ST DTH are pretty much all configured to turn “on” as part of the setColor command. Most zigbee bulbs will turn on when receiving those commands. The Hue integration explicitly sends the “on” when changing color.
CD was setup this way to prevent turning on bulbs that were off. The “on” action also gave CD an easy event to listen for and take action.
What @Sticks18 said. Basically, there’s no real standardization with all of the various types of devices on how to handle setting things. Some turn on if any commands are sent, some stay off. Unfortunately the slight delay is a necessary evil.
I’ll look into adding a setting for allowing CD to change the color of devices even when they’re off.
Is it possible to use more instances then 1 of this smartapp?
It uses a parent/child structure, so you can have multiple child configurations within the parent SmartApp.
Can I also change color temperature settings for each instance? I mean under each child instance?
The minimum and maximum color temperature settings? Currently that’s in the parent, but I could look at how difficult it would be to switch it to the children. I kept it in the parent because of each child instance has different color temp settings then all of your bulbs will not be in sync across children.
That would be awesome If possible.
I have set it up, but for a few other use cases I have it would be perfect to be able to set min / max temp settings for each instance.
How often does it update? Does it override routines?
I mean If I use this and have a specific routine for my lights during TV time, will it update after a while and mess up my TV time settings? Do I need to make a TV time mode that disable the circadian light for that mode? Sorry for all the questions, thanx though…
Would you mind giving some detail on your use cases for setting different min/max CT? I’m curious about why you would want different bulbs to have different color temperatures.
It updates all bulbs every 15 minutes, and it updates an individual bulb when it is turned on, unless you are not in a selected mode or a “disable” switch is on. So for your TV time mode it would mess up anything set by the routine, but to prevent it from messing up the routine you could create a mode as you said, or more simply you could create a virtual “TV time” switch that gets turned on by the routine and is selected to disable Circadian Daylight. In my case, I have a Harmony remote so all of the Harmony activities are added in ST and are basically a switch, so I have a child instance of CD for bias lighting that gets disabled in CD when any Harmony activity is turned on.
For me I have 3 different CT bulb types: Osram, Hue, LIFX and they all have some differences in CT range/calibration, so they never quite match each other in actual CT light output based on one CT setting.
For example, my Hue and LIFX looks more “white” at 4000K than my Osram, so it would be nice to be able to adjust each child set to better match each other’s actual CT output.
Thanks again for this great app! Your app has been working great and my only reason for sticking with ST! 
Got it, I would say the best solution would be to modify the device handlers themselves to have accurate color temperatures. Obviously that may not be practical for you though… The way CD is written currently to keep bulbs in sync when new ones turn on, etc. while minimizing overhead wouldn’t work with that setup, or at least would need to be completely rewritten. I’ll think through the conceptual end and if I can come up with a solution I’m happy with I’ll work on the change, but I’ve been pretty busy lately so I probably won’t have time to make such a major change any time soon.
Thanks @claytonjn for supporting this app. I am coming from Lighting industry and an app like this can be quite helpful in residential market.
One question, Is it possible to change CCT and brightness value without turning a lamp on. Then we can do the CCT and brightness adjustments using this Circadian daylight, and turning on and off with a separate app (e.g., smart lights) .
In addition, since most of us our daily life is more dependent on a clock than sun, time triggered color changes can be also useful.
Circadian Daylight does not control turning lights on/off - all it does is adjust color temperature/brightness (depending on your selected settings). It only updates lights that are turned on. This is for multiple reasons: most lights in SmartThings automatically turn on when the color or brightness is set, and sending adjustments to a bunch of lights that aren’t on is a lot of overhead and would quickly cause the SmartApp to exceed the maximum execution time.
Circadian Daylight is synchronized with the time, not whatever that actual sunlight is (that would require everyone to have a color meter that can pair to ST, of which I know none that exist. Circadian Daylight simulates what the sun based on time, but is not triggered by the sun. Circadian Daylight updates color temperature/brightness every 15 minutes. I’ve found that to be a reasonable increment where there is not too much system overhead, but adjustments are not typically noticed when they happen.
Love this app, but a few things that would make it even better.
Disable CD when these switches are off.
Dynamic brightness according to different mode you have in ST.
Example: If I have good morning, lunch, dinner modes in ST, It would be perfect to be able to choose max / min brightness for each.
Instead of one setting through the day for each “child” app.
Right now I have this working along with a bunch of pistons in CoRE and virtual switches, but Its not perfect at all.
But Im pretty sure Im not the only one interested in this
I’ve added both of those to my to-do list. The first should be fairly easy, the second will be a bit more complex because it will require querying all of a users modes and displaying options based on the results.
Just a thought but what if you provide a user mode/time restrictions within the child app? We’ll have to have multiple child apps per group/room (i.e. Bedroom Morning, Bedroom Lunch, etc.) but result I think would be the same right?
My hesitation with that is that it would allow settings that could result in lights being out of sync, which goes against the core purpose of this app. I’m not saying I won’t consider it, but it just feels wrong to me.
I installed this through the ST IDE and went through the configuration, but what next? I went through the posts and didn’t find anything. I’m using the device handler for the lightify bulbs.
Once everything is configured you shouldn’t have to do anything, it should all just happen automatically.
I’ve got Lifx bulbs and they all look quite different from each other when using circadian daylight and they don’t seem to change much throughout the day. It seems that if changes are made to one of the lights outside of the circadian daylight app it will never get back inline with the rest of the bulbs. Is this the normal behavior? I also get quite a few “Bad setLevel result: [422]” errors for Kelvins or Levels. It is a new hub and new bulbs. The bulbs are turned on and off with a motion sensor.
Just discovered this a few days ago, and am very happy that I did as it seems to work fantastically!
Two questions, and one suggestion/request:
1-- I installed from the Circadian-Daylight-Development repo as opposed to Circadian-Daylight. Will the latest version always be in development, or do I need to switch?
2-- Now that everything is installed, how do i get back to the settings screen where I can choose the zipcode, etc? I can’t find my way back to this screen, and now that I am familiar with the apps operation, I would like to see what other options were present at initial setup.
3-- I love the incremental color change and dimming. My only request would be that I would love the option to delay the dimming feature (not the temp). For example, it seems that today the first dimming from 100 to 96 occurred at 4:30pm. I would like the same dimming to occur, I just would rather it start at a later time. Any chance you would consider adding such an option?
Thanks and keep up the good work! This app quite nicely completes a hue/smartthings setup!