Simulate Sunrise

I'd like to simulate the Philips Sunrise Simulation Alarm Clock with a Hubitat controlled RGBW bulb or light strip, starting at the dimmest red and ending at the brightest white.

A few years ago, I ditched the alarm clock in my room. The biggest benefit I found was no more stress waking up at odd hours of the night frustrated by how much sleep time remained: either waking up repeatedly and seeing hours remain, or waking up once, still exhausted, and seeing only minutes remain.

I replaced the alarm clock with a sunrise simulation that was both consistent (running at or before actual sunrise most of the year) as well as 'rising' much slower than the actual sunrise (100 minutes, in my case, opting to believe the 90 minute sleep cycle theory). Basically, if I woke in the middle of the night and the room was still dark, I knew I could go back to sleep because at least 90 minutes remained. If I woke and the room had any amount of light, I knew I had less than 90 minutes, and should just go ahead and get up to avoid that groggy feeling when you're awoken in the middle of deep sleep by your alarm. As a fail-safe, the alarm was set on my phone at the end of 100 minutes, but with this setup, I very rarely slept until the alarm.

On Wink, I painstakingly wrote 100 robots, one per minute, that transitioned my bulb from 1% red to 100% 5000K daylight. It worked well, but was impossible to change (to cancel or disable I just turned off the lamp the night before). My routine starts on red because it's much dimmer at 1% than my bulb is at 2000K, then transitions from red into the lower white spectrum.

IKEA TRÅDFRI has a sunrise routine in their app, but is limited to 30 minutes and only goes from 1% to 100% of the previously set color. I have to preset the bulb to red at bedtime (via my, "Alexa, goodnight," routine). I see SmartThings also has a sunrise simulator, but I don't know if it transitions white spectrum or just goes from 1% to 100% over a set time like TRÅDFRI.

I'd like to see a routine that's flexible, allowing easy configuration of wakeup time (when it hits 100%) and customizing duration (when to start) as well as starting and ending color (possibly the biggest challenge).

Bonus: Control from a PICO remote! HOLDING up or down increments wakeup time in ten-minute intervals, spoken by Alexa or other TTS; tapping on turns alarm on; tapping off turns alarm off, also confirmed by Alexa or other TTS; HOLDING on (during an active ramp up time) ends ramp up and jumps to 100%; HOLDING off (during an active ramp up time), ends ramp up and jumps to 0%.

I'll investigate writing my own, but honestly, I haven't programmed seriously in 30 years, and that was Pascal in High School and Visual Basic shortly after. I wanted to post my idea in case there's something out there that already does some of this ... and maybe spark something in someone interested in the challenge.

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Does this maybe help?

I’m also writing a Simple Sunrise app :slight_smile: Maybe I can get it done this week...

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Oh .. nice! Thanks for replying! I never thought to search for circadian ... but in hindsight. :slight_smile:

I'll check it out.

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Please let us know when you do, I'd like to check it out ... and thanks for replying! :slight_smile:

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@adamkempenich

That's sounds terrific. Looking forward to it!

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Any progress on this sunrise wake up light controller?
I am pursuing a sunrise wake up too. I'm ready to buy a Hubitat if it can do it.

As I see it, it needs the following basic items:

mtwtf - days to operate
xx:xx - time to start
xxx ramp up minutes (generate ending time = xx:xx)

xx% starting brightness
xx% final brightness

xxx starting color
xxx ending color

what do do at end (flash light, turn off, cycle colors, alarm sound, cycle dark to bright every minute, ...????)


I would guess my settings would probably be

weekdays only
7:15 am
45 minutes ramp up, I should be out of bed by 8:00

0% starting brightness
100% end (depends on bulb I guess)

reddish starting color
yellowish ending color (or maybe blue)

at the end of the cycle I'd probably like it to stay on for xxx minutes then go off.


continuous smooth brightening would be better than 100 pulsed increases.

I think a smart bulb would do this better than a smart dimmer, but with a dimmer and incandescent bulb the color thing is solved, incandescents naturally go from red to yellow as you make them brighter.

thank you

Gentle Wake Up from @bptworld (Bryan) can do it. It lets you simultaneously ramp up (or down) bulb intensity and temperature.

Thanks for bumping this! :slight_smile:

I was just today looking at the new Sengled bulb in my nightstand that replaced the lightly supported TRÅFDRI RGB bulb, planning to just schedule a rudimentary routine to increase brightness over 90 minutes from 5:30am to 7am.

I love the features you suggested; especially an option to flash the bulb at the end of the cycle if still not out of bed. Also, I'd dig on/off and setting control of it from a Pico remote, and audible spoken confirmation of actions (which I mentioned in my initial post).

@aaiyar OOOOoohhhh! Perfect! I'm going to check this out. Thanks!

@carbon, the timing of your bump was spot on. Thanks again.

So there's 'Gentle Wake Up' and 'Circadian Daylight' apps that should hopefully work. Someone also mentioned that there's a command to ramp up a dimmer (for a incandescent bulb). No one has confirmed the "weekday only" option, but hopefully it can run only on weekdays.

Okay, awesome, so It looks like I can do what I want. I'm going to order a Hubitat.

Oh, can anyone recommend a smart bulb for me? I see bulb selection is not so easy.

Thank you for the reply and recommendation. It looks like the Hubitat will do the one thing I wanted to accomplish, so I'm going to go ahead and buy a Hubitat, but I'm also finding the community to be super-helpful which is a huge huge bonus.

@carbon

The person to thank would be Bryan (@bptworld) - he's written a very useful set of apps:

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Where you located? In North America, I'd recommend Sengled bulbs. But you should have other line-powered devices that establish a robust zigbee mesh. This is because Sengled bulbs are designed not to be zigbee repeaters.

Hubitat also support YeeLight bulbs, and there's a community integration for LiFX bulbs.

The LiFX bulbs look good.

Yes, the US.

The philips Hue bulbs look good, but I guess need the hub. I wouldn't mind buying a Hue Hub, but it appears to send info to the cloud, which I do not want.

The Sengled Element Plus Color also looks good.

I don't want anything going to the cloud.

Much appreciated.

You can pair the Hue bulbs directly to HE and don’t need the hue bridge.

Don't go with Philips. Too expensive last I checked. I use Sengled exclusively throughout my house. Couldn't be happier.

The biggest pro point I have for Philips Hue, after years of resisting, as of late last year, they finally conceded and you can now set their power up state following a power outage to on, off, or last state (I believe); alas, I haven't invested in Philips.

My Sylvania Lightify RGBW strips (and their old RGBW bulb I had that died long ago), IKEA TRÅDFRI, and Sengled all come on 100% warm white following a power outage, which isn't a huge issue mid-day, but sucks in the middle of the night. Thank heavens the Caseta dimmers and GE in-wall fan controls don't do that.

I'm mainly replying with the hope that someone says, "hey, try this with that Sengled ...," since that's what I'm slowly converting to. :wink:

Huh .. My Sengled does remember state ... IF on. :slight_smile:

Going to make a new topic about it.

Is Simple Sunrise available yet?