This app was mentioned in 19 comments, with an average of 2.42 upvotes
This might be too specific, but if you have Phillips Hue bulbs in your house, then I recommend the Lampshade app to control them. It is very easy to build your own color profile for solid, looped, or even timed throughout the day colors. It also integrates with Tasker so you can do a bunch of neat automations. I have a profile that triggers an hour long sunrise set with my lights when my alarm goes off, and another to turn my lights on over the course of 30 minutes during sunset if I'm at home. Yay Lampshade!
> Due to limitations in the Philips Hue API, you must be connected to your home Wi-Fi network when using this app.
There is no such limitation. LampShade.io supports controlling bridges over the internet. You just need to port forward the bridge (yeah, not the easiest thing for some people, but it proves that this limitation is false). LampShade.io is open source, so please feel free to copy any code you want, as long as you make sure to include any relevant licenses in your app's "about" page.
Also, how can I manually enter a bridge? Your app has an automatic bridge search, but I don't see any interface to manually enter my bridge IP.
I use Lampshade as my primary bulb controller. It's pretty easy to set bulbs in groups, and I have a widget on my home screen with on/off toggles. The app is free as well, which is nice.
Hue Disco is a pretty fun paid app for doing rough syncing with sound. It's great for parties. The interface can be a bit finicky on smaller smartphones, but you get used to it.
If I could, I would completely avoid anything Google as well, but with the way it's integrated into phones and so many other things, it is obviously quite hard to completely avoid, so I try to make a difference wherever else I can.
Good overall news, though: I seem to have found what I was looking for: LampShade.io
so, yeah, if you are going to be focused on the thinking that the only app to control the lights is the Philips official app, you are severely limiting your scope of view
Many many third party apps offer the functionality to create room-agnostic "groups" that you can control just fine
Here is one (of many) such apps in the Google Play store
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuxhausen.huemore
and another:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.benchevoor.huepro
IMO the best Android app is Lampshade.
I have Hue Pro and a few others but Lampshade does everything I need and has the best widget for group control. It's also free.
The Hue Halloween and Hue Christmas apps are both neat, if you're into that sort of thing.
Thanks for your interest in an Android version of Hue Lights. I've been thinking about this for a while, but don't have estimated availability dates. In the meantime, you may want to check out LamShade.io: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuxhausen.huemore
I use a sunrise alarm everyday, and have used one for quite a long time now. The easiest way I've found is using an Android app called Lampshade. With the paid Pro version, you can set multiple alarms, which makes it extremely simple to change the time of the sunrise alarm. You can even set different alarms (and therefore different times) depending on the day of the week.
Lampshade can also do this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuxhausen.huemore&hl=en
Using lifx-lan-gui for PC, Lampshade for Android.
You can definitely just use http queries. Use a javascriptlet for example mine has something like this
xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); xmlhttp.open('PUT', 'http://192.168.1.6/api/MY_APIKEY/groups/0/action',true); var tosend="{\"on\": true, \"bri\":255, \"xy\":[0.632,0.322], \"transitiontime\":10 }"; xmlhttp.send(tosend);
Then it's up to you what format you want your payload. Here it's bri/xy.
For authenticating the first time
xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest(); xmlhttp.open('POST', 'http://192.168.1.6/api',true); xmlhttp.send('{"devicetype":"MY_DEVICE_DESCRIPTION","username":"MY_APIKEY"}')
If you prefer to use an app, I use Lamp Shade - Open Source though I don't think the app in the store is no longer maintained. (Last updated 2016) It works as expected still though.
I have many hue apps installed, but the one I use every day all day is the Lampshade widget.
Android:Lampshade
I pretty much only use the official app and IFTTT after the official app incorporated more features. But found Lampshade.io and OnSwitch pretty good.
LampShade.io pretty basic and had used for light based alarms and timings: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuxhausen.huemore
and OnSwitch have some good animated scene uses: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.getonswitch.onswitch
IFThisThenThat: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ifttt.ifttt&hl=en
The app lampshade can handle NFC tag reading and writing!
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuxhausen.huemore
I use lampshade when I want to cycle through the colors, it has a color loop option.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuxhausen.huemore&hl=en
The sunrise alarm I use everyday fades up through the colors as well as the brightness. It's an Android app called LampShade.
You could use LampShade for this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuxhausen.huemore