Outdoor lighting rule

[robert2]

Awhile back I made a rule that did some differential times for dimming my outdoor lights, got some help here and it was great, but as I looked at my Rule Machine list I noticed I was doing a fair amount of "here's a rule to start something, and here's another one to do the other half of it"

With that said, I am trying to do the following:

1. At sunset each day +10 minutes, begin raising the out door lights (my house and garage) up to 100% over 30 minutes with an interval of every 1 minute. (Easy enough, works perfectly)

2. I want to begin dimming my lights at 10PM each evening until Sunrise -15 minutes.
   Having them gradually dim accomplishes two things for me, my neighbors dont have to stare at my daylight LED bulbs all night long on 100%, and I still have lighting for the overnight for security and not being a completely dark home.

The -15 is because by the time actual sunrise happens, its plenty light enough out to not have to go right up the official sunrise time.

Here is what I have in my rule:

My old rule had a diff time in it, but at this point, I dont think I need that, or maybe I do so that the light can calculate the time need to dim?

So here is how I have it in my mind:

Sunset +10 is my trigger time, next step, the lights raise from 0 to 100% over the next 30 minutes.
I put in a wait timer so that nothing happens until 10PM each night.
SetEndtime is set for sunrise -15.

Do I need the set diff at all?

[DubbyDad]

You mention "10 PM" in your description of the rule, but the rule itself specifies "10 AM" for startTime.

[robert2]

Yea thats a bug I have found, when using Safari.
See the fields/options in the photo:

It shows an update button, but that button doesn't apply the change.

If I make the change in Chrome it works fine, and the screen is totally different.

[DubbyDad]

Gotcha, good to know. You might want to report that issue to Support Team for review.

As for your overall rule design, since you asked, it looks really solid and should work as advertised. Just note that the lights' Level will be diminishing very slowly (by design), covering 100 cents over the span of 460+ minutes, at minute intervals. This equates to 1 cent every five minutes or so, due to rounding, so the outdoor lights may appear (or if LED of questionable dimming ability actually 'flick') "Off" long before sunrise approaches. Whereas some LED's will hold their minimum dimming level of N (say, 20) for the final N steps.