DEPRECATED but don't be sad. The new and better extension has been released.

[vchlum]

Hi!

After more than four years, I decided to retire this Gnome Shell extension because I had a better idea. Now, I would like to invite you to use the new extension.

The new extension (https://github.com/vchlum/smart-home) was recently released. It can control Philips Hue, Nanoleaf, and Ikea Dirigera devices. This new Gnome shell extension can be extended with new devices. The limitation is my ability to test the potential new devices.

I would appreciate your feedback on this new project. Do not hesitate to file a ticket within the new repo with your ideas or problems with the new extension.

Thank you all for using Hue Lights. I am looking forward to meeting you on the new project.

[2nv2u]

Thanks vchlum for all your hard work and dedication!
I'm not convinced this direction is the best approach tbh, not everyone uses the extra functionality you are adding in the new smart home extension since they might not have the hardware.
Your new extension adds more icons in the panel so why don't you keep them separate?

[vchlum]

Hi @2nv2u ! Thank you for your reply. I always value your input very much.

I maintained Nano lights and Hue Lights separately but there were a lot of similarities. For example, a user suggested to add 'on login lights' to Nano lights. It was already implemented in Hue lights. It wasn't so similar enough to just port it. It was just double work. This was not the only case nor the only reason.

I decided to create a whole new extension also because I wanted/needed to implement Philips Hue API v2. I considered rewriting Hue Lights completely but keeping the same name...

For me, It is easier to maintain one big extension than 3 separate. (as I am alone to do the work)

I rather decided to start from scratch. Honestly, I WANTED to start from scratch because I wasn't comfortable with the code base in Hue Lights or Nano Lights. I tried to design the Smart Home code base a bit better.

Regarding separated icons, my idea is to add an option to 'merge all devices into one menu' in the future. I have had this possibility in my mind from the beginning of Smart Home. It is just a bit challenging. The code is almost ready to read data from all plugins into one big menu. IMO, the challenge is handling the UX part for different bridges from one joined menu. How to control the platform-specific staff.

You probably know software like Home Assistant and so... Such software does not often implement platform-specific features. An example are the fire, candle, ... the hue effects. Another example is the difference between Ikea Dirigera and Philips Hue: With Dirigera, you need to turn the light, and wait for the light to really turn on and only then you can control the brightness and color. So the possibilities are shown in the menu once it is ready. With Hue, you can send one request containing 'brightness', 'color', and 'on request' in one. And some more...

Another problem... My experience with Ikea blinds is also that the bridge is a bit buggy. (it can not handle a lot of requests at once) e.g. if I want to open/close ALL my blinds at once some blinds sometimes do not respond correctly and one or two blinds are not opened/closed. This is very frustrating and it happens with both the original app and Home Assistant. In my extension, this is solved. In other words - each bridge handles groups differently. That is also a challenge.

There is some more in my mind for future work. e.g: matter support (zero-dependency support is a challenge by itself:-D) or Android/Google TV support, Netatmo Valves, and Netatmo Meteostation support, ... I did not want to overload the extension Hue Lights with all this. That was also a reason why I have started a new extension.

Your valuable opinion is always welcomed. If you want to put your input into the new extension I will be happy to cooperate:-).

[2nv2u]

Thanks! I'm happy to help where I can and will continue to give my unfiltered opinion. :)
I'm no where challenging your effort and appreciate all the time you put into this, I know how much effort writing software costs. Doing this in your free time is all but admirable!

As for the topic, I think I get what your aiming at, if your idea is to abstract the actual hardware away and making it vendor agnostic and just having it control light, blinds etc. with one consolidated and consistent UI I'm with you.
Combining this meaningfully is going to be a challenge though considering they all have their own quirks and ways of creating rooms and grouping devices etc. Perhaps relying on something like Home Assistant might actually be a good idea if you want to go this approach, but it would add another needed component to the mix defeating the ease of use.

If it's just for reuse of code and you still keep is hardware vendor specific (in separate sections) I would suggest splitting the projects into pieces that use each other or/and depending on the vendor you could "compile" the vendor specific extension with most code shared form the same project.

For me for example I don't use Nano or Ikea stuff and having this cluttering the extension especially on the UI side (settings I can still live with but would still argue it's making the extension "heavier" and error prone) is making me consider not using it.
For example the Nano Leaf icon is there now all the time.

[vchlum]

I already have feedback from Smart Home requesting support for Home Assistant (the idea is not only from you but also from Reddit) and I agree this is useful. So I think my next step will be to add HA support. As I was saying, HA does not support platform-specific features so I will not drop direct platform support in favor of HA. I also think not all users have the time, skill, hw, or whatever, ... to set up their own HA.

I would like to add the consolidated menu in the future. I do not want to be stubborn in having only one extension. I see it as a way to go. I mentioned the reasons before. I would like to add support for more different devices in the future. I do not want to maintain like 10 different extensions or so. I would rather deal with the challenge of making the UI settings wall-arranged. I know I have gaps in this field:-D.

As for having Nano icon or Ikea icon shown in the status bar even if the device is not set, this must be a bug. It is odd. I will try to reproduce it and fix it. If the device is not set, the related icon should not be in the status bar at all. I also added an option "Hide unavailable device" to device settings. This hides the related status icon if the device is not reachable. E.g.: If you have a notebook and traveling between several destinations and each destination uses different devices, you can simply enable it and you should always see only available devices in the status bar. Of course, if the device is not set, you can not see the option so you are not able to enable it:-))) If you have an idea of how it happened, please share the steps.

[vchlum]

Could you please send me the output of:
dconf dump /org/gnome/shell/extensions/smart-home/ | grep ikea
and
dconf dump /org/gnome/shell/extensions/smart-home/ | grep nanoleaf
If it is empty, the icon should not be showed... If the output is non-empty, I will investigate how it get there.