Device Discovery

Photons discovers LIFX devices by broadcasting a GetService message and interpreting the StateService messages received from the network.

This method is unavailable on networks that have broadcasting disabled and unreliable on networks with a large amount of devices. To remove the need for broadcast delivery, hardcoded discovery is used. To improve the reliability of discovery, serial filters can be configured.

Discovery options

Use the hardcoded_discovery option to configure specific serial to IP address mapping:

---

discovery_options:
  hardcoded_discovery:
    d073d5000001: "192.168.0.1"
    d073d5000002: "192.168.0.2"

This requires static IP address assignment on the network DHCP server so that each bulb always gets the same IP address.

If hardcoded_discovery is configured, Photons will not do any broadcast discovery and will not find any bulbs not specifically configured.

A serial_filter restricts the devices Photons can discover, but still uses broadcasting so static IP addresses are not required:

---

discovery_options:
  serial_filter:
    - d073d5001337
    - d073d5001338

In this case, broadcast discovery is used, but only to discover the specified serials. All other devices are ignored.

The serial_filter and hardcoded_discovery options can be combined.

The HARDCODED_DISCOVERY environment variable sets or overrides any hardcoded_discovery configuration setting. In the following example, Photons will only discover a single device with the serial of d073d5111111 if it has the IP address of 192.168.0.1:

$ export HARDCODED_DISCOVERY='{"d073d5111111": "192.168.0.1"}'
$ lifx lan:attr _ GetColor

The SERIAL_FILTER environment variable sets or overrides any serial_filter configuration setting:

$ export SERIAL_FILTER=d073d500001,d073d5111111
$ lifx lan:attr _ GetColor

Photons will do a broadcast discovery, but only for devices with the serial of d073d5000001 and d073d5111111.

Disable any discovery options set in a configuration file with an environment variable set to null:

$ export HARDCODED_DISCOVERY=null
$ export SERIAL_FILTER=null
$ lifx lan attr _ GetColor

Target options

Custom defined lan targets can have unique discovery options:

---

targets:
   my_target:
     type: lan
     options:
       discovery_options:
         hardcoded_discovery:
           d073d5001337: "192.168.0.1"

In this case, my_target is restricted to a single device with the serial d073d5001337 using the IP address 192.168.0.1.

Note

the HARDCODED_DISCOVERY and SERIAL_FILTER environment variables are global and will override target-specific discovery settings.

Global discovery options are combined with target-specific discovery options:

---

discovery_options:
  hardcoded_discovery:
    d073d5000001: 192.168.0.1

targets:
   target_one:
     type: lan
     options:
       discovery_options:
         hardcoded_discovery:
           d073d5000002: 192.168.0.2

   target_two:
     type: lan
     options:
       discovery_options:
         hardcoded_discovery:
           d073d5000003: 192.168.0.3

In this scenario, target_one contains d073d5000001 and d073d5000002 while target_two contains d073d5000001 and d073d5000003.

The global serial_filter is also combined with a target-specific filter:

---

discovery_options:
  serial_filter:
   - d073d5000001
   - d073d5000002

targets:
   target_one:
     type: lan
     options:
       discovery_options:
         serial_filter:
          - d073d5000003

   target_two:
     type: lan
     options:
       discovery_options:
         serial_filter: null

In this case, all targets use broadcast discovery but the default lan target will only find d073d5000001 and d073d5000002, target_one will only find d073d5000003 and target_two will find all devices on the network.