HomeyScript infinite loop

Questions & Help
1

Hi There,

I’m trying to make an infinite loop with a homey script. I want the loop to run as long as a variable is set to true.

This is my code.

let lightLoop = await Homey.logic.getVariable({id:lightLoopId});
while (lightLoop.value) {
  log('Light loop: ', lightLoop.value);
  await wait(2000);
  lightLoop = await Homey.logic.getVariable({id:lightLoopId});
}

Super simple and it works perfectly except the variable lightLoop never updates inside the loop, even when I change the variable to false.

What am I missing?

2

That’s not something you should do with HomeyScript (scripts are timed out after 30s).

My guess is that you’re getting a cached value. Not sure if it’s possible to get a non-cached value, but this sort of functionality should really be implemented as a normal flow.

3

Thank you for your answer :slight_smile:
I’ll make it as a normal flow, but I think I will have the same issue if the variable value is a cached value.
Will it be possible to implement a while loop inside a normal flow, that can be stopped from outside the flow?

4

Flows are event-based, not polling-based (like while-loops).

Your script is waiting for a particular variable to become false. With flows, you just wait for a “Variable has changed” event, and then check if it’s false (and if so, continue):

IF variable XX has changed
AND variable XX has value “false”
THEN …
ELSE …

5

Thank you @robertklep , now I know what you mean by flow. I thought you meant, I should code my own “Then” module.

What I’m trying to do is making a light show of 118 hue bulbs. I’m trying to fade each of them through an array of colors. I can’t make this by a standard flow.

If I could make a “Then” module with a infinite while loop, looping through all the bulbs and change each color with the next value in the array every 2 second, as long as the variable lightshow is set to true and stop the loop when it is set to false.

Hope this makes sense.

6

Your best chance is to write an app for this, because flows will either be too limiting or simply too slow to pull this off (and even with a custom app I doubt that Homey will be able to do this).

To control devices from other apps (like the Hue bulbs) you also need to use the Web API (aka as homey-api) in your app.