Circadian lighting: Tuneable White lamps do not instantly tune when turned on

SmartApps & Automations
1

Greetings!

I am happy to see Circadian lighting now broadly supported for all kinds of lamps that have “Color Temperature” aka Tuneable White.

Since I have quite a few of those kinds of lamps, I happily enabled it on all of them. Now I notice that lamps follow the outside sunlight temperature quite nicely if you leave them on, but lamps that are just occasionally on tend to look wrong - and I figured out why.

Apparently, the color temperature for all the lamps gets adjusted on a fixed schedule - today I’ve been observing changes on all lamps at 14:45 and then again at 16:45 and 17:45). This is what I’d expect, all lamps tuning to the sky’s general color temperature neatly in sync.

However, when a lamp that has been off for a while turns back on, color temperature for this lamp does not get adjusted until the next scheduled round of adjustments.

So let’s say I’ve last used this lamp late in the evening, when it ran on its warmest possible color temperature, and then turned it off for the night. When I turn it back on the next day in broad daylight, it stays on the warm setting until the next scheduled adjustment happens - which might be an hour or two.

My expectation would be that when I turn a lamp on that has Circadian mode enabled, SmartThings should immediately adjust color temperature to what it’s supposed to be for the current time of day, not leave it at whatever it last had until the next round of adjusting all the lamps.

Help please?

best regards,
Peter

PS: For the one or two lamps where this is most annoying, I made a routine that says “If lamp turns on, then turn on Circadian mode”. That triggers an immediate adjustment. I don’t want to do this for all the lamps, simply because that’s quite a lot of lamps and a big mess in routines.

2 Likes
2

Hi @Peter-M
We recommend contacting SmartThings Customer Support , as they are the appropriate team to escalate and investigate this kind of issue.
You can reach them by following these steps:

  1. Open the SmartThings app
  2. Go to the menu tab at the bottom-right corner.
  3. On this page, select the option “contact us” and then go to “Error reports”
  4. Select the topic related to your issue and follow the steps to submit your support request
3

Will do, thanks.

4

Done, and got a request for screenshots, which I supplied.

For the record, here are the same screenshots.

One is showing how the device turns on at 8:56 and is stuck on the wrong color temperature until 9:45; same again at 11:32. Note also how (all the) lamps with circadian rhythm appear to be updated at X:45 o’clock.

The other is showing how the same lamp, after turning it off in the afternoon while 5700K is set, gets turned back on in the late evening at 21:16. It stays at broad daylight 5700K for half an hour before at 21:45 it finally gets adjusted to 2700K.

So currently, the Circadian Lighting option - which in itself is the prettiest thing - is only useful with lamps that are on all the time. Lights that are turned on and off with room occupation will have the wrong “mood” most of the time, to the opposite of its intended effect on human wellbeing.

Let’s hope that this gets improved soon!

cheers,
Peter

Screenshot_20260121_220247_SmartThings
Screenshot_20260121_220247_SmartThings1080×2105 157 KB

Screenshot_20260121_154839_SmartThings
Screenshot_20260121_154839_SmartThings1080×3329 148 KB

5

Well that was a complete waste of time.

After some back and forth, Samsung customer support essentially just read my problem description back to me and made this their answer - “this is because the lamp colors are adjusted hourly only”. Well duh, that’s the problem, not the answer.

Then they proceeded to read my own workaround back to me as well, “just make a routine for each lamp to do what the original function forgets to do”.

That’ll make a right mess. Is there a limit to how many routines you can have?

PS: In case anyone from the actual ST dev team reads this, the case number is 66259395. Thank you for actually trying to move this forward.

6

I believe it is 1000 combined Automations per location.

7

OK thanks. While this exercise has just more than doubled the number of routines, I’m far from that limit.

Now, this workaround routine (one per device) does improve things, in that the lamps don’t stick to an annoyingly wrong temperature for a long while. However, the new annoyance is that there is a notable delay between the lamp turning on and the routine fixing the color temperature. So whenever I enter a room after a few hours, I’m greeted with a flash of wrong-temperature before things readjust to correct-temperature.

So … while it’s not as terrible as it is without the workaround, it is still not actually good. If someone from ST core dev reads this: Can we please fix this properly? Thanks!

-Peter

8

Hi, @Peter-M
Can you share the following, please?

  1. Support access to your account (instructions below)
  2. The name of one of the routines with this issue, this is to see its configuration.

To provide support access:

  1. Confirm the email account registered in the forum is the same one you use for SmartThings. If not, please share it with me over DM
  2. Enable support access to your account:
  1. Go to the SmartThings Web (my.smartthings.com)
  2. Log in to your Samsung Account
  3. Select Menu (⋮) and choose Settings
  4. Toggle on Account Data Access
  5. Select the time period and confirm - In this step, please select “Until turned off”, once the team finishes, we’ll let you know so you can disable it again.

See more information about this access here: https://support.smartthings.com/hc/en-us/articles/36170233944852-Enabling-Account-Data-Access-for-Support

Have you checked what happens on the driver logs to see which commands are sent to the device when the routine is triggered?
For this,

  1. You need to set up the ST CLI and run the command below:
smartthings edge:drivers:logcat
  1. The CLI will prompt you to select from which hub and driver you want to listen to events
  2. Then, trigger the routine to see the incoming and outgoing events.
  3. You can copy those logs into a file and share them with us at build@smartthings.com.
9

Thanks for your offer to help - let’s see what I can feed into it.

