The SDK currently supports Android only. Java support is coming soon.
The LIFX SDK will be published as a JAR archive when it is released publicly, but until then you can still use the SDK by cloning the repository and importing it into your project as an Android Library Project.
- Clone the SDK repository into a directory on your local machine.
- Open Eclipse and choose to import a "existing android code"
- Import the library project.
- Open the project properties for your application, select android then add the library project.
Initialize the library: Before using the Library functions, a connection must be established with the LIFX lights that are on the current network. First a reference to local network is gathered, then a connection is requested.
LFXNetworkContext localNetworkContext = LFXClient.getSharedInstance( this).getLocalNetworkContext();
localNetworkContext.connect();Turn off all lights:
LFXNetworkContext localNetworkContext = LFXClient.getSharedInstance( this).getLocalNetworkContext();
localNetworkContext.getAllLightsCollection().setPowerState( LFXPowerState.OFF);Turn on the light named "Hallway":
LFXNetworkContext localNetworkContext = LFXClient.getSharedInstance( this).getLocalNetworkContext();
LFXLight hallway = localNetworkContext.getAllLightsCollection().getFirstLightForLabel( "Hallway");
hallway.setPowerState( LFXPowerState.ON);Turn on all lights that are tagged "Kitchen":
LFXNetworkContext localNetworkContext = LFXClient.getSharedInstance( this).getLocalNetworkContext();
LFXTaggedLightCollection kitchen = localNetworkContext.getTaggedLightCollectionForTag( "Kitchen");
kitchen.setPowerState( LFXPowerState.ON);Set every light to a random color:
LFXNetworkContext localNetworkContext = LFXClient.getSharedInstance( this).getLocalNetworkContext();
for( LFXLight aLight : localNetworkContext.getAllLightsCollection().getLights())
{
LFXHSBKColor color = LFXHSBKColor.getColor( (float)(Math.random() * 360), 1.0f, 1.0f, 3500);
aLight.setColor( color);
}Disconnect: When the application is finished with the LIFX bulbs, you will need to signal the Library to end it's connections.
LFXNetworkContext localNetworkContext = LFXClient.getSharedInstance( this).getLocalNetworkContext();
localNetworkContext.disconnect();A Network Context refers to a context within which you will be accessing LIFX devices. The SDK currently only has support for a "Local Network Context", which refers to devices accessible on your LAN. We plan on adding Network Contexts for accessing your LIFX devices via our cloud service.
At the binary protocol level, we have three types of addressing - device, tag and broadcast. The details aren't important for SDK users, but it is important to be aware of the implications on performance.
Due to the low bandwidth available on the LIFX mesh radio system, performance is much better when sending a single message to a tag instead of sending individual messages to every device within a tag. Tags represent user-configured groupings, e.g. "Kitchen", "Hallway", "Bedroom".
Light Collections are classes that encapsulate a group of LIFX lights. They can have their light state manipulated in the same way that an individual light can. This is not only for developer convenience when writing UI code, it's important for getting the best performance out of a LIFX network.
A Tagged Light Collection represents the lights contained within a particular tag. If you want to manipulate every device within a tag, you should always use the Tagged Light Collection instead of dealing with each Light individually. You'll see much faster performance that way.
LIFX makes use of a "HSBK" color representation. The "HSB" part refers to the HSB color space, and the "K" part refers to the Color Temperature of the white point, in Kelvin. At full saturation, HSBK colors will correspond to the edge of the realisable color gamut, and at zero saturation, HSBK colors will correspond to the color described by the Color Temperature in the K component.
The LIFX SDK will need to discover devices on your network before it can talk to them. Due to the asynchronous nature of both the LIFX system, and the client SDKs, you won't be able to list all of the devices straight away, you'll have to check to see what devices have been found at a given point in time.