Relative offsets from sunrist/set possible?

I’d like to be able to have my outdoor lights come on a fixed time before sunset and go off a fixed time before sunrise (since at sunset, it has already been dark enough to justify turning the lights on and similarly for sunrise). As such it would be nice if there were a way to have an event occur at a relative offset from sunset and sunrise (e.g. be able to specify that lights should go on 30 minutes before sunset and off 30 minutes before sunrise). I suppose I could achieve the same with a brightness sensor (and I’ve ordered one to play with that) but in the meantime I think adding relative offsets to events would be a useful expansion of the functionality. Comments?

bc

there is an app to do this already. search for sunrise/sunset.
It would be nice if this was just part of the dashboard options, but it’s not.

Search where, exactly? Still a bit of a n00b I’m afraid. A gentle shove in the right direction would be appreciated.

bc

Update: Nevermind, I found it. The Android app is a bit opaque. I’ll get the hang of it eventually. Thanks for the pointer.

You can also search via the ide which isn’t easy, but it is sometimes easier than in app if you don’t know the name of the app you need.

Ok, thanks, I’ll look for that. Sadly, after I found and installed the app you were talking about and set it to turn on my outside lights 30 minutes before sunset (which today is 7:06 PM here) it ended up not working. By 6:48 PM nothing had happened. I I checked my event log on the ide and there was nothing related. So for the moment I have uninstalled the app and gone back to the built-in turn on/off at sunset/rise actions for my lights. I am not sure how to debug why it didn’t work for me.

bc

Reinstall it and wait a day. I do remember it not working right for me the day I installed it. But it has worked fine for me ever since.

Ok, I’ll give it another try.

bc

It did work after awhile, thanks again.

bc

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This app seems to have stopped working since last weekend. Anyone else using it experiencing the same problem?

bc

Mine is working 4321

Strange. Any idea how would I go about troubleshooting this? I’ve reverted to a plain-old-sunset/sunrise schedule in the meantime (which IS working fine).

bc