What you need to know
- A HomeKit fanatic has hacked up a way to display images and animations on LIFX Tiles.
- Amazing work includes Baby Yoda, and live YouTube subscriber counts.
- A complete tutorial is in the works, and tons of additional integrations are being explored.
An amazing LIFX Tile hack is making the rounds which puts images and animations front and center on the smart lighting system. Christopher Young, of homekitgeek.com and YouTube fame, has been working on on the project for the past several weeks, and has recently shared some incredible stuff, like Baby Yoda.
In addition to static images, Christopher is able to display things like YouTube subscriber counts. This incredible feat automatically updates the numbers on the light panels when new subscribers are added. Short animations are also possible, with a recent tweet showing off a supernova.
Your wish... pic.twitter.com/O7wkthwFveYour wish... pic.twitter.com/O7wkthwFve— Chris Young (@Homekitgeek) April 24, 2020April 24, 2020
Christopher tells me that the inspiration for the project was his daughter, and that he just wanted to do something cool for her upcoming birthday. Of course, once he began sharing some of his work, requests have come in for just about everything, including the aforementioned supernova.
The funniest part is that this project was TOTALLY because of my daughter. I really wanted to do something cool for her birthday and the plan was to take pictures with her friends and then display them on the tiles.
Christopher mentions that he has tons in store for the project as it seems like the possibilities are endless. Ideas include exploring the ability to create a dashboard of data from sources like air quality monitors, and even potentially showing off live camera feeds.
There are of course, some downsides for the project, one of which is that getting this hack up and running isn't quite as simple as drag and drop as of yet. The other is that LIFX Tiles are incredibly hard to find, and if you do happen to find some for sale, they will come with a premium price tag.
Christopher does plan to make a tutorial available in the future, but as of right now the project requires messing around with behind the scenes stuff (code), but progress in making it a little more friendly is being made. The pylifxtiles project can currently be found over on GitHub if you want to take a look.
If you want to be notified when tutorials are posted or if you are interested in seeing where this journey takes him, you can follow him on Twitter or on YouTube.
