Conditionally turn a Hue smart plug device on / off via service #835

lougreenwood · 2023-01-09T16:23:50Z

lougreenwood
Jan 9, 2023

This seem like it should be trivial, but I can't figure out how to do this!

I have a service node, it is configured in the node config UI to control a hue light (which is actually a smart plug, Hue just exposes smart plugs as lights).

I want to conditionally turn the "light" on / off depending on the value sent to the service.

It seem that the toggle service isn't suitable, since it's description mentions "Toggles one or more lights, from on to off, or, off to on, based on their current state." (i.e it implies it can't be conditionally controlled, it toggles to the opposite of it's previous state).

Also neither turn_on / turn_off seem suitable, since they imply that the are mutually exclusive controls and I would need 2 service nodes to handle it, in addition to routing to choose the correct service node.

Then... once the above is figured out, I cannot figure out how to send a payload to the node to get it to send the trigger. The docs talk about the data attribute being a json object, but when ever I try to include an object with params, I get the following error: "Call-service error. extra keys not allowed @ data['title']"

I've tried just sending the data as a bool or string (on / off, like what I receive as the state value on a state_changed event when I externally control this device), but this doesn't seem to work...

I hate to ask for hand-holding help, but could someone point me to how I send a conditional instruction to turn a light on / off. So far everything seems overly complex for such a simple use case. The docs for the service node are cryptic and don't include a trivial example of how to send a payload to control a device / entity... The examples in the node are missing any attribute to control the light on / off state.

(I also tried the device node, but it seems I hit the issue above of which trigger to use: toggle, turn on or turn off - none seem suitable.... and in any case, what should the msg object look like to trigger a device node, there are no docs for this).

Sorry if that came across as ranty, I love the addon - I'm currently trying to migrate my pretty complex light home automation system with over 50 lights, sensors and complex conditional logic, but I'm feeling frustrated that such a simple thing is tripping me up! 😢