Philips living color

Post by **AshaiRey** » Sat Aug 29, 2009 8:03 am

I don't know.
The Living Colors protocol is reversed engineered (it's 2-way communication) and the software is available for the Arduino and kloons like the freeduino. I don't know if there is something for this too.

Post by **Lennart** » Sun Sep 13, 2009 10:57 am

Is there anyone who's got one of these complete (assembled, preprogrammed and working) USB interfaces on offer? Currently, not being able to control my Living Colors, is one of my great frustration in HA-life

... I tried to contact Ivo (the guy from knutsel.org) but no reply until now (but maybe I'm a little too impatient).

Lennart

Post by **Willem4ever** » Sun Sep 13, 2009 12:10 pm

A little while ago I received a response from Ivo, no kits available

Post by **RDNZL** » Sun Sep 13, 2009 12:30 pm

There was also a diy project in Elektor of May 2008.
So you can control it via usb.

You can get the artikel here:
http://www.elektor.nl/artikelen-als-pdf ... 9788.lynkx

And the code here:
http://meuk.spritesserver.nl/projects/livcol/

Post by **Lennart** » Sun Sep 13, 2009 1:00 pm

Hi Ron,

I'm familiar with the article (available without credits through this link, BTW: http://www.ideetron.nl/Livcol/NL2008050601.pdf ), but I would like to get a non-DIY version. Ideetron offers the hardware ready built (see Willems link: http://ideetron.biedmeer.nl/Webwinkel-P ... 08-01.html ) but it seems you need to program the board yourself with the firmware ("Download de HEX-file (Released version) om het board direct te programmeren").

Anyone bought the Ideetron board? What hardware do you need to program it?

Lennart

Post by **tonilou** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 8:37 pm

@AshaiRey

I'm very interested in controlling the Living colors from my PC, but all information I find is in dutch and Ivo does not reply to see if there are mounted boards left.

Since you are the person who knows most about this topic, can you show us the vbscript used to control the board? Is the board shipped by Ivo totally fucntionl out-of-the-box or there is some hard setup (other than installing drivers and software)?

Thanks!

Post by **AshaiRey** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 10:01 am

It seems that Ivo doesn't have them anymore however on this site there is all the details to make one yourself http://static.knutsel.org/kits/CC2500_A ... hield_v03/
(you could try google translate for it Dutch=> Spanish )

You basicly need a standard arduino, a shield and a cc2500 transmitter

The board is fully functional. However it's not nice to 'learn' the lamp code eachtime you want to use it. So it's better to put the lamp ID hardcoded in the code. You can control the lamp via a serial terminal like hyperterm. I made a small vbscript so it's more suitable to communicate to it from homeseer (our other scripts)

Post by **tonilou** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 6:36 pm

Thanks Ashai

Since I have no experience with electronics I'll continue looking for some ready-made board.

Could you share with us your vbscripts to get a better idea on how to programatically control the light?

Thanks again!

Post by **AshaiRey** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 9:22 am

I had finaly some time to post the vb control script.
Look in the Homeseer scripts section
http://www.domoticaforum.eu/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3587

Post by **tonilou** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 11:20 am

OK, so it's a matter of sending the command line to the COM port. I assume "hs" is some Homesheer exposed object, but I'll find some other way to talk to COM by script (I'm not a Homesheer user).

Thanks!

Post by **AshaiRey** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 2:34 pm

Correct.
It's just opening a com port in VB, sending your commands through it and close it again.
Googling for Arduino, com port and vbscript will give you some hits.

The reason i use the HS object is that i can keep the com port open after the first time opening it so i can do more fancy things like fading in/out and color shifts.

Post by **tonilou** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 8:10 pm

And I assume the HS object is in some way exposed by a higher piece of software like Homesheer?

Post by **AshaiRey** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 10:26 am

Yes, but you don't need to have homeseer installed to use it.
You only need 2 dll's and of you go.

Post by **tonilou** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 12:42 pm

I assume one of the dll is <HomeSeer2.dll>., which shoud contain the COM classes to manipulate Homeseer.

Anyway, I assume those dll are not public. Am I right?

Toni

Post by **AshaiRey** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 1:34 pm

Hmmm, i don't know for sure.
You Probally get them also with the unregistered version of homeseer