With LED technology improving rapidly, I’ve had an idea that I believe should be possible with a little custom programming but I’d love some help brainstorming the project outline.
Goal: Automatically adjust the brightness and color temperature of recessed ceiling lighting to exactly match outside conditions, simulating the effect of a skylight.
Outstanding questions:
How do I measure current outdoor light temperature and brightness to feed into the system?
What lights would be best suited for this task?
What system (webcore?) would be best to set this automation up in?
I’m actually doing this now with webCoRE and the Weather Station smartapp. You could do it with the built-in $weather variable in webCoRE as well (although, I haven’t found a way to do illuminance yet).
I’m not 100% finished with my piston yet as I want to add in weather conditions as well and have the lights adjust based upon things like cloudiness and rain.
I like the weather angle, I too am in Phx so usually it’s just sunny anyway.
Ideally though I would love to figure out if there is a true sensor that would read the current outdoor light color, even if it means building a custom Arduino or something.
I used to be in Phoenix. We moved last year to North Carolina. I have weathers! LOL I do still miss Phoenix though. Although, the weather here this week makes me miss it a lot less (high of 79 today and remaining that way all week).
LOL I do still miss Phoenix though. Although, the weather here this week makes me miss it a lot less (high of 79 today and remaining that way all week).