TP-Link Chowmain Driver

[ILoveControl]

@alanchow

Been using your TP-Link driver for both the bulbs and the smart plugs. Firstly awesome driver, very little lag and tons of options. A suggestion:

Suggestion: 

1. I am not sure if this is possible but will def help in knowing what you changing to as right now its just a slider and you don't really know. I *think* I remember one of the RGB drivers having a color picker in the navigators. Not sure if this is limited to the touch screens and not available in the PC version or mobile versions. But if it was this as an update would be highly beneficial.

Anyway great driver just thought I would give you a view of a suggestion

[alanchow]

Glad you like our TP-Link suite of drivers.  We are quite proud of that driver as it provides extremely affordable reliable lighting and outlet solutions for Control4.

In regards to your question Control4 do not have a color wheel.  It has been requested though so hopefully one day they will implement it.

The method utilised by another developer involves a fake IP camera driver mapping xy to RGB values.  Although we could implement this we choose not to as it only works on certain navigators, lives under ip cameras (unless they do a page flip for T3's).

Once Control4 implements a proper color wheel we will update all of our RGB based lighting drivers to support it.

[alanchow]

For anybody reading this you can find out more about our TP-Link Suite of drivers below.

 

Integrated lighting is now stupidly affordable thanks to TP-Link with Wifi LED dimmable bulbs starting from $19.99 USD MSRP, Wifi smart plugs/outlets from $24.99 USD MSRP and in-wall switches from $39.99 USD MSRP.

Chowmain's new TP-Link Smart Home Suite of drivers for Control4 offers solid two way control/feedback over TP-Link's smart home devices with:

• Automatic Discovery
• Self Healing on IP Address change
• Ability to bind outlets to motorised devices
• Automatically hide color, saturation, and temperature depending on the bulb type
• Ability to change modes between Color, Temp, and Hue
• Allows control and feedback over
  • On/Off
  • Brightness
  • Hue
  • Saturation
  • Color Temp
• Ability to connect driver to keypad buttons (with LED feedback) to allow for quick on/off/toggle programming
• Preset Level and Click Ramp Rate Support

https://www.chowmainsoft.com/tplink-control4

[ILoveControl]

@alanchow

 

It is such a pity that they don't have this feature esp in today's world of LED's and RGB. Thanks for the feedback. Yeah I am in the same shoes as you with 240v so have to find other options and I wasn't going to go for the HUE as I hate that HUB idea. Wish TP-Link would start to come out with more devices now like the LED strips, bedside lamps (for kids etc) and the GU10 down lighters this would put them on or over par with Philips.

[ERDrPC]

@alanchow

I'm thinking of changing all of my outdoor soffit pot lights to  LB230. However I cannot find anywhere if these can be used outdoors.

I have a panelized lighting system with scenes and such setup for my current outdoor pots. Where I would like to implement the colour changing or strobe effect would be on alarm trigger, fire detector, christmas, party mode. I would like to do all of this with programming and not adjusting things on the fly at a touchscreen or using an app. Is this possible with the driver? I actually don't want my family to have access to the touch screen example you have above...I want my current screens to stay the same for simplicity. Is it possible to hide?

[alanchow]

6 minutes ago, ERDrPC said:

@alanchow

I'm thinking of changing all of my outdoor soffit pot lights to  LB230. However I cannot find anywhere if these can be used outdoors.

I have a panelized lighting system with scenes and such setup for my current outdoor pots. Where I would like to implement the colour changing or strobe effect would be on alarm trigger, fire detector, christmas, party mode. I would like to do all of this with programming and not adjusting things on the fly at a touchscreen or using an app. Is this possible with the driver? I actually don't want my family to have access to the touch screen example you have above...I want my current screens to stay the same for simplicity. Is it possible to hide?

Like any device in Control4 you can hide the TP-Link devices in Navigator and utilise programming in the background.

Note that the strobe effect you want has to be programmed in manually via a macro if you want it to change between two colors indefinately until cancelled.

If you do not have Composer Home Edition or are comfortable with creating programming macros i suggest contacting your dealer to get them to do this for you.

[ILoveControl]

Just a note, they don't make outdoor lights they don't have a IPxx rating either. 

The light bulbs are awesome I don't think strobing them though is a good idea, not to sure they designed for that. If you look in the app they do have a party scene have you tried that? 

 

Alan can one access the scenes through the JSON code? Maybe that could be work around. 

 

[alanchow]

1 hour ago, ILoveControl said:

Just a note, they don't make outdoor lights they don't have a IPxx rating either. 

The light bulbs are awesome I don't think strobing them though is a good idea, not to sure they designed for that. If you look in the app they do have a party scene have you tried that? 

 

Alan can one access the scenes through the JSON code? Maybe that could be work around. 

 

I couldn't see a method of accessing the scenes.  If you want something that does color fades and that sort of stuff you should check out Yeelight.  You can do some pretty impressive stuff using that hardware + its stupidly cheap.

[ILoveControl]

Just now, alanchow said:

I couldn't see a method of accessing the scenes.  If you want something that does color fades and that sort of stuff you should check out Yeelight.  You can do some pretty impressive stuff using that hardware + its stupidly cheap.

Do they have API doc for the lights I could look into it, or packet sniff the traffic between the KASA app and the light and switches.... Might be something they schedule in the background on the cloud and then "Push to the light at the scheduled time....

There are so many awesome smartThings on the market now TBH its finding out from them if they have open API's you can interface with (most of them are Alexa or Google compatible), but like you I have a 240v issue  The Philips HUE is cool and has the best amount of devices but that HUE hub is a @#@#

You thought of a Samsung SmartThings driver yet? Has a rich API. 

