Chowmain - Light Group Driver

[alanchow]

Overview

Chowmain Light Group allows lights by any manufacturer (including OS3.3 ColorWheel lighting) to be grouped together and operated simultaneously from a single light driver, instead of requiring ALS scenes.

This is beneficial as an example for systems where multiple lightstrips are used for a certain area and need to be the same color at all times, or for easier room lighting control.

This driver does not rely on driver Load Group support and supports both Pre-OS3.3 lightv2 lighting, and OS3.3 lightv2 lighting with ColorWheel. The original (and mostly unused) light (v1) proxies are NOT supported

OS 3.3.2 or later is required to use this driver

Driver Features

• Enables the grouping of lights into a single light
• Advanced Lighting Scene Support
• Brand Agnostic. Group together Shelly with Hue, LIFX, Yeelight, or even Control4 lights.
• Ability to change modes between Color Temp and Hue
• Turn on light automatically during color changes
• CCT Capabilities Auto-Detection (Manual selection is also supported)
• CCT Tracking via Percentage scaling, or the closest Kelvin Level
• Track Brightness via
  • Average brightness
  • Use the brightess light
  • Use the dimmest Light
  • Use a selected light
  • Or ignore Brightness from connected Lights
• Track Color/CCT Via
  • Average Color
  • Use a selected light
  • Or ignore Color from connected Lights
• Button Links suitable for Control4 Compatible Keypads to control Brightness, CCT, and Color

FAQ

What are the Minimum Requirements for this driver?

• Control4 OS 3.3.2 or later is required to operate this driver.
• HC Series controllers are not supported

What hardware will this work on?

• This driver is designed to be generic and work with any OS 3.3.0 light driver.
• This has been tested with many lighting drivers including TP-Link, LIFX, Shelly and Phillips Hue.

Are there any other considerations?

This driver works best for grouping lights of the same brand together. Some light brands may have different behaviors or require additional configuration which may lead to slightly different behaviors between them

I want to try this driver out before buying it?

All Chowmain drivers for Control4 come with a 90 day trial.

How do I find out more information about the driver?

Please see the links below for more information about the driver.

Driver Link

 

[Andrew luecke]

By the way, this is great for people who wanted to group lighting brands like Shelly, or who are still using the old LIFX drivers (simply for the group support). It will also work for non-Chowmain drivers though too 

[Andrew luecke]

G'day all, 

20230330 will become available later today or tomorrow which further refines the behaviour of the lights (all commands now utilise the Default On Brightness)

 

[Andrew luecke]

 

Hey guys, 

Made a video demonstrating the Color Light Grouping in OS3.3 (Phillips Hue, Yeelight, Shelly RGBW2, TPLink Kasa And Wiz ColorWheel based lights) for those who are interested how well it works.

I haven't demonstrated features like the Custom Extras Capabilities (there are many capabilities not demonstrated).

[Andrew luecke]

G'day, 

An update has been released (20230518) which resolves an issue some people have had with the color state not being correctly reflected in the Light State Interface. This is a recommended upgrade for everywhere (and if you had problems in the past, definitely give this new version a go). 

It also reverses the on/off LED button bindings to be consistent with other Control4 gear (most people however only use Toggle, so aren't affected)

 

Andy

[Andrew luecke]

G'day..

 

Just letting you guys know the new version which includes Preset support (such as Dim-To-Warm) is now available on the updated Chowmain website (which is also Chowmain's  new driver Marketplace, as per Alan's post).

https://chowmain.software/drivers/control4-chowmain-light-group . You will need an installer to perform the update, and a backup is recommended before installing.

The update is available from: https://chowmain.software/drivers/control4-chowmain-light-group and a backup is recommended.

 

The partial changelog is:

Version 20240808 - 08-AUG-2024

This is a Major Update which adds Chowmain licencing and Preset handling. It is recommended to backup your project before updating. This release performs a migration of internal data. Once upgraded, you cannot downgrade to earlier versions without loading a project backup. Users with BUTTON_LINK's may notice a few differences with the way the lights behave in this release. Existing users may need to toggle their default modes once and reboot for them to be properly active in some cases.

A reboot may be required for this release.

• Support for Chowmain Licencing
• Overhaul Lighting Scenes. Flashing Scenes are now supported, and scenes now are more "accurate" in handling
• Full Presets support including Dim To Warm / Fade Color
• Improved Troubleshooting
• Performance Improvements
• Improve Memory Usage and Controller CPU Performance
• Fix Click / Hold Rates not being stored correctly