Unable to change lights color via Web interface

[jd]

I've just installed Homeassistant, and configured it with Philips Hue support. The lamps show in the Web interface, and I can turn them on or off. However, changing the color XY or the brightness value in the JSON payload via the Web interface has 0 effect.

I can see the icon color changing in the Web interface so it reflects what I changed, but it actually does not make any call via phue.

[balloob]

Do you by any chance still have the demo mode enabled?

[jd]

No, I removed the [demo] section. :)

[jd]

So far I tried to debug a bit, so what I can say from the console is that the state change is well emitted, but it looks like there's only a group thing that listen to that change. I don't know if the light module is supposed to listen to that too?

[balloob]

The way the communication is structured is like this:
Web -> API -> Call Light turn_on service -> Light component -> Phue -> Update State

The state will not be updated based on the fact that the service is called but the state that phue returns, which in its turn queries the Hue bridge. So if the state changes to be on and the lights get colored, that means that Phue actually got this from the Hue bridge.

If you open the Hue app on your phone, does it say the lights are on ?

If that still not works, let's give just phue a try from the Python console.

[balloob]

So I tried it locally and it works for me:

domain: light
service: turn_on
JSON payload: {"rgb_color": [255, 0, 0], "brightness":200}

[balloob]

Ooh I get it now. Did you try controlling the lights by using the "set state" dialog? That dialog only changes the observed state, not the actual device. That's also why the interface got updated but the light didn't change. I see now that this is pretty bad UX. I'll make sure to add a description to the dialog and make the dialog less prominent (it's more of a debug tool anyway)

The good news is that in the last month a light more info card was added that shows when clicking on a light. It will actually allow you to change color and brightness.