Hi all,I've just got my BLGW and already absolutely loving it. It seems to work really well and be very solid as a system. I love how it's suddenly exposed the inner workings of what my B&O products are doing behind the scenes (I'm almost obsessively monitoring what's going on as I press various buttons). I thought I'd start a thread diary, on what experiences I go through with it etc. I'm sure I'm going to be pestering you all for hints and experiences too. Already so much great stuff I've learnt on here. @beojeff I owe all my Hue knowledge to you!Is that really self indulgent or quite a handy thing to do? 👍 I don't want to bore everyone!
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BLGW Diary
31 replies
That's great. Love to know and learn more about the BLGW
Congratulations on your addition! I think the thread is a great idea.
Did you take advantage of the "capture resources" feature for Hue under the "Resources" tab? It imports all of your Lights, Scenes, and Groups from the Hue bridge.You might not know yet how to use Hue "Groups" since that feature isn't in the current Hue app. However, Groups can be really useful. You can create Groups of lights using the Hue debug utility on your computer. For example, you can create a group of lights for a particular room and each group gets a numeric value assigned to it. The default Group is "0" as a Group that includes all of your lights.
If you find yourself getting really odd results from a macro, you likely have made a mistake in a macro somewhere --sometimes in another macro that creates a conflict. This can drive you crazy trying to track down the error.
Once you have a good set of Hue Scenes and Groups and good macros, you might want to take it to the next level: adding an Amazon Echo! You can then create IFTTT macros to trigger your BLGW macros using voice commands.
Have fun!
I thought it might be useful to contribute to this thread a list of LIGHT and CONTROL commands that I have found have particular uses by B&O. The list is incomplete and still needs some work.
LIGHT FUNCTION 1 through LIGHT FUNCTION 10 are used for Beo4 navi commands.
CONTROL FUNCTION 22 through CONTROL FUNCTION 33 are used for Beo4 navi commands.
LIGHT FUNCTION 22 through LIGHT FUNCTION 27 are used for Essence Remote buttons in LIGHT mode.
The following are commands assigned to functions on the BeoRemote One (the list is incomplete):
LIGHT FUNCTION 1 = MORNING
LIGHT FUNCTION 2 = LEAVING
LIGHT FUNCTION 3 = COMING HOME
LIGHT FUNCTION 4 = TV VIEWING
LIGHT FUNCTION 5 = EVENING
LIGHT FUNCTION 6 = MUSIC
LIGHT FUNCTION 7 = RELAX
LIGHT FUNCTION 8 = SLEEP
LIGHT FUNCTION 9 = GENERAL
LIGHT FUNCTION 10 = OUTDOOR
= HOME
= DINNER
= CINEMA
= BEDTIME
= NIGHT
= WELCOME HOME
= GOODBYE
CONTROL FUNCTION 1 = WINDOW 1
CONTROL FUNCTION 2 = WINDOW 2
CONTROL FUNCTION 3 – WINDOW 3
CONTROL FUNCTION 4 = WINDOW 4
CONTROL FUNCTION 5 = WINDOW 5
CONTROL FUNCTION 11 = CURTAIN 1
CONTROL FUNCTION 12 = CURTAIN 2
CONTROL FUNCTION 13 = CURTAIN 3
CONTROL FUNTION 14 = CURTAIN 4
CONTROL FUNCTION 15 = CURTAIN 5
CONTROL FUNCTION 21 = ON_OFF1
CONTROL FUNCTION 22 = ON_OFF2
CONTROL FUNCTION 23 = ON_OFF3
CONTROL FUNCTION 24 = ON_OFF4
CONTROL FUNCTION 25 = ON_OFF5
= SHADE 1
= SHADE 2
= SHADE 3
= SHADE 4
= SHADE 5
= FAN
= DOORLOCK
= ALARM
Already having so much fun with it - the capture feature is amazing! One thing I was going to ask was when capturing B&O products - I'm figuring out through trial and error at the moment how to capture certain 'state updates' - what do the tick boxes next to each field mean. When you click one it inserts an exclamation mark in the event code. Is it basically saying this is the thing that's changed since the last state?? Hope that makes sense!I did capture resources from the Hue - really really useful. I have all my Hue bulbs in one room and have it setup as such in the Hue app - this room has been imported as a GROUP into the BLGW - so really handy for switching all lights on and off etc. So easy to setup. I did have a problem connecting to the Hue Bridge as it wouldn't create a user from the BLGW (yes I was pressing the button on the bridge), but I created a use using the API interface on the Hue