Hue-topia

Version History

version 3.4.2 August 2020

• Only updates the licensing framework. This isn't an important release for licensed users who have 3.4.1

version 3.4.1 July 2020

• Small update to bridge discovery address (Philips had changed the url). Fixes bridge discovery on startup. While broken it was necessary to enter bridge address manually.

version 3.4.0 June 2019

• Improvements to Applescript functionality. Should be more responsive and reliable.
• Application is Notarized by Apple as from version 3.4.0

version 3.3.1 January 2019

• If location services is switched off, or permission hasn't been given for Hue-topia to access the user's location, and the user tries to switch on 'Link times to sunrise / sunset' then the schedule dialog closes elegantly and information is shown. Previously the window would hang with no explanation.
• Fixes crash experienced on newer versions of MacOS when running HT for the first time, immediately after pressing the bridge button.

version 3.3.0 September 2018

• Adds preference relating to groups:
  • Using a group's on/off button also makes the settings of all lamps in the group consistent
• The update check no longer able to perform the download, which has been problematic for security reasons. Instead visits application home page where the download can be made

version 3.2.2 September 2018

• If manual controller (main window) is closed, clicking dock icon or double-clicking application icon will re-open the controller window
• Fixes bug - if lamp was in colour-temperature mode, sliding the 'brightness' slider would cause it to revert back to hsb (colour) mode

version 3.2.1 September 2018

• dark-mode-ready for MacOs 10.14 Mojave (will respect the user's choice of dark or light mode in System Preferences)
• Fixes small bug causing colours used in an effect to become slightly more saturated each time the effect is opened and closed
• Fixes problem with the schedule window causing the controls to change colour / brightness to not always be visible when they should be

version 3.2.0 August 2018

• Interface improvements:
  • The on/off button for each lamp/group indicates more clearly whether the lamp is on at low brightness or off (Button goes darker when lamp is off, in light and dark modes.)
  • The sliders for warmth, whiteness and brightness have graduated coloured backgrounds to indicate what will happen if you move them in a particular direction
  • Warmth and whiteness sliders are completely hidden if the lamp doesn't have those capabilities

version 3.1.1 August 2018

• Enables dark mode when using MacOs 10.14 Mojave (will respect the user's choice of dark or light mode in System Preferences)
• Fixes crash when switching to Schedules > Chart when using the new system
• Improves the on/off button for each lamp / group, makes it more obvious (in dark mode) whether the lamp is off or on at low brightness

version 3.1.0 July 2018

• Links the frequency of updates while using continuous sliding controls (eg brightness slider) to the heartbeat speed as set in Preferences
• ^ if the sliders have a long delay before you see the change (seconds) then too many messages are being sent to and from the bridge. Turn down the heartbeat Speed
• heartbeat speed default value is set at a slightly higher value for new users
• changes urls within the app and the dmg (eg support, EULA) to new https site

version 3.0.10 January 2018

• Adds 'Turn all off' and 'Turn all on' to status bar menu, preset submenu
• Fix to 'Turn all off' and 'Turn all on' in hotkeys
• If an effect is running, and user switches lamp/group off (or selects a preset that results in the lamp switching off) then effect is stopped. Previously the effect continued running which could switch the lamp back on.

version 3.0.9 January 2018

• Adds drag and drop functionality to colour indicators. You can drag a colour from one lamp to another, or from a lamp to a group. This makes it easy to find a colour you like and then propagate that colour to a group or all lamps. The colour temperature functionality is supported in this.
• Fixes a problem where a group or location containing only dimmable lamps (ie which don't display colours) were displaying a red colour in HT rather than white

version 3.0.8 January 2018

• Some glitches in the interface tidied up.
• Custom 'About' box added, it contains licensing information

version 3.0.7 (no longer beta) December 2017

• Adds export and import for settings, for use when moving computers and wanting to migrate existing schedules, presets, effects and some settings
• Adds 'are you sure?' checks to deletion of effects and schedules
• Updates the default implementations of 'false dawn' and 'false dusk' to take advantage of the fact that effects now handle warmth values
• Existing users can load these updated effects by deleting the original ones and quitting & restartingLIFXstyle
• Fixes a crash on startup experienced by some in earlier versions of this beta
• Other small fixes

version 3.0.5 (beta) December 2017

• Adds much better 'navigation' allowing you to choose control strips for lamps / groups / rooms / all
• Adds a new minimalist layout plus button in the toolbar for switching layouts
• Adds custom colour picker, geared towards smartbulbs. This includes the option of full colour or whites
• Adds colour temperature functionality - adds 'warmth' control to each strip, optionally switches between colour temp mode and full colour mode
• Improved status bar menu, shows on/off state of lamps / groups at a glance. Possible to switch lamps on/off from that menu, and select presets as before
• Adds scrollwheel functionality, use scrollwheel within colourwells to dim up / down
• Adds a number of preference options for various behaviours
• Effects designer is enhanced in a number of ways. And the 'effects' icon within control strips animates to indicate where an effect is running
• Many other small enhancements

