New to Hubitat - Automation Advice - Multiple Levels

I did some searching - but didn't find what I was looking for. Apologies if this has been covered.

I'm new to Hubitat - and really like it so far!

I wanted to do the following - at a certain time of the day (say sunset) turn on a bunch of lights - with varying levels - some just on, some at say 60%, some at 20%, etc.

At this point I have Hubitat doing what I want - by creating multiple simple automation rules - but was ideally looking for a more elegant solution.

Thanks in advance!

Are these lights in the same room? If so then I would use rule machine. If they're in separate rooms, the Simple lighting app with multiple rules is probably better. Elegance in rule building is a double edged sword. Personally I think it's less complex to have separate smaller rules than one huge one. Sure it adds more visually to the list but honestly it's not slower than a single rule.

Several options here. You've found one that is working which is good, because that will allow you to explore some of the others - I'd recommend looking at Room Lighting, just introduced with 2.3.2.xxx, but very comprehensive and fairly easy to configure.

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I like to use HE's built-in modes to control lighting. I have a mode that kicks on just before sunset called "evening." I then use a scene to set various lights to whatever settings I like, and activate the scene when the mode changes to evening. The nice thing about modes is they can be used with many apps. So for instance when the mode changes to night I activate a bunch of lights but I also use night mode with mode and motion lighting to turn the bathroom and hallway lights to red instead of white when I get up in the middle of the night :slight_smile:

@rlithgow1 and @thebearmay - thanks so much for your quick responses! a great platform gives you lots of flexibility - and hubitat definitely does that.

for me - @brad5 this was exactly what I was looking for... thanks so much! I just created 3 scenes - one with specific on / dimming for sunset, one for specific on / dimming for 2300, and one for specific on / dimming for sunrise.

I went into the simple rules and de-selected all of my physical switches and added the scenes. I think this will do exactly what I want.

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Yeah it works well. If you discover not all your lights respond, fiddle with the options - especially metering.

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I would actually use modes and then check out the new Room Lighting app. It combines all the features of mode/motion lighting, along with groups and scenes into one app, and also adds additional features. If you already made some scenes you can import them to get started. There is a huge write up on the forms.

super helpful @jtp10181 !

i saw "room" and poked around awhile back - and avoided it b/c it said "room" - and didn't look closely enough to see that i could select individual devices.

thanks!