Not that I know of, aside from screen capture your settings and work from that.
Not that I’ve seen, it doesn’t even make the top 20 for apps using CPU time on my primary hub.
Not that I know of, aside from screen capture your settings and work from that.
Not that I’ve seen, it doesn’t even make the top 20 for apps using CPU time on my primary hub.
It took me a few reads this morning to catch that for your use case you have all CT bulbs but only some of them will be using the Dynamic Brightness feature. I think in this case it's best to run two instances of the app, one for CT+Brightness and the other for CT-only). Keep in mind what Derek mentioned, if you select the same bulb in both app instances (e.g. Kitchen sink light) there will be a race condition on the duplicate bulb and the results will be unpredictable.
You can always try to clone the app via the settings gear of the instance you want to copy. I think that will carry over the settings and you just select the bulbs you want in the clone.
I've got two instances running and do not see any performance related issues. I used to run significantly more. The one thing I do is only log a single instance; otherwise, multiple instances will clog up the logs every five minutes.
Good afternoon. Thank you for this app. I am enjoying it. I am still working through some aspects of it. I have some suggestions and questions in no particular order.
Can you add a table to the bottom of each instance to show the current status of what it is commanding for CT, color, level, and if anything is disabling? I appreciate how Rule Machine provides insight into its important variables. It will be helpful for troubleshooting. Maybe even when the next time trigger is expected to occur.
Is the disable by switches an 'and' or an 'or' when you have two items in there?
Can you make a disable/pause while brightness is 100%. Basically if someone sets full brightness, all changes to CT, color, and level would pause until it's not 100%? You would have to set max brightness to be 99% in the other menu to work.
Thanks!
Hi Frank, glad you're enjoying it. I hope I didn't hold you up waiting for these answers.
There's an option on the main page of the app to turn on enhanced description text logging that will show (in the log) all the values that are calculated for each update.
That is an 'or' .
In the Disable Options there's a selection to disable the brightness updates when the brightness level is changed outside of the app's updates. To disable everything, it might be best to have a RM rule to flip one of your disable switches when certain lights are set to 100% and un-flip the switch when those lights are less than 100%.
Hey everyone!
Just wanted to throw out a feature request that I think would make life a little easier. How about adding the ability to reactivate "day lights" with a simple button press on smart switches? Let me explain why this would be awesome:
Picture this: you’re watching a movie, the lights are off, it’s cozy. Then you need to grab something, so you dim the lights using your phone (staying below max brightness of the brightness override settings). You come back, lights off again. Later, movie ends, you get up and turn on the lights using the switch... and boom, 100% brightness! It totally kills the vibe, especially after sunset it would be nice to hit the smart button instead (if lights are on and daylights deactivated, activate day lights. If lights are off and day lights deactivate, than lights on and activate day lights)
I think this would make the already amazing app fully feature complete.
I’m using Innovelli switches, and I think an additional button press to bring the lights back to that sweet brightness override for time of day would be perfect!
Thanks for reading, and hope everyone's having a great day!
I think we'd probably want to go over your scenario a bit to make sure there's something I can do. In my mind, once you've manually set a light to a different brightness to go get something then brightness changes are disabled. When you turn off the light after you get back to the movie and then turn it back on when it's over, the light should remain at the same level you set it to with your phone.
That being said, I don't see a problem with adding a new button device group whose members can re-enable brightness updates.
Hey, sorry it took me so long to write back, and thanks for replying to my post.
You explained the functionality better than I could: "When you turn off the light after you get back to the movie and then turn it back on when it's over, the light should remain at the same level you set it to with your phone." -- I actually would like to option for it to not go back to the setting I had with my phone and rather to the default "brightness adjustments" that I have configured.
I think what I'm getting at, is that currently, brightness updates only re-enable the next day after brightness is manually adjusted. and I think some flexibility there would be great beyond the one override option that allows Brightness adjustments to be re-enabled at a specific time.
Depending on the room (I have an instance of Day Lights set up for each room of my house), it would be really nice to be able to dim and adjust lights as needed, but then quickly revert back to brightness updates once you are finished with whatever activity required.
I can think of a few ways to re-enable day lights that would be useful for different circumstances:
Toggle button: Re-enable Brightness updates when switch is turned off
How this is useful: you are using the room normally, need to dim for a specific activity. turn off the lights, return to the room, but youre no longer doing an activity that requires the previously manually dimmed setting. this toggle would ensure that regardless of manual dimming, you can turn the light off, return later in the evening, and brightness adjustments would be back on to normal.
condition: Re-enable Brightness updates when condition is met
How this is useful: super flexible and allows for deep integration into the rest of the habitat devices - for example: If tv turns off; revert lights back to on, but with brightness adjustments + any other configuration you might have in that Day Lights instance
condition: Re-enable Brightness updates on trigger
How this is useful: same as above and maybe can be integrated with above. just adds more flexibility. maybe?
Specify additional button to re-enable brightness updates:
How this is useful: adds flexibility in a room where there is constant change, multiple people dimming and doing different activities, but sometimes you want to just quickly revert back to the brightness adjustments and other settings configured in the instance.
why does any of this matter? In my case, I consider the lights with brightness adjustments on to be the default setting of the home - all rooms have the same theme and there is consistency. the idea is to add flexibility while retaining the ability to easily revert to "default" - the ability to maintain consistency throughout the home
maybe this will help understand my case more: After 6pm I have configured the whole house maximum brightness to 60% with brightness and temp adjustments on - so these options would be particularly useful to be able to retain the 60% brightness "default", the color temp adjustments and the brightness adjustments immediately after any activity that happened to require dimming so that it doesnt go to that overly bright 100% at night (I have alot of lights lol...)
