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Integration with Home Assistant now working

J

jmf

Active member
For those of us who are in the DIY realm with automation or *only* using Lutron Ra2, there was a recent release of a K integration for Home Assistant. I have installed it and it works very well. The example provided by the developer does a basic light up / lights down scene based on play / pause or movie start. His initial release supports many of the basic K integrations items needed for home cinema such as movie location, masking, ratio, scope masking, etc. I don't think he is a member here (yet), and I was able to track him down on the AVSforum to get permission to cross-post over here. I did a basic test with adding a lights up scene as credits rolled, and it was perfect. I will likely tinker some more for Intermission responses, etc.

I don't know the rules of direct linking to AVS, so I will simply quote his post. If its permitted to link to the AVS post, I will. He is looking for more testers for a wider variety of K components. I have a Strato S, as does he, so I am of no help on that front. :)

<His quote>
After months of work I have finally completed an open source Kaleidescape movie player integration for Home Assistant. This integration allows you tie your player(s) into lighting systems, masking systems, lens controls, videos scalers, etc. For instance, have the lights turn up when the credits start rolling, change your masking system to match the current aspect ratio, or Roomba to clean the theater when the movie ends :).

If you are a Kaleidescape owner, and current user of Home Assistant, would love to get some help testing it out across more devices before submitting it to Home Assistant for official inclusion. My own testing has been on my Strato S.

See https://github.com/SteveEasley/hass-kaleidescape for details
<end his quote>
 
Thanks for the pointer to this integration. Unlike Mike's grand home theatre (of which I am insanely jealous and I've never even seen it in person!), my setup is decidedly lower budget and I use Home Assistant for quite a bit of home automation. I'll be installing this integration and taking it for a spin ASAP.
 
J.Green said:
Thanks for the pointer to this integration. Unlike Mike's grand home theatre (of which I am insanely jealous and I've never even seen it in person!), my setup is decidedly lower budget and I use Home Assistant for quite a bit of home automation. I'll be installing this integration and taking it for a spin ASAP.
Click to expand...
Well, I am new here, and I assure you, my CURRENT setup is not all that awesome. Im in the process of building a dedicated theater and decided I wanted in on the K ecosystem, so I connected with Jim and got setup with a Strato. My main goal was to start building the collection on the K instead of the Apple TV we had been using as a family so when the construction is done in the spring, we hit the ground running. I have it plugged in to a 65" Sony x950 which has a great picture and is fine. However, the room is an open floor plan with 20' ceiling, a wall of windows with no light control, and a 5.1 Bose Acoustimas kit I bought ~17 years ago on clearance at a Sears shortly after getting married.

The worse part, I have my new processor sitting in a box, I *could* pull the trigger on the speakers and amps, etc ... but nowhere to safely put them in this room! So ... one can dream about how much better the experience will be when the room construction is done. :). I think I have some support from my wife on doing a basic upgrade on the speakers in the current room, but the room itself still sucks for this type of purpose.

As for the Integration with HA, I am still learning HA and find it frustrating. However, this integration was a breeze to setup and has been working quite well. It did fail to raise lights when a swap to credits in MOVIE_LOCATION happened, but I didn't dig into why. Its possible I jumped around too much while showing off to my kids how it worked. :)
 
jmf said:
Well, I am new here, and I assure you, my CURRENT setup is not all that awesome. Im in the process of building a dedicated theater and decided I wanted in on the K ecosystem, so I connected with Jim and got setup with a Strato. My main goal was to start building the collection on the K instead of the Apple TV we had been using as a family so when the construction is done in the spring, we hit the ground running. I have it plugged in to a 65" Sony x950 which has a great picture and is fine. However, the room is an open floor plan with 20' ceiling, a wall of windows with no light control, and a 5.1 Bose Acoustimas kit I bought ~17 years ago on clearance at a Sears shortly after getting married.

