Auto Light Flow using Circadian, Aqara FP2, 9 Nanoleaf G10, Hue Strip and filament bulbs

[Tariq]

I’m trying to sanity-check some behaviour I’m seeing with Circadian + presence-based lighting in Homey Pro. Basically my lights keep reverting to some default state.

Setup

• Homey Pro (Early 2023)

• Presence sensor: Aqara FP2 (zone-based presence)

• Lights:

  • 9× Nanoleaf G1 Matte bulbs (Matter over Thread)

  • 1× Philips Hue light strip

  • 3× Philips Hue filament bulbs

• Circadian app used to control brightness and colour temperature

Flows involved

There are two main flows:

1. Presence flow (Aqara FP2)

   • Triggered when a zone becomes occupied / free

   • Turns lights on only if they are currently off

   • Applies Circadian values brightness and colour temperature immediately after turning them on

   • Turns lights off again when the zone becomes free

1. Circadian flow

   • Triggered by “Circadian values changed”

   • Periodically re-applies brightness and colour temperature

   • Uses conditions like “light is turned on” to avoid touching lights that are off

I’ve added notification cards to both flows to see exactly when they fire.

I have tried a number of different flows using time of the day to set Homey Moods, using Groups app instead of Homey Groups, Better Lights, Party Lights, nothing seams to be able to set the dim and temperature reliably. I have seen that Homey Moods is not reliable for more than 3 or 4 lights and that Groups App is better as it runs sequentially.

Observed behaviour

• I consistently receive a notification every ~5 minutes from the Circadian flow, which matches its periodic updates.

• I do not receive any notifications from the presence flow during the times when lights visibly change.

  • Suggests the Aqara FP2 is not re-triggering.

• Despite this, lights will:

  • briefly revert to a brighter or default brightness/colour temperature

  • then be corrected again on the next Circadian update

• This produces a visible “cycling” effect.

Important observations

• The behaviour affects both Nanoleaf (Matter/Thread) and Philips Hue (Zigbee) lights.

• That makes it unlikely to be manufacturer-specific.

• The only flow consistently triggering during the issue is Circadian.

Interpretation

Based on this, I believe:

• Circadian is behaving as designed:

  • it periodically updates values

  • and re-applies them to lights that are on

• The actual issue seems to be:

  • lights briefly applying their default / last-on state when switched on or refreshed

  • Circadian then correcting that state on its next tick

• Because Circadian runs periodically, it looks like the cause — even though it may only be exposing the underlying behaviour.

Questions

Given that Circadian appears to be working correctly:

• What is the recommended flow pattern for combining:

  • presence-based lighting

  • with Circadian control

• Is there a way to:

  • prevent lights from applying their default/last-on state?

  • How are others handling this setup in practice?

[Wim_Post]

I noticed that you are using ‘set relative dim-level to ..’
What happens when you use the dutch ‘dim naar ..’ (Eng:dim to ..?)card?

You also may try to dim to 0% before turning the lights off.
While the dimlevel is 0% you can have the circadian app change the colortemperature invisibly.
And when the zone becomes active don’t turn on the lights but use only ‘dim to #dimlevel’. The colortemperature is already set.

[Tariq]

Thanks for the suggestions, very helpful. I have applied the changes and will see how it goes, initially I was getting lights reverting to defaults but at the moment it appears to be working. I’ll let it run through some cycles and see if settles down. During testing I did see anomalies like not all lights being turned on or off but working if I ran the test again. I guess my expectation was that with Homey Pro and the Homey software automations would be more reliable but I suppose its all the different manufactures maybe being less reliable, trying to automate so many lights in one go as well could be problematic.

[Tariq]

I have found the root of the problem. In my Apple Home app I had set the lights to ‘Adaptive’. Zone Memory and found the temperature was being reset.

        {

            "name": "light_temperature",

            "value": 0.43

        },

        {

            "name": "light_temperature",

            "value": 0.18

        },

Shoutout to Thomas Hebendanz for the app. Very useful.