Question about color led bulbs

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I am new to HE but not to home automation projects. I started about 4 years ago using Raspberry PI and real life took over so I put it aside for now. I recently went back and I have tried varies of different Home automation open source software on RaspPI ...

What I am trying to do is built an home automation that will work for Deaf people. My wife and I are both Deaf and I wanted to built a system where I could have the color led light flash depending on what triggered it such as front door unlocked, doorbell pressed, co2 detector or alarm system.

When I first started it, I brought a pair of Zwave plus Aeon bulb that was like 60 dollars a pop thinking I could set it up with rule that if this trigger then flash the bulb with certain color so we know what set it off.

Well the Aeon bulb doesn't exactly flash instead it dim on slowly then dim off slowly when we first tried it so we contact the manufacture and they blame it on the home automation software because they claim that it does come on and off instantly when set up property.

I kept trying different software on RaspPI and all pretty much do the same thing, comes on slowing dimming brighter and goes off slowly fading away. We need it to flash not dim on or off to grab out attention when there is an alert.

I recently brought HE hoping that it could flash it off and on but sadly it does the same thing that other automation software does unless I somehow set it up all wrong.

First thing I want to try to do is set up a doorbell button to flash the light yellow even maybe flash our normal ceiling lights once to alert us to look at the color led bulb or something like that. We are thinking of getting Lutron setup after I read up about it on this forum but not we are not sure yet for our normal home lighting.

I brought a Sage Doorbell sensor and plan to hook it up our doorbell and hopefully somehow set up a rule on HE to flash the color led buib at a certain color when the doorbell is pressed on HE.

Is this possible with HE?

Should I go with a different brand of led color bulb that will have a instant on and off flashes? What brand should I look into?

Can a rule be set up that it trigger our home lighting only once but flash the color led bulb a couple of times. We don't want to put led bulb in every room but in some corner that when we see our home lighting blink then we know to go look at the color led bulb to determine what triggered it.

Any feedback are welcomed!!!!

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I'm not an expert on that brand or Zwave, or Home Automation, but I believe most zwave devices have settings that can be configured using a device driver available called Basic Zwave Tool. There's probably a setting called dimming/ramp/fade time or something similar. When you send an off command this setting dictates the fade to off time. It likely has a default of 1000ms, changing it to something like 100 or even 0 should get you there. Just search these forums for the Basic Zwave Tool. Then it's just a matter of finding the command and values. The original paperwork that came with the bulb probably has a few of the common ones.

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You probably didn't set it up "all wrong", but you probably just left the bulb (the device) at default values.

If you go to the devices page and click on the name of the device, you will be taken to the device settings page... You then scroll down to the "Preferences" section where you will find a setting for "Transition speed"... The default is fast, which does a fast dim on/dim off... The setting you desire is "Instant"... Select it, then click on save... The bulb will then do instant on/instant off.

The Aeon/Aeotec bulbs are rather unique... They do have a "blink" mode and a color cycle mode... which would be ideal for your desired functions... Unfortunately, these modes are programmed by setting Z-Wave parameters on the bulb, so using these modes are not possible unless there is driver support for the functions.

Fortunately, the stock Aeon/Aeotech have limited support for blinking/flashing using the setEffect command which you can issue from Rule Machine... The discussion of "flash" capable devices is HERE and the description of the setEffect function for the Aeon bulbs is HERE.

There is also a relatively new plugin that could be of use, called "The Flasher"... available HERE.

You can find a simple Rule Machine rule HERE, and if you use the search icon (magnifying glass) in the upper right corner of the page and enter "flash"... You will find many more threads that will help you.

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Thank you @michael.l.nelson and @cybrmage. I will look into those and do a search on it.

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Hue lights on the Hue bridge flash and it can be set through the CocoHue app on HE, or just ifttt direct to Hue.