I think this would take Day Lights to the next level for anyone who really enjoys deep lighting automations
I'd love to hear your thoughts!
What I’ve done, is have Daylights control the colour temp only.
All brightness changes are controlled either manually, or by rules.
It’s honestly a lot easier than turning Daylights into a mini RM.
Fair enough - I like to try to keep as much in one place as possible. Your point remains valid but it’s always worth a pitch
Well it’s also worth noting that RM doesn’t have brightness/temp control over time the way day lights does.
I see that as the major advantage to using this over RM.
And I believe those add ons would be awesome
Regardless, It’s just a suggestion and I have no expectation that anyone would put in that amount of work just for me.
I also just think it would be awesome tho.
I've got several different Daylights running as well. One thing I have done is have an instance control a virtual CT bulb. As the virtual bulb changes, Hub Variables for CT and Brightness get updated. This way, I can use the variables in RM or Room Lighting to get rooms back into their standard setup.
I certainly have had times where I wanted to reset/re-enable DL as well. But, because I'm lazy, I didn't end up pursuing anything fancy - I just go into the app and press Done. But this has been a missing piece from the start.
Your suggestions in reverse order -
4. Specify additional button to re-enable brightness updates
I like this idea. A single button press will revert the instance back to its configured settings.
There could be a physical button in every room dedicated to this, or a virtual button device could be set up with the number of buttons matching the number of DL instances. Each virtual button would reset the corresponding instance.
3. condition: Re-enable Brightness updates on trigger
and
2. condition: Re-enable Brightness updates when condition is met
Once the button is set up, RM can be used to define those triggers and conditions to digitally press the button.
1. Toggle button: Re-enable Brightness updates when switch is turned off
Unless I'm missing something here, this seems like a special case of #3.
I'm going to get to work on the button functionality this weekend and we'll go from there.
Pete, any chance you could add switch functionality to this as well? Only reason I ask is that buttons cannot be used in Google Home or Alexa, but virtual switches work. This would allow for voice activation to re-enable Daylights.
That makes sense.
I can see possible confusion for new users, so I'll spend some time thinking how to present all this in the least confusing manner.
Although one might consider setting up a virtual switch for Google/Alexa purposes that would have a RM trigger to press the button...
Edit - You've also got me thinking that I might be able to add a way for you to specify hub variables for the CT, Brightness, and RGB values that I can update as part of the regular processing. That would take out the need for your virtual bulbs. I'll play around with it.
Your edit sounds awesome. The Hub Variables allows me to use Room Lighting to turn on the lights to help minimize the changing of color with Daylights then taking over.
As for the switch/button, it might be more work than worth it, but you could setup Daylights to create an activator/child device for this scenario that has button and momentary switch functionality. A user would just need to input a name and the app creates the device for usage. I'm thinking similar to how Room Lighting currently works. This also came up in a CoCoHue discussion recently around Philips Hue scenes and their behavior.
Ultimately, this is how I view Daylights. It's an actively managed scene during my circadian mode. When my modes change to ambiance, the virtual switch stops Daylights and the colors fade in. It's great for little kids and keeping them on a routine/schedule.
This would be GAMECHANGING haha. I would love to see progress. If I can donate, please send me a link. I know this is time consuming
I've updated the code on github.
I'm not sure what value(s) would be needed to assign color in RM, but if someone has the need for it/them just let me know and I should be able to add that capability pretty quickly.
I'm not going to be home on Sunday so I figured I'd get this out today so I've got all day tomorrow to fix anything I broke
My logs show an error right away and Daylights is no longer updating:
app:6532024-10-04 03:45:53.062 PMerrorjava.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method size() on null object on line 404 (method updated)
app:6532024-10-04 03:44:31.481 PMerrorjava.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method size() on null object on line 401 (method updated)
app:4122024-10-04 03:43:53.356 PMerrorjava.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method size() on null object on line 401 (method updated)
App 653 is the one I'm testing the new Hub Variable connector for CT. Any thoughts?
And if you need it, here is the debug information for my variable setup:
app:6532024-10-04 03:59:10.301 PMerrorjava.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method size() on null object on line 404 (method updated)
app:6532024-10-04 03:59:10.271 PMdebugDay Lights (Day Lights Hub Variable and Guest Room ): initialize() with settings: [logDescriptionText:false, logEnhancedDescriptionText:false, hvCT:House CT from Daylights, colorTemperatureDevices:[Guest Room Lamp, Virtual Circadian Color Temperature], logDebug:true]
Here is the debug information for my whole home setup (no variable):
app:4122024-10-04 03:51:40.346 PMerrorjava.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke method size() on null object on line 401 (method updated)
app:4122024-10-04 03:51:40.281 PMdebugDay Lights (Day Lights Entire House): initialize() with settings: [logEnhancedDescriptionText:false, disablingSwitches:[Stop Day Lights (Circadian)], logDescriptionText:false, colorTemperatureDevices:[Master bedroom (Hue Group), Kitchen (Hue Group), Chloe's Lamp (Hue Bulb), Logan's Lamp (Hue Bulb), Dining Room (Hue Group), Family Room (Hue Group)], logDebug:true]```