[alanchow]

1 minute ago, ILoveControl said:

Do they have API doc for the lights I could look into it, or packet sniff the traffic between the KASA app and the light and switches.... Might be something they schedule in the background on the cloud and then "Push to the light at the scheduled time....

There are so many awesome smartThings on the market now TBH its finding out from them if they have open API's you can interface with (most of them are Alexa or Google compatible), but like you I have a 240v issue  The Philips HUE is cool and has the best amount of devices but that HUE hub is a @#@#

You thought of a Samsung SmartThings driver yet? Has a rich API. 

Yeelight have an open API which is why we can do so much with it in comparison to other products.  It is 240v and 110v so please make sure you purchase the right one.

They have strips, bulbs, lamps and ceiling lights.  I personally have a RGB strip, RGBW bulb and mono bulb.  All dimmable.

Bulbs prices start at just above $10 USD

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100-Original-Xiaomi-Mi-Smart-LED-Bulb-Yeelight-Wifi-Remote-Control-Adjustable-Brightness-Eyecare-Light-Smart/32736219908.html?src=google&albslr=221710193&isdl=y&aff_short_key=UneMJZVf&source={ifdyn:dyn}{ifpla:pla}{ifdbm:DBM&albch=DID}&src=google&albch=shopping&acnt=494-037-6276&isdl=y&albcp=1001731409&albag=50593269078&slnk=&trgt=304655778945&plac=&crea=en32736219908&netw=g&device=c&mtctp=&aff_platform=google&gclid=CjwKCAjwspHaBRBFEiwA0eM3kQSRTqxKCXCXzIA7UWicyI7IlhQQIyjhmNBFXTuTSH5YapAY1XOM5BoC42kQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

[ILoveControl]

25 minutes ago, alanchow said:

Yeelight have an open API which is why we can do so much with it in comparison to other products.  It is 240v and 110v so please make sure you purchase the right one.

They have strips, bulbs, lamps and ceiling lights.  I personally have a RGB strip, RGBW bulb and mono bulb.  All dimmable.

Bulbs prices start at just above $10 USD

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/100-Original-Xiaomi-Mi-Smart-LED-Bulb-Yeelight-Wifi-Remote-Control-Adjustable-Brightness-Eyecare-Light-Smart/32736219908.html?src=google&albslr=221710193&isdl=y&aff_short_key=UneMJZVf&source={ifdyn:dyn}{ifpla:pla}{ifdbm:DBM&albch=DID}&src=google&albch=shopping&acnt=494-037-6276&isdl=y&albcp=1001731409&albag=50593269078&slnk=&trgt=304655778945&plac=&crea=en32736219908&netw=g&device=c&mtctp=&aff_platform=google&gclid=CjwKCAjwspHaBRBFEiwA0eM3kQSRTqxKCXCXzIA7UWicyI7IlhQQIyjhmNBFXTuTSH5YapAY1XOM5BoC42kQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

You have no idea how much I   you right now

Will check it out now. Thats all we need an open API   Let me go check it out.

[alanchow]

1 hour ago, ILoveControl said:

You have no idea how much I   you right now

Will check it out now. Thats all we need an open API   Let me go check it out.

Yeah we made a driver for yeelight.

https://www.chowmainsoft.com/yeelight-control4

Driver auto discovers bulbs and auto configures itself to hide the modes it doesn't use.  Eg white only bulbs hide the color and temperatures, temperature only ones hide color, etc.

Full two way feedback with instantaneous response, self healing, etc.

Made it stupidly cheap as well so it'll be a no brainer to invest in the driver (way cheaper than buying a philips hue bridge + bulbs even with the driver licence!)

[Ilushka85]

I have this driver for several Kasa KL430

 

In the my c4 project I see separate controls for brightness / hue / color / saturation.  The issue I have is that I want to turn the lights on / off and control their brightness.  The regular brightness does not quite do that.  It sometimes turns them on and sometimes does nothing.  It always turns them off if they are on.  Sometimes I raise brightness to 100 and it magically drops to some other number.

 

How do I get it so that when I turn the lights on via c4 light icon in app that it goes to x color and brightness properly works?

[Ilushka85]

@alanchow

[alanchow]

22 hours ago, Ilushka85 said:

I have this driver for several Kasa KL430

 

In the my c4 project I see separate controls for brightness / hue / color / saturation.  The issue I have is that I want to turn the lights on / off and control their brightness.  The regular brightness does not quite do that.  It sometimes turns them on and sometimes does nothing.  It always turns them off if they are on.  Sometimes I raise brightness to 100 and it magically drops to some other number.

 

How do I get it so that when I turn the lights on via c4 light icon in app that it goes to x color and brightness properly works?

The brightness slider will turn the light off you set it to 0% and will turn it on to a level if you goto whatever level.

The driver may have issues communicating to the Kasa KL430 if its doing weird things.

Best bet is to open up a support ticket with us so we can help troubleshoot.

https://www.chowmainsoft.com/support

[therockhr]

I know its early but will this driver get updated with the new color wheel?

[Andrew luecke]

9 hours ago, therockhr said:

I know its early but will this driver get updated with the new color wheel?

Unsure what we're allowed to disclose at this time in the public forums unfortunately, but the new beta has began distribution to dealers (for internal testing). 

Because the TPLink driver was written a lot time ago though, the entire TPLink package was rewritten and simplified though as part of the upcoming beta. The biggest change in TPLink V2 (which uses the same licencing as V1) is that there are far less drivers dealers need to install, better support for future products, new light driver, a provisioning system for easy setup, and a generic outlet driver which should work for all outlets (instead of 10 different outlet drivers). There are also many other improvements on the backend.

 

Andy