The worse part, I have my new processor sitting in a box, I *could* pull the trigger on the speakers and amps, etc ... but nowhere to safely put them in this room! So ... one can dream about how much better the experience will be when the room construction is done. :). I think I have some support from my wife on doing a basic upgrade on the speakers in the current room, but the room itself still sucks for this type of purpose.

As for the Integration with HA, I am still learning HA and find it frustrating. However, this integration was a breeze to setup and has been working quite well. It did fail to raise lights when a swap to credits in MOVIE_LOCATION happened, but I didn't dig into why. Its possible I jumped around too much while showing off to my kids how it worked. :)
Click to expand...
Not sure I understand the raise light point perfectly as I have crestron, but one item I did notice that makes sense but caught me off guard. If there is a scene post credits that is "part of the movie", then the lights will actually not raise until you get to that scene. This one fooled me the first time as I went searching for why my credits lighting scene did not fire.
 
Bauer89 said:
Not sure I understand the raise light point perfectly as I have crestron, but one item I did notice that makes sense but caught me off guard. If there is a scene post credits that is "part of the movie", then the lights will actually not raise until you get to that scene. This one fooled me the first time as I went searching for why my credits lighting scene did not fire.
Click to expand...
Ah!!! I bet that is correct! My daughter mentioned “there are some scenes as part of the credits”. Thank you for that!
 
Bauer89 said:
If there is a scene post credits that is "part of the movie", then the lights will actually not raise until you get to that scene. This one fooled me the first time as I went searching for why my credits lighting scene did not fire.
Click to expand...

Never ran into during development. Good to know! Also a great clue to hang out during the credits.
 
Bauer89 said:
Not sure I understand the raise light point perfectly as I have crestron, but one item I did notice that makes sense but caught me off guard. If there is a scene post credits that is "part of the movie", then the lights will actually not raise until you get to that scene. This one fooled me the first time as I went searching for why my credits lighting scene did not fire.
Click to expand...

As a related Tip, if the have Finishing the movie the title still shows “Resume Movie“ there is more content to see. Also applies to removing a Watched movie from the “Watch Soon”. If it isn’t removed aut, there is more to see.

John
 
Not specific to Home Assistant, but how are folks handling lighting when running Scripts? When the script changes from one scene to the next, it inserts a pause prior to moving to the next movie. This is triggering lighting on. Then the lighting turns off when it starts the next scene (playing). I have a flag to turn off all lighting automation, but wondered if anyone has figured out how to handle. I've looked the the Strato control logs when playing a script (vs normal movie), and really don't see any major differences. Having the pause at the end of the movie is good, because if you just hit the stop key (instead of pause), it inserts a pause before moving to the main title screen(s). This allows lighting to come on which is what you typically want. If I had a way to identify that a script was playing, I could change so the automation doesn't trigger. Obviously not that big of a deal, but thought I would ask! Thanks. SJ
 
When I play a Script it runs straight through - no pauses. Scenes, on the other hand do stop after every Scene. The only way I know to create a pause in a Scrpt is to actually insert one after every Scene.

John
 
Hmmm. Scripts are just a bunch of scenes that can obviously span across your entire movie library. After every scene in the script, the control system has a PLAY_STATUS event of pause (1), followed by a PLAY_STATUS event of Nothing Playing (0). It then moves to the next scene (which could be another movie) and you get a PLAY_STATUS of Playing (2). The pause (1) and playing (2) status is what is triggering lighting automation so the lights go up and down (that and Movie Location for end credits). Maybe I'm pulling the wrong thing to connect to my lighting system, but it works great except scripts... :oops:
 
In my Home Assistant automation I handle an issue similar to this with its state hold feature. So the state has to remain in the target state for a certain time before triggering the action. In my case 1 second. Not sure if there is a way to do something similar?
 
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@SJHT, got it. I haven’t perused the Control Protocol Manual in a while to know if there is another way to do it.

