Phillips Hue Bridge and Thanos Integration

Input and output integration overview

This plugin gathers status from Hue Bridge devices using the CLIP API interface.

This plugin sends metrics from Telegraf to Thanos using the Prometheus remote write protocol over HTTP, allowing efficient and scalable ingestion into Thanos Receive components.

Integration details

Phillips Hue Bridge

The Hue Bridge plugin allows users to gather real-time status from Philips Hue Bridge devices utilizing the CLIP API interface. By communicating with Hue Bridges, this plugin is capable of retrieving various metrics related to home lighting and environmental conditions. It offers multiple schemes for accessing the bridges, such as local LAN, cloud, and mDNS, ensuring flexibility in deployment scenarios. The plugin can handle diverse configurations such as room assignments for devices, which optimizes the evaluation of statuses, especially in environments with many devices. Furthermore, it provides various monitoring metrics applicable to lights, temperature sensors, motion sensors, and device power status, thereby enabling comprehensive insights into a smart home setup. The configuration options allow users to tailor their connections to optimize performance and security, including optional TLS configurations for secure communication.

Thanos

Telegraf’s HTTP plugin can send metrics directly to Thanos via its Remote Write-compatible Receive component. By setting the data format to prometheusremotewrite, Telegraf can serialize metrics into the same protobuf-based format used by native Prometheus clients. This setup enables high-throughput, low-latency metric ingestion into Thanos, facilitating centralized observability at scale. It is particularly useful in hybrid environments where Telegraf is collecting metrics from systems outside Prometheus’ native reach, such as SNMP devices, Windows hosts, or custom apps, and streams them directly to Thanos for long-term storage and global querying.

Configuration

Phillips Hue Bridge

[[inputs.huebridge]]
  ## URL of bridges to query in the form ://:@
/
  ## See documentation for available schemes.
  bridges = [ "address://:@/" ]

  ## Manual device to room assignments to apply during status evaluation.
  ## E.g. for motion sensors which are reported without a room assignment.
  # room_assignments = { "Motion sensor 1" = "Living room", "Motion sensor 2" = "Corridor" }

  ## Timeout for gathering information
  # timeout = "10s"

  ## Optional TLS Config
  # tls_ca = "/etc/telegraf/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
  # tls_key_pwd = "secret"
  ## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
  # insecure_skip_verify = false
</code></pre>

Thanos

[[outputs.http]]
  ## Thanos Receive endpoint for remote write
  url = "http://thanos-receive.example.com/api/v1/receive"

  ## HTTP method
  method = "POST"

  ## Data format set to Prometheus remote write
  data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"

  ## Optional headers (authorization, etc.)
  # [outputs.http.headers]
  #   Authorization = "Bearer YOUR_TOKEN"

  ## Optional TLS configuration
  # tls_ca = "/path/to/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/path/to/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/path/to/key.pem"
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

  ## Request timeout
  timeout = "10s"

Input and output integration examples

Phillips Hue Bridge

1. Automated Lighting Control Based on Room Occupancy: Utilize the Hue Bridge plugin to monitor motion sensors within various rooms of a home. When motion is detected, the system can automatically trigger the lights to turn on, providing convenience and energy efficiency. This integration could significantly enhance user experience and preferences, adapting the lighting to occupancy levels without manual intervention.

2. Environmental Monitoring in Smart Homes: Implement the Hue Bridge plugin to track temperature and light levels within the house. By continuously monitoring these metrics, users can create a comfortable indoor climate, adjusting heating and cooling systems based on temperature trends or activating lights based on light levels detected. This data-driven approach leads to smart home automation that responds to actual environmental conditions.

3. Integration with Home Automation Systems: Leverage this plugin to integrate Philips Hue Bridge statistics into broader home automation frameworks. For example, collecting light and temperature data can feed into a centralized dashboard that provides homeowners with insights about their energy usage patterns. Environments can be programmed to respond proactively to user habits, promoting efficiency and energy conservation.

4. Battery Monitoring for Smart Devices: Use the Hue Bridge plugin to monitor battery levels across various connected smart devices. By being alerted about low battery states, homeowners can take timely actions to replace or recharge devices, preventing outages and ensuring smooth operation of their smart home systems.

Thanos

1. Agentless Cloud Monitoring: Deploy Telegraf agents across cloud VMs to collect system and application metrics, then stream them directly into Thanos using Remote Write. This provides centralized observability without requiring Prometheus nodes at each location.

2. Scalable Windows Host Monitoring: Use Telegraf on Windows machines to collect OS-level metrics and send them via Remote Write to Thanos Receive. This enables observability across heterogeneous environments with native Prometheus support only on Linux.

3. Cross-Region Metrics Federation: Telegraf agents in multiple geographic regions can push data to region-local Thanos Receivers using this plugin. From there, Thanos can deduplicate and query metrics globally, reducing latency and network egress costs.

4. Integrating Third-Party Data into Thanos: Collect metrics from custom telemetry sources such as REST APIs or proprietary logs using Telegraf inputs and forward them to Thanos via Remote Write. This brings non-native data into a Prometheus-compatible, long-term analytics pipeline.

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