References from the command line

References in Photons are specified either as a single serial, a list of serials or a special reference which defines how to find devices dynamically on the network.

A serial is a 12-digit hexadecimal number in the format d073d5xxxxxx, e.g. d073d5123456 and is also the MAC address of the device. The serial number is printed on the base of each bulb.

When Photons discovers devices, it associates an IP address with each serial and uses that to target packets for each device.

For example, get the current color of the device with serial d073d5001337:

$ lifx lan:attr d073d5001337 GetColor

Set the power of these two devices:

$ lifx lan:attr d073d5000001,d073d500adb8 SetPower -- '{"level": 65535}'

Photons provides some special references including _ which is a shortcut for all discovered devices on the network and the match reference.

Toggle the power on all devices on the network:

$ lifx lan:power_toggle _

Set all multizone devices (Z and Beam) to green:

$ lifx lan:transform match:cap=multizone -- '{"color": "green"}'

Transform a device with the label kitchen to blue over 2 seconds:

$ lifx lan:transform match:label=kitchen -- '{"color": "blue", "duration": 2}'

Photons also accepts a list of serials contained within a file as the reference:

$ cat my_serials.txt
d073d5008988
d073d500ad23

$ lifx lan:apply_theme file:my_serials.txt

The match reference

The match reference has the following options:

serial

The serial of the device

label

The label of a device is its name as defined in the smart phone app.

power

Either “on” or “off” depending on whether the device is on or not.

group_id

The UUID of the group set on this device.

group_name

The name of a group. If there are several devices that have the same group_id, this will be set to the label of the group with the newest updated_at option.

location_id

The UUID of the location set on this device.

location_name

The name of a location. If there are several devices that have the same location_id, this will be set to the label of the location with the newest updated_at option.

hue

saturation

brightness

kelvin

The HSBK values of the device. You can specify a range by providing the minimum and maximum values seperated by a hypen, e.g. 10-30, which would match any device with an HSBK value between 10 and 30 (inclusive).

firmware_version

The version of the HostFirmware as a string of “{major}.{minor}”.

product_id

The product ID of the device as an integer. For example LIFX Tiles have the product ID of 55.

cap

A list of capability strings, i.e.

• ir and not_ir

• color and not_color

• chain and not_chain

• matrix and not_matrix

• multizone and not_multizone

• variable_color_temp and not_variable_color_temp

Use the & operator to combine multiple options or multiple values of the same option:

# Find matrix devices with a saturation value of 1
"match:cap=matrix&saturation=1"

# Find devices that have either the chain and multizone capabilities
"match:cap=chain&cap=multizone"

Note

combining different options uses a logical AND while combining multiple values of the same option uses a logical OR.

To match on a label with specicial characters, provide the URL encoded value of the label. For example, to find a device with the label “Kitchen bench” use the following match string:

"match:label=Kitchen%20bench"