What does this do, docs unclear

Interesting project but Im a little lost on what it is trying to achieve, in the faq it says:

The ha-bridge has helpers to build devices for the gateway for the Logitech Harmony Hub, Vera, Vera Lite or Vera Edge, Nest & HAL and the ability to proxy all of your real Hue bridges behind this bridge.

That sentence is a little hard to parse, could someone try to reword that? Another point of confusion is that it says it emulates Phillips hues api, what is the reason for this, is this because many devices already integrate with that so its an easy place to hook in at, or is it something else?

Anyway ideally i would like to control thermostats other than the nest with my harmony. The harmony only talks to the nest but Im hoping i can emulate the nests api with this and redirect it to my thermostat. Is that a use case for this project or have i got the wrong idea.

Thanks

[digiltd]

@LukeDefeo I think you are getting distracted by the api side of things, the core concept of ha-bridge is really very simple (but very powerful).

Typical Hue use

You purchase and install a Philips Hue Starter Kit (bridge and bulbs) in your home.

Now you can turn the lights on and off with your phone, as well as the Hue Dimmer Switch stuck to your wall. Great!

Hue and Echo use

You then buy an Echo which out of the box can detect and control the same bulbs you already control with the app.

This is built in to the Echo and you do not need to use the Hue Skill for basic control.

You can say “Alexa, turn off the living room lights” and “Alexa, dim the living room lights to 40%” and she will. Super!

---

Ok, so we know the Echo can control Hue bulbs, what’s the big deal?

ha-bridge gives you the ability to create software based “fake Hue bulbs”

These fake bulbs are seen by the Echo and treated as if they were physical Hue bulbs, and like physical Hue bulbs you can send ON, OFF and DIM commands to them

ha-bridge allows you to set what you want it to do when the fake bulb receives each of the three commands (you can fire a script, make a http request, press a Harmony button etc, the possibilities are endless)

e.g.

• Receive ON command: do this thing
• Receive OFF command: do this other different thing
• Receive DIM command: do this other thing and send the value (number or percentage) as well

It doesn’t matter what the fake device does, as far as the Echo is concerned it has just turned a bulb on.

This means you can create a voice controlled switch for pretty much anything as long as you can do it with a computer 😃

Can you see the attraction and power now? 😃

[bwssytems]

@digiltd Great write up! might put that as the intro in the README…