Hello, I would like to set a flow to do this:
From 9pm to 7am when I switch on a light in the night part of the house (3 rooms, a bathroom and one anteroom) I would like to have a reduced brightness, while in the other part of the day I would like to set it on 100%.
My lights are the following: 2 strip leds with zigbee controller, 1 philips hue pendant and 4 philips spot gu10.
The 2 strip are always powered and I can switch off and on with a physical button or by homey app.
The 4 spots and the philips hue are behind a traditional switch, but I have linked them to homey through a shelly 2.5
At the moment I tried to write a simple flow with the settings I desire, but it only happens that sometimes at 7am or at 9 pm my strip led switch on. Where am I wrong?
That really depends on the app. Athom has dicatated that light apps must turn on the lights if you dum up from 0% and turn off if you dim down to 0%.
However, the app might have also enabled that it is automatically turned on when a new dim value is set. Maybe it is easier to check on this if you share your flows?
For now I added actions to the flows to turn them off again after “dimming” (1 second after dimming; without this delay they don’t get turned off), but this means they will flash (be on for a second) twice a day.
Did you ever find a way to set brightness without turning the lights on?
(I initially tried to do this in HomeKit instead of Homey, but that failed every time; brightness would not be changed)
This must be supported by the app AND the hardware. I don’t know if this is possible with hue at all.
It works flawless with LIFX though.
On app level it can be configured by the developer, that a dim action does not imply a turn on/off action. But of course, also the hardware needs to be capable of setting these values without implying an on/off action.
Maybe some hue specialist here can clarify whether the hardware can do that, then you could maybe ask the developer about “enabling” that feature.
It is not a problem to implement this also with Hue lights. For this you need a variable that must be stored as a tag in the action dimming level.
But you should define time frames. From when to when the dimming level should be 40%. From when to when the dimming level should be 100%.
Flows to write the dimming level into a variable:
Flow 1
If…
– Time is 07:00 (here I would choose a time during the night, so that in the morning the dimming level is at 40%). Then…
– Logic card: Set variable “Dimmlevel” to 0.4 (is equal to 40 %)
Flow 2
If…
– Time is 17:00 Then…
– Logic card: Set variable “Dimmlevel” to 1 (is equal to 100%)
In the flows which are responsible for switching on the light (via a switch, a time, an event like motion), the condition must be set as shown below.
When…
– ??? (I don’t know your action card) And…
– ??? (this is optional) Then…
– Dimming to tag “Dimming level”
If you would provide some more information, I could create a complete flow for you.
This should also be possible, but therefore you need an additional virtual switch/button.
With this additional virtual switch/button, named “Ceiling Light” for example, you can say “Hey Siri, switch the ceiling light in the kitchen (or whatever) on”.
In Homey the virtual switch/button is also switched on and the Flow will start with the right dimming level.
The disadvantage of this method is that the Hue lamp must be renamed in HomeKit (connected via the Hue Bridge or imported via Homey), so that it can’ t be switched on by mistake. For example “Ceiling Light Original”, or whatever.
To create a new room in HomeKit where the duplicate “original” devices can be placed would also be a good thing.
I solved this by creating “scenes”.
(See also my post “how to structure your flows”)
A scene is a flow that sets a group of lights to a desired dimlevel and color.
I created a flow for every situation:
Dimmed lights livingroom
Bright lights livingroom
Alarm triggered livingroom
These are being triggered by the other flows.
You need to figure what works best for your situation.
at a certain time trigger a specific scene
disable the scene flows that you do not want use and start them all flow a flow (the disabled flows will. Ot run)
