Good afternoon Leon, Thanks for the app! The response of your homey app is lost as soon as the connection of the Casambi app dies or Casambi is closed. Can I keep the Casambi app running actively in the background? Or is there another solution? Thanks
Hi @Aad_van_Rijn what do you mean with “when the connection of the Casambi app dies or Casambi is closed”?
Do you mean closing your Gateway device?
Since my app runs on homey and once installed it keeps running on Homey. You cannot close it (unless you disable it or remove the app from homey)
I still do have to implement a lost connection handler ,which triest ro rebuild the connection as soon as it is disconnected. this can probably happen for example when your homey loses its internet connection or your local network is unstable.
The other thing you should know is that casambi only provides an api to develop applications like this one on. I implemented this for homey, but this means you still require a device in your setup that acts as a casambi gateway. Your Homey unfortunately cannot directly speak with (bluetooth) luminaries (your light’s).
So in other words the homey app runs on homey ,gut speaks via the internet to your casambi gateway (a Android or apple device with the casambi app) that speaks to your devices. So you have to leave a (old, mobile) device in your setup with the official app on it, that acts as a gateway.
Morning Leon! Although am Dutch will keep typing english…
Issue is not with Homey or Homey aapp, its the gateway which keeps dropping off.
I need to reopen the Casambi app on my phone (not the Homey app) to get it alive
again. Have looked for a way in the menu to keep it alive or run in the background,
but I cannot find it. Yes, I will try an old mobile to see if I can keep it alive, running
in the foreground.
I am using Arditi and ELT in-line blocks, Arditi Casambi TED Bluetooth 800698
Ontvanger Dimmer 230V 150W Debt230-150 and eBLUE TRAILING EDGE, blue tooth
dimmer which can be approached/hooked up by Cassambi without compatibility issues
on brand. What kind of protocol is used here for communication?
Maybe there is a alternative software "talking to this BLE modules already migrated in Homey?
Hi @Aad_van_Rijn as mentioned in my Todo’s in the opening post, I am aware of the current short coming of the application not being able to restore a broken connection to the gateway. This can happen for multiple reasons, and I also have an idea how to implement the fix, but didn’t had time yet to implement that.
With regards to your your suggestion to implement the BLE-protocol, the only documentation that I have found from Casambi is this: https://developer.casambi.com/ in which they only describe how to communicate via the API (and sockets) to a gateway. I did find someone who tried it: GitHub - lkempf/casambi-bt , but haven’t looked at it yet and is even more experimental.
The reason the gateway (hub) is required, is because casambi does not provide any other documentation: https://developer.casambi.com/
So it has nothing to do with Homey (2023). I haven’t found anything else besides the API to connect to…
I have seen that the Casambi API returns status-code 429 on the Homey app requests.
This indicates a “API Key use limit” according to their documentation.
So even though the implementation is still very limited and not even used that much, it now probably doesn’t work for anyone anymore…
I filled a ticket at Casambi, asking what to do.
Version 0.4 is in test (still needs to be approved by Homey) and can be found here Casambi Controller | Homey
Casambi has changed some things which required me to change the implementation to build up and reuse the connection. I hope I also made it somewhat more stable by trying to reconnect when it detects the connection is lost.
However please be aware the Casambi gateway app should also still be running on your device, else there is no way to get to your devices.
good to hear the app is working good!
I think I can add color control to it as well, but need some time to write the changes. I will let you know when I have found the time to make a new test version
Wij gaan modular verlichting kopen. Deze wil ik aansturen met modules van casambi. Je hebt deze app gemaakt zodat je luminaires kan toevoegen aan homey, alleen moet ik ergens inloggen als ik deze wil toevoegen.
Waar moet ik op inloggen? In de beschrijving van de app staat inloggen op een gateway? Maar welke gateway?
Hopelijk kan je mij verder helpen, dan weet ik namelijk of casambi een slimme keus is om met homey aan te sturen.
I don’t know how your home Casabmi installation looks like, but besides luminaires-devices that are before your lights, you probably have some kind of device with buttons, or a screen to centrally control all your luminaires. This can be a (old) mobile phone, or tablet, with the Casambi app installed on it, but in order to operate your devices via Homey: the gateway. You need to have this, in order for the Homey app to control your devices, since Casambi hasn’t opened up their bluetooth API, only an web-API to a gateway device that you can have.
The Casambi app on your phone is also very error prone, as far as I have seen. Energy saving, memory issues or broken internet connection or maintenance at casambi can mean the connection gets broken, and Homey cannot control the luminaires anymore…
Because of this I also wouldn’t recommend Casambi in a Homey setup, since you are required to have a gateway in your house, next to Homey. Other protocols, like zwave, or zigbee can be controlled by many more devices, without gateways in between.
I really gave Casambi a try (took me a few weeks to find out there are many problems I had to solve. But I will definatly follow your advice and skip Casambi.
