Need help with RGB bulb settings at certain times

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1

I have two floor lamps that I just changed from regular smart bulbs to Third Reality RGB bulbs. I also have a Home Pod, and a scene set up in Home Kit called evening. It turns off certain lights in the house, and would dim the floor lamps. With the RGB bulbs, I have them change to a certain color.

The Third Reality bulbs are not compatible with Home Kt, so my work around was to add a virtual switch called Evening. When it's on, the bulbs change to evening settings. When it turn off, they switch back to daytime, which is color temp of 2700 and 100% brightness. So far, that works just fine. I tell Siri to set the scene to evening, and Home Kit turns that switch on, and the bulbs change color and dim.

Here's my first world problem. I'd like to have some way to have the bulbs switch back to daytime settings just after sunrise. In my sleep deprived state while setting this up last night, I just set up a simple rule to turn the switch off at that time. And got a surprise this morning, while still in bed, when the lights turned on, because that's what they're told to do with the switch is turned off.

The problem is, if I'm up at that time, I want the bulbs to switch over. But usually I'm not up. And, when I do some workaround like this, usually in about six months I'll have guests over or something, and things start turning on and off on their own, because, well, normally that works just fine.

So, the question is, is there any other way to have HomeKit be able to change the bulbs to evening mode when I change the scene, but tomorrow when I turn the lights on, but I'm not ready for evening mode, to have them already set back to daytime settings?

EDIT: To simplify the question, is there any way to have Hubitat change the settings on a bulb from RGB to color temp without turning the bulb on?

2

I'm not familiar with Homekit and had a little trouble understanding the setup you're describing, but I think you want the lights to turn on at the correct color/CT settings, but you don't want them to turn on just because the mode changed. In the morning you want to turn them on manually after you're awake and have them come on in CT mode.

That can be done with the Room Lighting app. If you set up a Room Lighting app with your two bulbs, use the "vary light settings per mode" option, and add an activator device, you can have it turn on at the correct color/CT settings. To be more precise, with most devices it will turn them on in their previous state and then immediately switch the color/temp/level. You should be able to have Homekit directly control that activator device. When you turn the activator off, the bulbs will turn off. When you turn it on, the bulbs will be turned on and set per the mode.

I've found Room Lighting to have a steep learning curve because it has so many capabilities. Also, the documentation doesn't exactly match the current app, which doesn't help. I've been getting more proficient with it as I just added a ton of RGBW recessed lights as my main lighting in 3 rooms and have the level and color temp varying based on mode/time of day.

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3

I don't use Homekit. I do have a similar use case. I set our vanity lights to 2700 k at sunset and 3200 at sunrise. I believe you might be able to do something similar to this instance in the button controller app.

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4

That's not what I'm looking for.

In the evening, I want to have the bulbs change (amongst other stuff in the house), but not at a set time. When I'm ready to relax for the evening, I tell Siri to set the scene to evening. If I do nothing after that, then the next day these lights are still set to the RGB setting for evening. It's not a huge deal to manually change it back, but being that Hubitat is very capable, I'd like to have it switch colors back on it's own. But, being that HomeKit is involved, I have that virtual switch, and when it's switched off, it will turn the lights on because it's really being used to switch between evening and day settings.

One thing to note is that I'm not doing this with modes. I'm doing it with scenes that are set up in HomeKit. I possibly could, but that might come with it's own complications. I have two modes set up - Home and Away, and there are lighting automatons in place to look like someone's home when there's not. So, I'd have to modify those rules and room lighting rules to include the other modes.

That all said, since you mentioned room lighting, I'll check that out a bit deeper.

5

Room Lighting will probably still work for you. You can use times of day rather than hub modes to determine the light settings. You can also have more than one room lighting app for the same lights with separate activators if that works better. In the family room I have a general Family Room Lights them adjusts brightness and color temp based on mode (time of day) and one called "Family Room Multicolor" that has each bulb set to a different color which creates nice ambient lighting when we're watching TV.

The other potentially confusing but very cool thing about a room lighting activator is that it works like the underlying devices, meaning in my case that I can control the activator as a RGBW bulb. In other words, even though my "Family Room Lights" activator device might be set to activate at 2700K at 50% at a certain time, that is just what it does when it's simply turned 'on'. If I tell Google Home "Hey Google, set the family room lights to daylight 100%" that's what will happen. I could also say "Set the family room multicolor to daylight 100%" and it would do the exact same thing, since both RL app control the same bulbs.

As a tip, the settings for 'activate if already partially activated', 'turn off if partially off', and the selection for how the indicator works are very important to get the activator to respond the way you want.

6

You could just share the bulbs to HomeKit via the integration (HomeKit Bridge | Hubitat Documentation). This would allow you to setup the bulbs to their desired state in HomeKit and eliminate the need for a virtual switch. This also gives you the option to create a morning scene to activate with Siri and the bulbs in their desired daytime brightness.

If the above is not the way you want to go, you’ll need to figure out what “awake” is defined as besides time. Do you have any motion or door sensors elsewhere in the house? They could be used to define “awake” and allow for automation of the virtual switch.

7

That's how they are set up now. All of my devices are set up in Hubitat, and then linked with the HomeKit bridge. But even doing that, Homekit says they are not compatible. It will control them for on/off and brightness, but that's it. That's why I used the virtual switch as a workaround.

8

I'm not using hub modes now. The evening scene in in HomeKit, not Hubitat. And I don't want to set this up based on time of day. I'm not always ready to change to evening settings at the same time every day. That would be easy, and I know how to do that. I already do that with my outside lights.

9

In the HomeKit Bridge app, are they selected as RGBW bulbs? The app can send only certain attributes over to HomeKit. It sounds like HomeKit thinks these are just dimmable lights rather than colored bulbs.

10

They are showing up as RGBW, but when I first added them, then opened Home on my phone, a message popped up saying these bulbs are not comparable with HomeKit. When I go to the device settings in the Home app, it says that device is not certified for HomeKit, and that some features may not work.