return to the manual control window and click ‘Listen’ in the main toolbar. You’ll see that there’s a delay of 60 seconds which you can use if you are leaving the room or the house.

16 Click ’Start now’. The computer is now listening for sound and will respond by turning up all of the lights if it hears a sound. if there’s silence for 5 minutes, the lights should go back down again.