thunderstorm

A whole-house lightning storm, in the spirit of the Hue "Thunderstorm" app but spanning Hue and Govee rather than one vendor.

Switched by input_boolean.thunderstorm. Participants are whatever carries the Thunderstorm label in Home Assistant, so lights join or leave from the UI -- nothing here needs editing.

How it works

Two tiers, driven completely differently, because their hardware differs:

Tier	What	How it is driven
Conducted	Hue zones and rooms	Animated here via HA: slow blue rain shimmer, plus flash envelopes
Govee LAN	Govee devices with LAN Control enabled	Animated here too, straight over UDP (~33 ms) -- fully in sync
Native	Govee lights reachable only through the cloud bridge	Their built-in Thunderstorm scene, set once; the animation runs on the bulb

Why Hue groups and not Hue bulbs

The bridge takes roughly ten light commands a second. There are 43 individual Hue bulbs here, so flashing them one by one would both exceed that budget and arrive as a visible wave. A Hue Room/Zone entity is a single HA entity that the bridge fans out internally, so one call flashes a whole room at once, truly simultaneously. That is the only reason synchronised lightning is affordable.

Govee: three speeds, and only one of them can keep time

Govee lights reach us by two completely different paths, and the gap is not subtle:

Path	Measured round-trip	Can it flash in sync?
LAN API (UDP, local)	20-67 ms, 33 ms median	Yes
MQTT bridge (cloud-backed)	5-10 seconds	No

Proof of the slow path, on a live bulb:

call light.turn_on effect=Thunderstorm  ->  +2s off  +3s off  +5s on, effect=Thunderstorm

So a Govee light is sorted into one of two tiers depending on which path is open to it:

• Answers the LAN scan -> driven directly over UDP, exactly like a Hue zone. It gets the real rain shimmer and lands its flashes with everything else.
• Does not -> given its native on-device Thunderstorm scene and otherwise left alone, because a flash sent through the bridge would arrive seconds after the thunder and merely interrupt the bulb's own animation.

Commands are fire-and-forget UDP with no acks. A dropped flash frame is a non-event; waiting on an ack would cost more than it could ever save.

Getting more Govee lights into the fast tier

LAN control is off by default and is per device. In the Govee Home app open the device -> settings -> LAN Control -> on. Only some models offer it at all (the H619D strip here does; the H6008 and H600B bulbs did not answer).

Nothing else to change: the storm rescans on every run, so a light moves from the native tier to the LAN tier by itself the next time you flip the switch. Check with:

docker compose logs | grep govee-lan
# govee-lan: 1 device(s) reachable locally: 192.168.0.238

Strike shapes

Lightning is not one flash. STRIKE_SHAPES in app.py holds five envelopes, from a distant single swell to a close stuttering multi-flicker, each a list of (brightness_pct, hold_seconds). A 0 means "back to the current rain level", never off -- switching a zone off and on is slower than dimming it and reads as a blink rather than lightning. Gaps between strikes are exponential with a one-in-four chance of a fast follow-up, because real storms cluster.

The UI

A dedicated Home Assistant dashboard lives at /dashboard-thunderstorm ("Thunderstorm" in the sidebar). dashboard.json in this repo is the exported config, so it can be restored with a lovelace/config/save websocket call against that url_path. The switch is input_boolean.thunderstorm; the rest are live tuning helpers, re-read at the top of every strike cycle so the storm can be adjusted while it runs:

Helper	Effect
input_select.thunderstorm_intensity	Distant / Building / Overhead — picks which strike envelopes are drawn from
input_number.thunderstorm_strike_mean	mean seconds between strikes
input_number.thunderstorm_rain_min / _max	brightness band between strikes

If a helper is missing the corresponding .env default is used instead.

Config

Defaults, via .env (sops-encrypted as .env.enc). The helpers above override the first four at runtime:

Var	Default	Meaning
STRIKE_MEAN_S	22	mean seconds between strikes
STRIKE_MIN_GAP_S	3	floor on the gap
RAIN_MIN_PCT / RAIN_MAX_PCT	10 / 34	brightness band for the rain shimmer
RAIN_STEP_MIN_S / RAIN_STEP_MAX_S	2.5 / 6.0	how slowly the shimmer wanders
FLASH_NATIVE	0	try to flash cloud-only Govee bulbs too (see above)
GOVEE_LAN	1	discover and drive Govee devices over the local UDP API
THUNDER_LABEL	thunderstorm	HA label id that selects participants

State is snapshotted to scene.thunderstorm_restore at the start and restored when the switch goes off.