John
 
When you create the K script, you can add "Send command to control system" as a step at the beginning to disable light cues and then add another "Send command to control system" step at the end to enable light cues again.
 
andy said:
When you create the K script, you can add "Send command to control system" as a step at the beginning to disable light cues and then add another "Send command to control system" step at the end to enable light cues again.
Click to expand...
Perfect! Thanks!
 
jmf said:
Ah!!! I bet that is correct! My daughter mentioned “there are some scenes as part of the credits”. Thank you for that!
Click to expand...
If there's a scene all the way at the end of the credits (think Ferris Bueller), we typically don't delay the end-credits bookmark that far. But if there's a scene after the initial part of the credits (popular with many Marvel movies), we will hold the end-credits bookmark to that point. It's also sometimes delayed if the end credits have extensive animations or other action that is best watched with the lights down. This is an editorial decision so it's up to the Movie Guide specialist who bookmarked the movie to make that call.

SJHT said:
When the script changes from one scene to the next, it inserts a pause prior to moving to the next movie. This is triggering lighting on.
Click to expand...
I have my control system set not to respond to pause events or a return to the OSD. I bring the lights up for the end credits bookmark, or for an intermission event (with different fade rates for those two cases). I seldom if ever want the lights to come on when paused, or when returning to the onscreen display via a stop command.

Are you inserting actual pause events in your script, or are you just seeing these lighting triggers fire between scenes?
 
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MikeKobb said:
I have my control system set not to respond to pause events or a return to the OSD. I bring the lights up for the end credits bookmark, or for an intermission event (with different fade rates for those two cases). I seldom if ever want the lights to come on when paused, or when returning to the onscreen display via a stop command.

Are you inserting actual pause events in your script, or are you just seeing these lighting triggers fire between scenes?
Click to expand...
The Strato control system puts a pause event (1) as well as a nothing playing (0) event between scenes as you are running a Script. There is no way to tell that you are running a Script vs. just a normal scene. Guess I could just use Intermission for the lighting as you have (vs pause). If there was anyway to tell that a Script was running it would be super easy. But looking at the Strato control system events, there doesn't seem to be any difference between running a normal scene (or even a movie) and when running a script. The lighting feature is just great. Our theater has a short entry way before the doors. If it is after sunset, I even turn on those hallway lights in addition to the theater lights for pausing and end credits. :)
 
Honestly, that sounds like a bug. I will file it, but I'm not sure when it will be addressed.
 
SJHT said:
The Strato control system puts a pause event (1) as well as a nothing playing (0) event between scenes as you are running a Script. There is no way to tell that you are running a Script vs. just a normal scene. Guess I could just use Intermission for the lighting as you have (vs pause). If there was anyway to tell that a Script was running it would be super easy. But looking at the Strato control system events, there doesn't seem to be any difference between running a normal scene (or even a movie) and when running a script. The lighting feature is just great. Our theater has a short entry way before the doors. If it is after sunset, I even turn on those hallway lights in addition to the theater lights for pausing and end credits. :)
Click to expand...
For purposes of my bug report, what kOS version is your system currently running?

I do the same thing for my theater lighting integration, by the way. I dim the lights in my concession area when the movie is playing, since it could be distracting if somebody opens the door to go get more popcorn. I brighten them up for intermission or end-of-movie. I also bring up the lights outside the main theater door for those cases. I didn't make that conditional on being after sunset. Good idea! Most of my movie viewing is after sunset, though.
 
MikeKobb said:
For purposes of my bug report, what kOS version is your system currently running?

I do the same thing for my theater lighting integration, by the way. I dim the lights in my concession area when the movie is playing, since it could be distracting if somebody opens the door to go get more popcorn. I brighten them up for intermission or end-of-movie. I also bring up the lights outside the main theater door for those cases. I didn't make that conditional on being after sunset. Good idea! Most of my movie viewing is after sunset, though.
Click to expand...
10.11.0-22557. Thanks and this should be low priority for sure…..
 
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