LIFX Mini Bulb with V3.90 firmware always offline to PG3 LIFX 2.1.26 Node server

[gviliunas]

My system uses several LIFX Mini (C and W) bulbs. These bulbs are all V3.60 firmware. All of these work properly with the PG3 LIFX NS.

I tried to add several new bulbs. These have v3.90 firmware. These new bulbs add properly to the network and can be properly controlled by the LIFX cell phone app. 

The PG3 LIFX NS discovers the bulbs and adds them to the IOP Admin console device tree. On the Admin Console page for these bulbs, all are listed as offline and cannot be controlled via PG3

Restarting the NS, PG3, IOP, and Polisy does not fix the problem. Added @xKingto this as he is the author of the PG3 NS

Has anyone else seen this?

Edit: I learned a little more about this issue. After a firmware upgrade, the MAC address of the bulb is changed. (Usually incremented or decremented by 1). 

I tried manually deleting the old node on the NS Nodes page and modified my devlist.yaml to reflect the new MAC and IP. IOP shows the node as found but still lists it as being offline. 

Lifx_Bulb_debug.log

Edited October 29, 2022 by gviliunas
Learned that MAC address changes in the firmware upgrade process

[xKing]

I don't have any of those mini ones so can't really test, sorry. Also @einstein.42 is the author, I just ported it to PG3  

[gviliunas]

@xKing Sorry for the late reply. I was out of town this past week. 

FYI, I just discovered this is a PG3 issue. I brought my PG2 version of Lifx back up and v3.90 bulbs work perfectly with the PG2 version Lifx NS. They now show Online=True and can be controlled properly.

I know you don't have these bulbs to test but if anyone is having this problem, a good workaround would be to use the PG2 version.

Thanks for your help!

[gviliunas]

After more tinkering, I discovered that the problem with using v3.9 LiFX bulbs is not PG3. The problem is with using a devlist.yml file. With previous revisions of bulb FW, the bulb MAC that the router associates with an IP and the bulb SN that the PG3 devlist contains were the same. Now, with firmware 3.9, the MAC address is different from the bulb SN.

Here is how to use LiFX bulbs and a devlist if you have any bulbs with firmware version 3.90:

1. Add LiFX bulbs to your WIFI network. Find the bulb's MAC and IP in your router's status pages. Configure your router to issue a static lease to the bulb(s) so that the IPs will remain constant. Note the IPs and MAC addresses of your bulb(s). (See example screenshot)

2. Configure the LiFX Node server to NOT use a devlist. Restart the Node server and let it automatically discover all of your bulbs. You may need to click "Re-Discover Bulbs" several times.

3. In the Admin Console, look through the status pages of each bulb discovered. At the top of the page will be the bulb's name with the Node server slot-number and bulb SN listed below. (See example screenshot)

4. For each bulb, compare the SN  obtained in step-4 with the MAC obtained in step-1. If the bulb firmware is 3.90, you will find that the MAC and SN differ by 1. In my example case, the MAC is d0:73:d5:3f:2a:e7 while the SN is d073d53f2ae6

5. To build a devlist.yml file that will work, for each bulb, use the IP address from step-1 (In my case 192.168.1.58) and the SN (formatted with the colons:   d0:73:d5:3f:2a:e6) from step-4. Install the new devlist.yml file. Be sure to add the location of the file on the Node server configuration page. Restart the Node server.

All of your bulbs should now be working.

Many thanks to @xKingand @einstein.42for their work in developing this very useful Node server and porting it to PG3!

Edited November 13, 2022 by gviliunas