How to change colors of all lights in a zone

[Mark_Jansen]

Hello all,

I’ve recently acquired a Homey Pro and it works great.

I do however have a question. I am wondering if it’s possible to change the color of a certain zone like for example Philips Hue can do.

I have zones such as living room, hall, kitchen and bedroom. But I can’t find a way to change all the colors in the zone by hand. Only for individual lights.

Does this option exist?

Kind regards,

Mark

[Sharkys]

Zone Memory

or

Circadian Lighting

Each of the solution has (dis)advantages. Therefore I’m using flows and adjusting temperature based on Advanced flows and triggered by conditions “Light turned on”…

[Mark_Jansen]

Thanks for the reply. Not sure if I explained it correctly though. I am looking for a way to change the colors for an entire zone from this screen.

It looks like I can only do this manually per light, but not for a zone as a whole.

[Glenn_Seegers]

You can use the group app

< groep >

[Peter_Kawa]

Not possible by default, you have to use an app:

1. The beforementioned < group > app comes in handy, just create a group of lights you want to control with one ‘master-light’, add all lights of a zone, and off you go. Put the group light as master-light in your zone.
   or
2. An Advanced virtual device has lots of possibilities for your usecase.
   Maybe the dev can create a function to control certain capabilities of a zone. Just ask here.

Check the Light Triggers app as well, might be interesting

[Mark_Jansen]

Thanks for all the great replies. It’s a shame that’s not possible by default. I’ve checked out the group app and it does what I want. It feels odd though to have to use an app to create an extra group of something that already is a group of something (a zone).

Thanks again

[DirkG]

I recommend the Better Lights app:

[Mark_Jansen]

@DirkG I already have that one, and it’s a good one but it only seems to work with Flows. But I also manually want to be able to change the color of an entire zone in 1 go.

[DirkG]

Okay, so with “by hand” you mean you change the color of 1 light, e.g. with the Homey smartphone app and the color picker of 1 light, and the other lights should follow?
Then I recommend the Light Triggers app.
With this app you are able to create flows which will be triggered if you change a capability of a light and all the other lights connected via flow will follow.
If you don’t want all lamps to be adjusted, you can add a virtual switch or mode (Buil-in virtual devices) f.e., and switch this function on or off.

[Mark_Jansen]

Yes, I’m sorry if I was unclear about that. But that’s basicly the case yes. I think the < group > app kind of does exactly what I want. Because then I can still simply select just 1 light or the group as a whole to change the color.

With the light triggers app I’d have to set up Flows. The group-app sounds simpler. (but maybe I’m wrong)

[DirkG]

Using the < group > is easier and no flows are required, correct.
However, some users don’t want to have any additional virtual devices besides the original devices, because the overview becomes less clear with each additional device. The app Light Triggers would be maybe the better choice for them.
But in the end, it’s up to you to decide.

You can also send Athom a feature request and ask if this can be integrated directly into Homey. But there is no guarantee that they will implement this function.

[Mark_Jansen]

Yeah I get that too. The groups will easily clutter up the UI if you have a lot.

I’ll for sure submit the feature request.

Thanks everybody for all the tips and advice. Much appreciated.

[JeroenIam]

Hi Sharkys,
I am wondering what advanced flows you have created to tackle this issues. I feel that most apps have disadvantages that I should be able to correct with advanced flows.

Could you share some screenshots to point me in the right directions.

Thanks so much

[Merlind]

Hi, I think it would be much more intuitive to control the lights modifying the current Lights widget as follows:

1. Lights widget, color feature: The “Lights” widget should have a color button beside the color opening a color picker disc, where users can select a color for the light or the zone by dragging a placeholder within the color disc. An example may look like:

   
   

   Or also maybe access the color selector by tapping the “>” arrow beside the zone name and expand it to a detailed panel and see the individual devices and additional features.

2. Lights widget, zone, group and individual devices color: When the “Lights” widget it’s related to a zone, users will see the devices in the zone as individual placeholders or as a group inside one placeholder, within the color picker disc. They can:
   a) drag the zone placeholder to select the color of all lights in the zone (feature above).
   b) click on the zone placeholder group to see the individual devices inside, drag a device outside of the group to pick its color as an individual device, drag it over another individual device to create a new group and in the same way add a device to an existing group. This is how it works on the Philips Hue app and it would be great to get the same.

   
   
   
   
   

   What do you think?