Going deeper down the ST rabbit hole and loving it.
I am wondering what thing I should get to detect day/night. I am using the sunrise/sunset settings but it seems like it would be better if I could actually detect light/dark at our house to control when the outdoor lights go on.
Which thing should I get for this? I am having trouble finding one. Or perhaps one isnāt available yet which I can live with too.
Yea, thatās one of the best lux sensors out there, particularly if youāre going to point it outside.
All lighting in my house is controlled via LUX enabled smartApps.
I donāt have any time scheduled smartapps.
I was actually considering going the other way and using sunset and sunrise settings based on time of day and location. Is this easy to do? Not sure where to lookā¦ for me this seems more accurate than fussing around with a lux sensor - that is assuming the sunrise/sunset parameters are set accurately. Might even write a custom one that reads the weather and adjust to cloudy conditions.
@mike_maxwell Can you elaborate on this? Iāve been thinking about switching to a lux-based control model and am curious to hear how others are doing this.
So I live in the pacific northwest, so STās sunrise/sunset firing issues aside, we have our own issues with sunrise/sunsetā¦
So for me, using the current exterior LUX level is a better representation of interior lighting requirements than what the weather/solar system or clock saysā¦
I also decided adding modes as a flag for lighting didnāt make any sense, to do that you just have way too many to keep track of.
home day, home night, away day, away night, and on and onā¦
Itās really that simple. So thereās a few stock apps that allow use of a lux sensor, and most do not.
Iāve modified a few of the stock ones to allow selection of the lux thresholds, and written others to make specific use of LUX readings.
My home modes reflect the state of the occupants, changes being driven only by life360 presence via hello home actions that trigger the mode changes.
Lighting is driven by motion sensors and LUX readings. A separate auto dimmer app I wrote subscribes to dimmer on events, then modifies the current dimmer levels based on exterior lux readings.
So when itās mid afternoon and dark out (which never happens here), the dimmers donāt blast on at the same level they would if it were super sunny (which mostly happens in augustā¦)
No time schedules, no dst issues, no weather feed is wrong issues, no zip code issues.
In other words, lighting is based on actual environmental readings vs the vagueness of sunrise/sunset.
Sunrise/sunset are built into the mobile app in two places: Hello Home Actions and Shortcut Groups. The one in HHA allows an offset like ā15 minutes before,ā the one in Shortcut Groups doesnāt.
If youāre writing custom code, theyāre also available as events.
Lux may be more helpful if you have a lot of cloudy days.
I have those and loved them for 1 day. Then the lux level stopped updating. My smartThings service has been having problems for 4 days now. Resetting the sensor makes it start working temporarily, but they stop again shortly after.
The default settings for lux reporting requires a change > 200.
So the default sensor configuration parameters will need to be changed.
Thereās several threads about this, including the how toos.
I played around with LUX levels for a while but concluded Sunrise/Sunset was a better option. I changed my mind one cloudy winter afternoon. It was dark enough to trigger the lights when the sun went in but they would come on when the sun went out ā¦
I thought sunrise/sunset was based on a weather channel or something like that. The only reason I am no using it is specifically for days when itās kind of gloomy out. light makes me happy, gloomy makes me sad.
Itās actually based on astronomical calculations and takes no account of the weather or light levels, whereas the weather tile tries to combine sunrise/sunset times with an estimate of light levels based on the weather at your zip code.
I have an Aeon Motion/Luminance/Temp Sensor which seems to be good enough. Its controlling my indoor/outdoor lighting at this point, but Iād like to have my mode changes triggered by luminence as well since ST sunrise/sunset has not been consistently working with tslagle13ās app ( https://github.com/tslagle13/SmartThings/tree/master/Magic-Home ). Iāve looked at his code, but its beyond me to modify it to run off of lux instead of sunrise/sunset.
Finally got my Fibaro! I am not seeing how to trigger my outdoor light using lux though. I have browsed through the smartapps and tried a fewā¦ they seem to be āif lux and motionā required.
Is there a smart app that would let me just have the lights on or off base don lux alone?
Thanks all!
I also got a bunch of cree bulbs to go put around the house. fun times!
Mike, would love to hear more details on how you have set up lighting in your home. It sounds like exactly what Iām after, but I donāt have a luminance sensor yet, and keep struggling with modes and hello home phrase confusion.
Care to expand how you use motion, luminance, presence, modes, and hello home phrases together? I feel like there must be a better solution than what I have now.
Have you had a chance to look at Tim Slagleās āMagic Homeā smartapp yet?
Itās very popular, and combines the factors you mention. This is now an officially published app under the name āHello Home Phrase Director.ā You can find it in the mobile app by going to the dashboard, tapping the plus sign, then in smart setup scrolling right on the top to MORE and then tapping CONVENIENCE. Itās in there.
You can also find discussion of it in the following topic:
Sure, itās pretty straight forward actually.
The modes I have simply reflect the state of the occupants, I have home, away, vacation, wake and sleep.
I have 5 hello home actions, good night, good by, good morning, Iām back and staying at home.
Good night is manually triggered, good by and Iām back trigger from cell presence (life 360) , good morning is motion triggered within a specific time period. Staying at home is presence beyond another time period.
These phrases and modes are sufficient to completely manage heating, and allow a sufficient mode selection to enable/disable the remainder of the smart apps I use.
This leaves a pretty large gap in modes, if you wanted to include level based lighting management.
I initially used sunrise/sunset as lighting filters, but soon found that not all apps had this and dim levels as well.
I also noticed that here in the Pacific Northwest, sunrise/sunset have little meaning in regards to how bright it is outside.
For me lighting is about contrast, the brighter it is outside, the brighter it needs to be inside. This of course unless you live in a box with no windows. Well how does this make any sense, If itās bright outside, it will be brighter inside, so if someone turns on a light, they want it even brighter inside than what the natural lighting is providing. If you support that interior lighting requirements are directly related to exterior lighting conditions (for the most part) and that a relationship exists between the two, then managing the default light levels becomes simpler and more accurate.
But when we add luminance level requirement to the smart app mix, we have even less choices, and these apps are simply geared to tell you when itās light/dark out.
So I wrote autoDimmer.
Auto dimmer does not turn lights on or off, all my other smart apps do that, motion, time event apps whateverā¦
None of my other smart apps manage dimmer levels.
Auto dimmer sees a dimmer turn on, and says hey, its super bright out side, but your dimmerās currently at 20%, Iāll adjust that to 100% for you.
Or it sees that itās very over cast, you turn on a dimmer, autoDimer says hey, that dimmerās currently at 100%, let me back that off to 60%ā¦ Or itās completely dark out, so letās set that bad boy to 20%ā¦
If you manually change a dimmer level after itās turned on, auto Dimmer wonāt mess with it, it only adjusts the level when itās initially turned on.
You could do the same thing pretty much with enough modes and hello home actions, but it didnāt make sense to me to use the modes and actions that way due to the quantity of them that would be required and the added complexity of managing them all correctly.
I also wanted an app that could just sit on top of an existing setup and do itās thing, without having to re-wire and or replace any existing modes/actions.
fun times!