version 2.0.2 (no longer beta) November 2017

• Takes v2 out of beta, which adds the effects designer. As well as adding a tool for designing cycling effects, it also replaces the old 'false dawn', 'false dusk' (there are built-in effects for those things, which you can edit and have much more flexibility over the settings for those)
• Fixes problem preventing Hue-topia from automatically discovering the bridge IP properly (problem would have begun occurring on 2 Nov 17 due to slight change in the format of the information returned when HT requests the address of the bridge)
• Adds 'View' button in toolbar allowing you to choose the layout (this option was available before but hidden in the menus)

version 2.0 (beta) August 2017

• Adds Effects designer, 'pre-loaded' with some effects, TV simulator, Fire, plus two which are designed to replace the old 'false dawn' and 'false dusk'. The new dawn / dusk effects change colour through gold and blue while reducing or increasing the light in order to simulate dawn or dusk more realistically. More importantly, they're editable and you can customise them as you see fit.
• If you did have any 'false dawn / dusk' set up on schedule, you'll need to open these and change them to 'Effect' and choose the appropriate effect.
• Adds ability to set F13 - F19 as 'hotkeys', useful for users of extended keyboards (there's no conflict with the newer functions of the function keys - brightness, volume etc)

Version 1.11 released November 2016

• Supports Hue's new 'rooms' concept. Previous versions show Groups and Rooms as Groups. Now Hue-topia clearly shows Rooms with a room icon.
• Adds preference to show Groups but not Rooms in Hue-topia

Version 1.10.1 released Jan 2016

• Fixes hang when visualising schedules (gantt chart) for users upgrading from an earlier version of HT than 1.9 with existing schedules
• Fixes a problem with the logic of bridge login which was causing the 'please press button on your bridge' message to not appear or appear sporadically, so some users didn't know that HT was waiting for the bridge button to be pressed and thus had appeared to hang.

Version 1.10 released Dec 2015

• Adds 'Chart' option for visualising schedules (gantt chart)

Version 1.6.5 released Sep 2014

• Adds 'Edit group' for changing the lights in a group
• Changes 'Delete group' to a menu system to match the new 'Edit group'

Version 1.6.4 released Sep 2014

• Fixes memory leaks
• Improves bridge error reporting system; user isn't alerted to occasional one-off errors which are not unusual, only by more frequent problems
• if a lamp is off, brightness/whiteness/colour sliders will no longer attempt to send instructions to the bridge - pointless because bridge only returns an error

Version 1.6.3 released Aug 2014

• Improves error reporting (via View>Bridge warnings, cmd-4)
• Adds ability to switch off bridge warnings (Preferences > Don't show bridge warning)
• Improves handling of unresponsive bridge (previously, app appeared to hang)

Version 1.6.2 released Aug 2014

• Adds new-style colour picker to Action window
• Prevents instructions from being sent to the bridge more than 10 times per second when continuous-action sliders and colour pickers are being used. Sliders being moved quickly was causing bridge error 503 to be sent to the Console (although user would have been unaware of a problem)
• Fixes bug causing colour picker to stop working after choosing colours in certain ways
• Now correctly hides brightness and saturation sliders when opening a scheduled false dawn

Version 1.6.1 released Aug 2014

• Adds support for non-ascii characters in lamp and group names
• Improves the colour indicators - colour more closely resembles the colour of the bulb

Version 1.6 released Aug 2014

• Adds 'badge' to dock icon showing number of bulbs lit. Switch this feature on / off in Preferences > General
• Adds standard colour picker to each control strip - allows you to store your favourite colours, drag and drop colours between bulbs etc etc
• Previous rotating colour knob is still available if you prefer it - Preferences > General > Colour
• Adds 'Touchlink' command under Lights menu. An alternative to LampStealer, connects bulbs that have previously been paired with a different bridge
• Sliders for brightness, whiteness and the new colour picker work continuously rather than only operating when you 'let go'
• increases the frequency that the bridge is polled ('heartbeat') so certain kinds of update are faster and the UI looks a little more responsive
• Switches to Paddle licensing system. Will pick up and honour existing licences
• Tested and supported on OSX 10.10 Yosemite

Version 1.5.1 released July 2014

• Fixes minor bug relating to hotkeys F7 & F8

Version 1.5 released July 2014

• Access your presets quickly using F-keys (with or without modifier)
• Preferences window remembers its position

Version 1.4.3 released June 2014

• Some fixe to presets

Version 1.4.2 released June 2014

• Adds support for Bloom, LivingColours and LivingWhite lamps (if already connected to your bridge)