My account is already open for access, email address is @online.deonline.de

The helper routines I’ve been making are all named “[device] Tagesrhythmusbeleuchtung”, and they all do the same thing -

[
  {
    "if": {
      "equals": {
        "id": "26c0344e-b704-4923-9c66-b03c5f6c3f62",
        "left": {
          "device": {
            "devices": [
              "7b55f291-e24f-437d-88a5-35e10bf0d5ea"
            ],
            "component": "main",
            "capability": "switch",
            "attribute": "switch",
            "trigger": "Always"
          },
          "type": "device"
        },
        "right": {
          "string": "on",
          "type": "string"
        },
        "changesOnly": false
      },
      "type": "equals",
      "id": "9f8411b0-f103-4dec-ad79-a20b6c09f3cd",
      "then": [
        {
          "command": {
            "id": "29cff195-7ff4-4992-975d-633e8086e2f5",
            "devices": [
              "7b55f291-e24f-437d-88a5-35e10bf0d5ea"
            ],
            "commands": [
              {
                "component": "main",
                "capability": "synthetic.lightingEffectCircadian",
                "command": "setCircadian",
                "arguments": [
                  {
                    "map": {
                      "timeZoneId": {
                        "string": "Europe/Berlin",
                        "type": "string"
                      },
                      "state": {
                        "string": "Run",
                        "type": "string"
                      }
                    },
                    "type": "map"
                  }
                ]
              }
            ]
          },
          "type": "command"
        }
      ],
      "sequence": {
        "then": "Parallel",
        "else": "Parallel"
      }
    },
    "type": "if"
  }
]

This works, but it’s slow enough that a brief moment of wrong color temperature becomes very noticeable.

In terms of devices, “Lampe Garderobe” would be the most active in terms of on/off cycles, for it’s a hallway lamp on a motion detector routine.

A good example on the brief moments of totally wrong temperature is with “Lampe Büroraum” -

Time,Device Label,Device Name,Location,Component,Component Label,Capability,Attribute,Value
2026-02-03T20:16:20.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","off"
2026-02-03T17:47:46.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","colorTemperature","colorTemperature","3000"
2026-02-03T17:47:46.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","3000"
2026-02-03T17:47:46.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-03T17:47:46.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","on"
2026-02-03T13:45:38.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","off"
2026-02-03T13:45:35.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-03T13:45:35.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-03T13:45:35.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","on"
2026-02-03T13:45:23.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","off"
2026-02-03T13:45:11.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-03T13:45:11.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-03T13:45:10.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5000"
2026-02-03T13:45:10.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","on"
2026-02-02T15:52:34.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","off"
2026-02-02T15:17:47.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5000"
2026-02-02T14:52:47.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-02T14:52:47.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-02T14:52:46.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","on"
2026-02-02T14:52:43.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","off"
2026-02-02T14:51:54.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-02T14:51:54.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-02T14:51:54.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","6500"
2026-02-02T14:51:53.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","on"
2026-02-02T12:09:50.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","off"
2026-02-02T11:17:52.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","colorTemperature","colorTemperature","6500"
2026-02-02T09:50:52.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-02T09:50:52.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-02T09:50:51.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","2700"
2026-02-02T09:50:51.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","on"
2026-02-01T21:30:32.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","off"
2026-02-01T20:17:54.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","colorTemperature","colorTemperature","2700"
2026-02-01T18:46:54.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","colorTemperature","colorTemperature","3000"
2026-02-01T18:46:53.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","3000"
2026-02-01T18:46:53.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-01T18:46:53.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","on"
2026-02-01T11:03:55.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","off"
2026-02-01T10:08:40.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-01T10:08:39.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","5700"
2026-02-01T10:08:38.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","6500"
2026-02-01T10:08:38.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","on"
2026-01-31T13:16:30.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","off"
2026-01-31T12:38:23.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switchLevel","level","100"
2026-01-31T12:38:20.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","switchLevel","level","1"
2026-01-31T12:34:57.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main","main","colorTemperature","colorTemperature","6500"
2026-01-31T12:34:57.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Lampe Büroraum","Zuhause","main",,"colorTemperature","colorTemperature","6500"
2026-01-31T12:34:27.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Matter Color Temperature Light","Zuhause","main","main","switch","switch","on"
2026-01-31T12:34:27.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Matter Color Temperature Light","Zuhause","main","main","switchLevel","level","100"
2026-01-31T12:34:27.000+00:00,"Lampe Büroraum","Matter Color Temperature Light","Zuhause","main","main","colorTemperature","colorTemperature","2703"

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10

A true solution cannot come from such a routine, it’s always going to react and adjust after the fact rather than setting the color temperature correctly in the first place, right before or right after the On command.

That is unreachable for a user routine, so the SmartThings core logic would have to do something like:

If (command is “on”)
–if (device is in Circadian mode)
—-send SetColorTemperature with time-of-day accurate color temp
–send On

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