More light!
Charly's Column – Hue and Rasp Pi
Since his Trådfri Smarthome article over a year ago, sys admin columnist Charly has been receiving messages from readers with two questions: "Can you do that with the Philips' Hue system?" and "Can this also be done with a normal brightness sensor?" Yes and yes!
In a previous issue [1], I described how I control a smart light in my living room with Ikea's Trådfri system and Linux. The darker it gets, the more I turn up the lights. Around the same time, Martin Loschwitz then explained how he used a Raspberry Pi and a transmitter module to control Hue and other Zigbee devices [2].
Now I'm going to do it again, without the Zigbee module, but I expect to use a Hue bridge, which Martin's approach doesn't need, and because not everyone has a roof-top photovoltaic system, this time I focused on a simple brightness sensor.
Getting Started
First, I discovered the IP address of my Hue Bridge: 10.0.0.8. Then I pressed the button on the bridge and entered the following at the command line:
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.