Currently labelled

\nconducted\n

entity	integration	area	note
light.den	hue	Den	Room
light.front_yard	hue	Front yard	Room
light.kitchen	hue	Kitchen	Room
\nnative\n
entity	integration	area	note
---	---	---	---
light.bed_bulb_1	mqtt	-	Thunderstorm
light.bed_bulb_2	mqtt	-	Thunderstorm
light.can_bulb	mqtt	-	Thunderstorm
light.game_cabinet_1	mqtt	-	Thunderstorm
light.game_cabinet_2	mqtt	-	Thunderstorm
light.hall_bulb	mqtt	-	Thunderstorm
light.rainbow_lights	mqtt	-	Lightning
light.utility_far	mqtt	-	Thunderstorm
light.utility_near	mqtt	-	Thunderstorm

Everything else you could add

Add the Thunderstorm label to any of these in the HA UI and it joins on the next run. Hue Room and Zone entities are strongly preferred over individual bulbs, for the rate-limit reason above -- note the three purpose-built zones thunder_indoor / thunder_outdoor / thunder_both, which overlap the room groups, so use one scheme or the other, not both.

entity	integration	kind	area	storm effect
light.tidbyt_display	?	bulb	Bedroom	-
light.apollo_msr_2_278a20_rgb_light	esphome	bulb	Utility Room	-
light.ratgdov25i_47a254_light	esphome	bulb	garage	-
light.ratgdov25i_886c74_light	esphome	bulb	garage	-
light.my_hatch_baby_clock	ha_hatch	bulb	-	-
light.my_hatch_baby_light	ha_hatch	bulb	-	-
light.the_rainbow_connection_clock	ha_hatch	bulb	-	-
light.the_rainbow_connection_light	ha_hatch	bulb	-	-
light.basement_2	hue	Room	Basement	-
light.bedroom	hue	Room	Bedroom	-
light.color_light_1	hue	bulb	-	-
light.dining	hue	Room	Dining	-
light.door_bulb	hue	bulb	Entrance	-
light.entrance	hue	Room	Entrance	-
light.girls_room_door	hue	bulb	Nursery	-
light.girls_room_window	hue	bulb	Nursery	-
light.guest_room	hue	Room	Guest Room	-
light.hue_color_downlight_1	hue	bulb	Kitchen	-
light.hue_color_downlight_1_2	hue	bulb	Kitchen	-
light.hue_color_downlight_1_3	hue	bulb	Kitchen	-
light.hue_color_downlight_2	hue	bulb	Kitchen	-
light.hue_filament_far_right	hue	bulb	Kitchen	-
light.hue_lily_outdoor_spotlight_1	hue	bulb	Front yard	-
light.hue_lily_outdoor_spotlight_2	hue	bulb	Front yard	-
light.kitchen1	hue	bulb	Kitchen	-
light.kitchen_far_left	hue	bulb	Kitchen	-
light.living_room	hue	Room	Living Room	-
light.living_room_bulb	hue	bulb	Den	-
light.outdoor_candle_1	hue	bulb	Front yard	-
light.outdoor_candle_2	hue	bulb	Front yard	-
light.pantry	hue	Room	Pantry	-
light.pantry_light	hue	bulb	Pantry	-
light.signe_gradient_floor_1	hue	bulb	Living Room	-
light.small_lilly_2	hue	bulb	Front yard	-
light.small_lilly_one	hue	bulb	Front yard	-
light.thunder_both	hue	Zone	-	-
light.thunder_indoor	hue	Zone	-	-
light.thunder_outdoor	hue	Zone	Front yard	-
light.eve_dimmer_switch_20ecq4101	matter	bulb	-	-
light.eve_dimmer_switch_20ecq4101_2	matter	bulb	Stairway	-
light.eve_light_switch_20ece4101	matter	bulb	Guest Room	-
light.powder_room_downstairs_bathroom_left	matter	bulb	Powder room	-
light.powder_room_downstairs_bathroom_right	matter	bulb	Powder room	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_001	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_002	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_003	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_004	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_005	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_006	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_007	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_008	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_009	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_010	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_011	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_012	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_013	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_014	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.rainbow_lights_segment_015	mqtt	bulb	-	-
light.plug1_night_light	tplink	bulb	-	-
light.u6_mesh_basement_led	unifi	bulb	-	-
light.u6_mesh_bedroom_led	unifi	bulb	-	-
light.u6_mesh_ds_led	unifi	bulb	-	-
light.u6_mesh_led	unifi	bulb	-	-
light.usw_ultra_210w_led	unifi	bulb	-	-
light.bathroom_light_right	zha	bulb	Girls bathroom	-
light.girls_bathroom_left_ligut	zha	bulb	Girls bathroom	-
light.guest_motion_sensor	zha	bulb	Landing	-
light.middle_hue_down_light_light	zha	bulb	Laundry Room	-
light.right_hue_down_light_light_2	zha	bulb	Laundry Room	-
light.third_reality_inc_3rsnl02043z	zha	bulb	Girls bathroom	-
light.third_reality_inc_3rsnl02043z_2	zha	bulb	Powder room	-