The simple question I would like to pose is how people handle adjustments in (primarily) lighting when people go to bed at different times, whether that be children's bedtime, or, in my case, visitors bedtime around Christmas? I am interested in being able to adjust lighting to being quite dim in a common hallway and bathroom when anyone is in bed.
I haven't done a lot of research on this forum, so I apologise if there is a clear-cut solution. I have skimmed the "dual mode" post in the RM category and tend to agree that modes is not really the solution for me, it is meant as a house-wide setting, not a room-by-room setting. I also agree in @ogiewon 's approach of "KISS", i.e. keeping things simple, so if there is an app or in-built solution I should use, then I an happy to try it.
I've been working on an app I call "Sleepy House". You define "sleepy rooms", and which lights and dimmers they control, and which motion sensors they watch.
Basically, for each room, you can define start/end of "nighttime". During nighttime, if there is no motion in a room, it will eventually dim down to a low level, and then soon after, it will turn off the lights. If someone comes back in to the room, it can (it's an option) bring it back up to the low level. (So that it doesn't blind you.)
Two examples:
My kitchen has several dimmers and also several on/off switches. And two motion sensors. At night, if there is no activity, it dims down and then turns everything off. If I come back in to the room, it brings the dimmers back up to the low level, but leaves the on/off switches off.
My hallway has dimmers, and two motion sensors. At night, if the motion sensors detect no activity for a while, it dims the lights down and then eventually turns them off. However, my wife doesn't like the hallway to come back on automatically, so I have auto-on disabled. But, since it already dimmed the lights before turning them off, that means that if I get up in the middle of the night and manually hit the switch, I know it will come on at a low level and not blind me.
This has been working well for a couple weeks now, so I will probably release it later today.
It does many of the same actions as motion lighting, but it has a different philosophy. It's centered on the idea that at night, rooms should "relax" to a dimmed state and then off, and motion can wake them up.
Iāve been playing around with modes a bit. For example, in the living room Iāve setup two motion zones. One is set for 30 seconds and the other is ten minutes. My rule looks like this:
For this discussion you can ignore the first if statement. Basically if the mode is bedtime then it uses the short 30 second timeout and only sets the light to 1%.
For any other mode it uses the long timeout and sets the light levels based on modes.
It is pretty basic but has been effective. Iām still playing around with the sensors so this has been experimental. I still have more sensors and zones to setup. On the plus side I havenāt used a light switch or voice command in a few weeks.
Sleepy House above sounds much more robust and falls inline with your guests requirement. Iām sure you can do the same with modes and/or global variables but the above app may make it much easier.
I did neglect to mention I currently handle my lighting on a Philips Hue bridge. I have done something similar to both solutions using scenes, a "mode" style variable and switch/motion lighting rules, all defined on the hue bridge.
I think the my main requirement in this setup is to be able to identify rooms in HE and have an equivalent virtual switch to identify when the room is in sleep mode. I have developed a driver that I think I could then use to reflect that switch in the Hue bridge for use in my rules there. I'll take a look at the Sleepy House app to see if I could potentially achieve this there.
All that said, I am starting to consider transitioning my hue lights and accessories to a HE hub, perhaps a second one.
