Philips Hue Plugin for Macro Deck 3

Control Philips Hue lights from Macro Deck: recall scenes, switch lights on or off, set brightness and color, and nudge brightness, saturation, hue and color temperature up or down.

This is the Macro Deck 3 version of the Macro Deck 2 Philips Hue Plugin. It is a new, out-of-process plugin and can take over the bridges and buttons you set up in Macro Deck 2.

If this plugin is useful to you, you can support its development:

Requirements

Macro Deck 3 A Philips Hue bridge on the same local network as the computer running Macro Deck

Setting up a bridge

In Macro Deck, open Integrations and set up Philips Hue Plugin. Pick your bridge from the list. If it is not listed, choose Enter an address and type the bridge's IP address (the Hue app shows it under Settings > Bridges). Press the round link button on top of the bridge, then select Continue within 30 seconds.

Repeat for each additional bridge. When more than one bridge is set up, each action asks which bridge to use.

If a bridge's IP address changes, the plugin finds it again automatically.

Actions

Action What it does Set scene Recalls a scene stored on the bridge, either on the scene's own lights or on a room you pick. Update light Sets one or more lights to a fixed power state, brightness, color and fade time. Adjust light Raises or lowers brightness, saturation, hue and color temperature relative to the current state.

Coming from Macro Deck 2

Macro Deck 3's migration wizard hands your Macro Deck 2 setup to this plugin:

Paired bridges become integration entries, so no re-pairing is needed. (This needs the migration wizard to read Macro Deck 2's stored credentials.) Set scene, Update light and Adjust light buttons become the matching Macro Deck 3 actions, with the same bridge, lights, scene and settings. Brightness is now a percentage instead of 0-255.

Network use and privacy

The plugin talks to your bridge over the bridge's local HTTP API (Hue API v1). To find bridges, it uses, in this order: mDNS on your local network (the bridge announces itself as hue.tcp), and at the same time a scan of your local subnet: one GET /api/config request to each address next to your computer (at most 254 per network adapter), and only if both find nothing, Signify's discovery service (https://discovery.meethue.com), which lists the Hue bridges registered from your public IP address. The plugin sends nothing else there. Discovery runs when you set up a bridge, and when a configured bridge stops answering at its last address. The app key the bridge issues during pairing is stored in Macro Deck's encrypted secret store.

Known limitations

Uses the Hue API v1 over plain HTTP on your local network, as the Macro Deck 2 plugin did. No variables or button states yet. Lights are controlled, not monitored. Rooms and zones can be targeted by Set scene; Update light and Adjust light work on individual lights.

Development

dotnet build dotnet test macrodeck-plugin test --project src/DodecaDev.PhilipsHue

To debug against the desktop app, enable Developer Mode in Macro Deck and start the Macro Deck - Real Host launch profile (first run needs a one-time enrollment token in the project's .NET User Secrets under MacroDeck:Plugin:EnrollmentToken).

Releases are published by creating a GitHub release; .github/workflows/release.yml runs the official Macro Deck publishing workflow. The release tag sets the version.

License

MIT. Based on the original Macro Deck 2 plugin by RecklessBoon.