Photons Configuration files
Photons is configured using one or more configuration files.
Photons looks for a lifx.yml file in the same directory as the script being
run. The LIFX_CONFIG environment variable is used to override this location
with the specific path to a configuration file.
Photons will combine the lifx.yml or LIFX_CONFIG configuration with the
contents of ~/.photons_apprc.yml.
Additional configuration files can be included using the following syntax in one of the automatically detected configuration files:
---
photons_app:
extra_files:
after:
- filename: "{config_root}/secrets.yml"
optional: true
before:
- filename: "/path/to/file/you/want/loaded/before/this/one.yml
All configuration files are automatically merged to create a single Python dictionary using Option Merge.
The following options can be configured.
Logs colours
Change the color scheme used by the console log by setting the term_colors
variable. This is best configured as a per-user setting in ~/.photons_apprc.yml
---
term_colors: light
Note
log theme is set when the configuration is loaded after Photons starts.
Targets
Photons has a single target type of lan named lan by default.
The default target uses a default broadcast address of 255.255.255.255
for device discovery.
To make discovery more efficient, the lan target can be configured with a
more specific broadcast address.
---
targets:
lan:
type: lan
options:
default_broadcast: 192.168.1.255
# These options are all optional, below are the defaults
gaps:
# Some messages, like that used for discovery has an "unbound" number of results
# We stop waiting for results this gap plus 0.05 seconds before giving up waiting
# for more results
# In practise, with the default value, discovery will take a minimum 0.45 seconds to complete
gap_between_results: 0.4
# If we need both an acknowledgement and a result from a device, we wait this many seconds
# after getting an acknowledgement before retrying a message if we haven't got a reply yet
gap_between_ack_and_res: 0.2
# This is the backoff times for retrying messages.
# So with this setting, we retry at 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9, 1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, 6.1, etc
timeouts: [[0.2, 0.2], [0.1, 0.5], [0.2, 1], [1, 5]]
A custom target can also be defined:
---
targets:
home_network:
type: lan
options:
default_broadcast: 192.168.1.255
If a custom target is configured, it can be used instead of the lan target
the lifx utility on the command line, e.g. instead of
lifx lan:transform -- '{"power": "off"}' it becomes
lifx home_network:transform -- '{"power": "off"}'
Hard-coded discovery
Adjusting animations for busy networks
Tile animations send 320 HSBK values every 0.075 seconds to each tile set. To compensate for networks with heavy existing traffic, configure Photons to used a different packet strategy to reduce the overall number of packets sent and received:
---
animation_options:
noisy_network_limit: 2
This configuration is overridden at runtime by similarly named environment variables:
NOISY_NETWORK_LIMITSets the maximum number of unacknowledged animations frames in-flight at any point.
In noisy network mode, Photons will limit the number of frames in-flight to the value set. In this example, if two frames have been sent, Photons will not send another frame until it receives an acknowledgement.
Full configuration example
An example configuration with all available options looks like this:
---
photons_app:
extra_files:
after:
# load a "secrets.yml" that sits next to this file
# before this file is read
# If there is a secrets.yml to be found
- filename: "{config_root}/secrets.yml"
optional: true
animation_options:
noisy_network: true
inflight_limit: 2
targets:
home_network:
type: lan
options:
default_broadcast: 192.168.0.255
work_network:
type: lan
options:
discovery_options:
hardcoded_discovery:
d073d5000002: 10.0.0.2
d073d5000003: 10.0.0.3