Hi everyone! I’ve done a basic amount of research but thought I’d ask my questions here.
TLDR: I want a light to be turned on to be dim at dusk, brighten when I arrive home, and then shortly after revert back to be dim.
I just moved and am starting to build my smart home setup. I am an Apple person so have used HomeKit for my parents, and have a Apple TV as a home hub.
One thing I really want to do is this:
Dusk- porch light turns on dim
When I arrive home- porch light changes color and becomes brighter
10 minutes later- light returns to first mode.
So basically, home kit is not what I want. I am working of trying IFTTT, but need more time to connect everything as it’s not working currently. I just don’t like how in Apple you can’t have a light have a background to always revert back too. I have thought about just having the light on a motion sensor, but then it would be completely off and just look dark…
Sorry if this is confusing, basically I just want to see what apps people are using. Thanks for all your help!
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Home Assistant.
+1 but only if you’re serious about diving down the home automation rabbit hole.
The approach that I’ve found to work well is that Home Assistant provides the real “brains” of my house, and almost all of my smart devices are connected there.
I then use an HA integration with HK to expose those devices to HK so it can act as a “voice front end” to HA.
Implementing your requirement of a “default ambient brightness” would be straightforward to do in HA. I use the word “straightforward” intentionally, as it assumes you’re comfortable with basic concepts of coding. There’s a Node-RED plugin for HA that provides a visual programming interface that may help you. (I’m an old school programmer, so am more comfortable with raw code.)
I use a brightener automation in a few locations. For hardware I use a Z-Wave dimmer and a motion sensor.
At sunset+offset the lights come on to a 25% dim level. If the light is on and motion is detected, the dimmer is set to 100%. If motion stops, the motion sensor has a 1 minute no-motion window, then wait 2 minutes and set dim level to previous level.
I have no idea how to do this in Apple. IFTTT should absolutely be able to do it. But, why layer on more cloud dependency? Start your local controller journey.
At some point I absolutely want to build a system like that, but right not I’m only renting, and only 1 bedroom so I really don’t have that much…