Version 1.4.1 released May 2014

• Fixes problem with the status bar menu
• Fixes problem with schedules involving 'all lamps' where user has the 'all' group switched off
• Other small fixes relating to schedules. Users might open and close existing schedules if the schedule isn't operating the expected lamps

Version 1.4 released May 2014

New features

• Able to link on/off times to sunrise/sunset - off an hour after sunrise / on an hour before sunset (uses location services to find the times, OSX will ask whether you want to enable location services, feature will obviously only work if you agree)

Improvements and fixes:

• Better handles factory reset of bridge or new bridge that hasn't been set up using the Philips app
• Fixes problem of controls sometimes having no effect and jumping back to previous position
• Fixes bug when deleting group, if more than one group selected, only one was deleted at a time
• improved error reporting
• Fixes problem of status bar icon duplicating after certain actions
• Many small fixes and 'under the hood' improvements

Version 1.3.5 released April 2014

• Adds 'import from bridge' - to import any schedules from bridge that weren't originally created by Hue-topia (they can be browsed first using the bridge explorer)
• NB scheduled times may appear to be different on the bridge and within Huetopia because the bridge internally stores time as UTC but Hue-topia and other apps display and handle time in the local time
• Corrects incorrect percentage being displayed for brightness in the list of schedules (in the table, not the editor popup)
• Fixes bug causing brightness/colour sliders not to show in schedule popup for actions which are set to 'Change brightness & colour'
• colour, brightness, whiteness defaults for a new action are explicitly set to appropriate values

Version 1.3.4 released April 2014

• Solves a problem with launching on 10.7

version 1.3.3 released March 2014

• Improves bridge connecting
• Improves error reporting where there are problems connecting
• Adds Bridge IP to Settings window, allows IP to be entered manually when there are problems discovering bridge
• Handles more than one bridge found on local network (previously caused Hue-topia to fail)

version 1.3.2 released March 2014

• Fixes problem with renaming presets
• Fixes problem with app becoming unresponsive after Licence reminder has been displayed for the second time (once per 24hrs)
• Adds ability to 'fold' control strips to help manage a large number of lamps (feature needs to be switched on)
• Adds transition time to presets - default time set in Settings/Preferences, individual times for each preset set in 'Manage Presets'

version 1.3.1 released March 2014

• Adds refresh button to bridge explorer
• Fixes a cause of a very occasional random crash

version 1.3 released March 2014

• Adds 'False dawn' and 'False dusk' which can be scheduled or started manually (just dusk) for lamps or groups
• Adds transition time for false dusk / dawn to Preferences. Default is 30 minutes, which starts from the scheduled time
• Adds 'Bridge explorer' (View > Bridge Explorer or cmd-3) allows user to browse the contents of the bridge
• Adds 'Show Manual Control' to status bar menu
• Fixes bug causing unexpected results with schedules in the previous version
• Adds link to tutorial under Help menu

NB there is a bug with false dusk which seems to lie with certain older bulbs (swversion 65003148 - you can check using the new Bridge Explorer in Hue-topia) - those bulbs sometimes (not always) switch off quickly regardless of the transition time. False dawn seems to work fine. Suggest switching your bulbs around if you have any of the newer ones (swversion 66009663) so that the newer ones are in the place(s) where you'll use the false dusk.

version 1.2.2 released February 2014

• Fixes a bug causing problems to some users when connecting to the bridge for the first time

version 1.2.1 (not beta) released February 2014

Fixes and improvements:

• Groups update themselves based on the status of the lamps in the group
• adjusting the brightness / whiteness / colour of a group now switches the group on. Previously altering the controls did nothing unless the group was switched on
• Removes 'brushed metal' look from manual control panel
• Adds Activation functionality, key £4.95
• Fixes problems related to brightness and saturation sliders in schedule popup

version 1.1 (still beta) released January 2014

Fixes and improvements:

• Fixes 'start and stop listening' scheduled events happening at random times if the computer has been asleep
• Fixes bug causing problems with incorrect checkboxes being checked when an existing action is opened
• Adds preference 'Show a group for All lights'. Adds tabbed view to Preferences window
• Reorganises menus, adds 'Start listening', 'Stop listening', 'All on' and 'All off' to menus
• Better keyboard control, cmd-A = All on, cmd-shift-A = All off, cmd-L = Start listening, cmd-Shift-L = Stop listening
• Built for 10.7 (Lion) upwards (first beta 10.8 and up) and also 32 as well as 64-bit intel macs
• Fixes starts listening on schedule even if item is disabled in schedules
• Fixes action colour slider working in reverse
• Fixes bug - 'actions on bridge' message showing after you'd removed them

version 1.0 (Beta) released November 2013