which fed back the long ID number for the user when it was created. I copied and pasted this into the username field on the BLGW and hurrah it connected immediately (how satisfying is it when the systems turn green at the bottom off the BLGW interface 😁)Congratulations on your addition! I think the thread is a great idea. Did you take advantage of the "capture resources" feature for Hue under the "Resources" tab? It imports all of your Lights, Scenes, and Groups from the Hue bridge.You might not know yet how to use Hue "Groups" since that feature isn't in the current Hue app. However, Groups can be really useful. You can create Groups of lights using the Hue debug utility on your computer. For example, you can create a group of lights for a particular room and each group gets a numeric value assigned to it. The default Group is "0" as a Group that includes all of your lights. If you find yourself getting really odd results from a macro, you likely have made a mistake in a macro somewhere --sometimes in another macro that creates a conflict. This can drive you crazy trying to track down the error. Once you have a good set of Hue Scenes and Groups and good macros, you might want to take it to the next level: adding an Amazon Echo! You can then create IFTTT macros to trigger your BLGW macros using voice commands. Have fun!
@beojeff have you had any luck using the motion sensors in the Nest Protect Smoke Alarms yet? I see we can detect the LED status colour change from them on the BLGW - but not sure when that actually happens. I was going to test if the BLGW picks up when the nightlight comes on from the protect but haven't had a chance yet.
The BLGW is a fantastic product. And it's a much easier programming device thanThe crestron and savant and control4 competitors.I recently got back from a training showing all of the things the BLGW can do. When you attach the global cache it becomes an infinitely wide IR controller. The trainer unlocked doors, triggered shades, ran a vacuum cleaner, made coffee. It was fantastic. Any number of IP or RS232 devices can be connected. Quite spectacular. I use radiora2 and Alexa at the moment but intend to expand to some IR control before too long. For less than $2k it seems to me that nothing comes close to matching the abilities of the BLGW.
Love it - holding back from getting a Global Cache IPIR at the moment!
Good news for Philips Hue users! Yesterday, Hue released the new iOS Hue App Gen2. With the new app, you can create a Hue API GROUP for each of your rooms through the app. This is as easy as ticking off the boxes to indicate which light is in a room. This is so much easier to create the API GROUP than going to the computer and using JSON commands. After creating the GROUPS, they show up on the BLGW when you import the resources.
This has a huge benefits when using Apple Homekit - since Homekit has a limited number of Hue lights upon which a command can act.
I have yet to see how this will affect the SCENES. I'm worried that it might try to create a separate SCENE for each and every GROUP. Since the Hue bridge can only hold a limited number of SCENES, this could cause a problem by generating too many SCENES. This will need to be tested to see.
Update to observations about new Hue app: My fears were true. The new Hue app wants to create scenes specific for each room group. Also, the new app cannot import SCENES from the old app! Fortunately, you can still use the Gen1 app to recall these SCENES. Also, the global SCENES have been imported already into the BLGW and can still be used by the BLGW.
There really is no good reason for this limitation. While the new Gen2 app utilizes GROUPS, all of the existing SCENES have already been assigned to a GROUP -- which is GROUP 0. GROUP 0 is the global group that contains all of the lights. I suspect that enough complaints in the Hue API developer forum might get Philips Hue to makes some changes to fix this.
Regardless, we can use the BLGW to take advantage of the best of both Hue Apps. We can use the existing global GROUP 0 SCENES and we can create specific SCENES for each room GROUP.
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