Scott Hanselman

Fix for Elgato Key Light not found by Control Center

February 23, 2021 Comment on this post [7] Posted in Bugs
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Elgato Control CenterSometimes blogging means lots of long form essays that take weeks to write and drop lots of wisdom.

However, many times blogging is just keeping track of a fix for a nagging problem. There may just be 5 or 6 of us with this issue, but if you're that person, this blog post is for you! Welcome to the solving of the issue you just googled for.

I recently bought an Elgato Key Light, and when I purchased it I did not realize that it did not have any external controls. You can only control the light with Wi-Fi and remotely. Personally I think that's a product flaw, this means I'm always going to have to be dependent on their software, and I can't just turn the thing to another level or color with a button.

The biggest issue with this light - and other picky IoT devices - is that it doesn't like my network. It happens to be the one and only device on my Ubiquiti network that doesn't seem to want to get along with the others in the house. It uses multicast DNS in the form of Apple's weirdo Bonjour service to broadcast itself, and it's notoriously hard to get the Elgato Control Center software to find the light. I know it's on the network, I can see its IP.

There's lots of blog posts with folks trying to solve this issue, and if you found your way to this blog post I figure that you've already done the obvious things like opening the firewall, turning on multicast DNS at the router level, and now you're just sick of it.

Here's my brute force solution that made my Key Light show up in Control Center.

First, I'm assuming a few things:

  • That you got the Elgato Key Light on to your network and you can find its IP Address.
  • That you installed the Elgato Control Center software on your PC

I put my Settings.xml file in this gist but the salient points are the SerialNumber and the IpAddress. You'll find the Serial Number on a sticker on the back of the light. You'll find the IP address in your router's IP table.

My Elgato Key Light's IP Address

Go to this folder on your PC

C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Elgato\ControlCenter

Make a copy of the settings.xml in that folder so you don't blame me with this whole affair goes horribly wrong.

This is not the complete settings.xml, again that's in the gist, but this was the missing piece for me.

<Accessories>
<Accessory>
<Name>Elgato Key Light Air E424</Name>
<UserDefinedName />
<UniqueID>Elgato Key Light Air E424 (3C:6A:9D:15:5E:B6)</UniqueID>
<IsHidden>false</IsHidden>
<HostName>elgato-key-light-air-e424</HostName>
<IpAddress>192.168.1.44</IpAddress>
<DNSSuffix>localdomain</DNSSuffix>
<ServiceType>_elg._tcp</ServiceType>
<Manufacturer>Elgato</Manufacturer>
<Model>Elgato Key Light Air 20LAB9901</Model>
<DeviceType>200</DeviceType>
<LightStripIsTemperatureColorSelected>false</LightStripIsTemperatureColorSelected>
<DeviceSettingsLightStripIsTemperatureColorDefault>false</DeviceSettingsLightStripIsTemperatureColorDefault>
<SerialNumber>CW39J1A17111</SerialNumber>
</Accessory>
</Accessories>

Change the Elgato Settings.xml to include YOUR light's serial number and IP address. Start Control Center.

Elgato Control Center

 

BTW, I also found this lovely blog post from Trevor Sullivan where he shows the Elgato Key Light internal API (on /elgato/lights) and a PowerShell Module that lets you change the Elgato Key light with script.

To be clear, this doesn't excuse not having buttons, but it's a start. Hope this helps both of you with this problem I had!


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About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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February 24, 2021 11:44
Scott, strangely I have a Unifi Network also and 2x Elgato Key Lights and I don't seem to have any issues. My network is pretty much at defaults, no Vlans and Multicast DNS is disabled.

Still, if I ever do run into any issues at least I'll have this blog post to fall back on.

Liam
February 24, 2021 11:47
also, if we are hard coding the IP address in the settings.xml you should probably mention to set a staticIP address in the Unifi controller :)
February 24, 2021 16:54
I've put my Elgato Key Lights on a separate IoT VLAN and made it work by joining my PC to that VLAN first but I now also saved the settings file for backup purposes. I've got more problems with the fact that Control Center eats so many CPU cycles and polls the devices at least once a second! (Fiddler trace will reveal that). That's why I'm now looking at PowerShell to control my lights, and also integrate that into my Stream Deck.
February 25, 2021 0:15
Thanks for the post Scott! Have had that issue in the past but it has been stable for a while now :-). Settings currently match yours, next time I'll know where to look!

Do note that the remote API is really easy to integrate into Home Assistant (www.home-assistant.io). Changing the light and turning it on/off has been rock solid, even when the control center didn't show the light.
February 25, 2021 10:25
I wrote a C# library that can call the Elgato Key Lights. See https://github.com/danielshue/ElgatoLightLib
February 25, 2021 15:35
I had issues with a Ubiquiti access point configured with 2.4G and 5G Wifi on the same SSID and Spotify not seeing my Sonos speakers (which are 2.4G wifi) when my phone was connected at 5G. Was fixed by turning off "Allow Meshing from Other APs" per this Ubiquiti community post: UniFi AP-AC-PRO Not Crossing mDNS/Multicast/Broadcast between 2.4GHz and 5GHz Networks.
March 04, 2021 3:07
IoT at my company equates to "Infinite amount Of Time"

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.