I’ve been trying to create a flow and system that would gradually turn on my lights with my alarm, but I’m having trouble fitting all the moving pieces together with Flows as it seems like Homey Pro is missing some critical pieces to make it work.
iOS Shortcut to set alarm
To set an alarm, start the shortcut and it will set the alarm on the iPhone and send a web hook with the alarm time for tomorrow
Flow to store the alarm
Accept the web hook
Store the datetime in a variable
PROBLEM 1: How would a tag from a web hook be converted into a valid datetime object usable to trigger a flow? Variables doesn’t seem to be supporting a date time object
PROBLEM 2: I need to make sure that only one value is always stored as my alarm; There needs to be a way to calculate 30 min before the alarm and calculate the variable to include tomorrow’s date.
Start a flow 30 min before alarm
Dynamically start a flow with the datetime that computes 30 min before the alarm
Turn on the lights by increasing relative dim-level by 10% every couple of minutes
PROBLEM 3: I did not find a way to dynamically start a flow based on a dynamically changing time. The only thing I found was Auto Scheduler, but that requires setting a permanent time per day of week that is not easily changeable via a flow.
Flow that delete the alarm if I should remove it
Another flow should delete the alarm if a new web hook comes in with that information from iOS.
Maybe someone attempted this previously and has a couple of pointers? Would be amazing to rebuild this! Thank you!
I don’t have all the answers.
But for your inspiration: The standard Homey ‘Alarms’ has trigger-cards ‘one hour before alarm goes off’ etc. I want to leave for work at 8:10. So I set an alarm in homey at 8:10.
One hour before the alarm goes off the heating turns on and a wakeup light dims from 0 to 100% during 15 minutes.
45 minutes before homey beeps (homey pro 2019) and iI get up. My status is changed to ‘awake’ so lights go on.
5 min before i get a reminder.
1 min for another reminder to put my coat on. My status is changed to ‘away’. Radio turns off. Lights go out slowly so I don’t have to move aroud in the dark.
Thank you Wim! I tried using that functionality but there was no way to set it via a flow - from what I understand is that the alarm can only be set via HomeyScript. I also can’t find conclusive documentation from Athom on this topic. Do you know?
I don’t have any problems with enabling an alarm and adjusting the time in homey but I understand that is a no-go for you.
Have you checked the Timey app?
Hi @quellenform , sure - I ended up implementing a system that communicates from Shortcuts to Homey via Webhooks. Attached, the images of the flows I’m using to store and trigger the alarms for the next day. Let me know if you have any specific questions!
Yes, I use Hue lights, but this one feature seems to be specific to a wakeup light (Twilight?). I don’t see this option with the normal Hue lights, and in that case you would have to program your own fade-in.
