Use EasyTrigger for night mode?

[larrywal32]

Hi folks - my scenario is as follows:

1. At a specific time in the evening, I'd like all lights in my house that are on to dim to a certain level. Any light turned on after that should initially turn on to that dimmed level.

2. At a specific time in the morning, I'd like the opposite - turn all lights that are on to full brightness, and any light turned on turns on initially to full brightness (or its last level if customized, but that requirement can be sacrificed).

I've heard and know I can do it via scripting. Possible to do without scripting though?

[TC1]

Yes, it can be done without scripting through a series of events.

• An initial event can be set to trigger on an absolute time of day or relative offset to sunrise or sunset. You can use this to set your target dim levels.
• Subsequent events can set the desired dim levels. Some light dimmers support setting the dim level without actually turning on the light, some dimmers you'll have to set the dim level by turning on the light and turning it off immediately.

Much of this will depend on the capabilities of your dimmers and whether they all behave the same.

[larrywal32]

Thanks! They’re all homeseer dimmers. I think hd-200 but some might be 100. Don’t remember.

Which event actions do each of those bullets? It’s exactly what I want but I didn’t think you could set target levels without odd or impossible state from each device. Do you have one example I could work from?

[TC1]

Ok, since they are all HS dimmers (100s and 200s) that means they are all scene capable. In my house I use the one-tap on the Up paddle for a scene detection to automatically set my light to my preferred level, even if someone before me changed the dim level. This will be key to getting a consistent dim level across all your dimmers. Here's the example for my office dimmer:



So you'll obviously have to setup an event for each dimmer that you want to be at a consistent dim level. And you'll want to substitute the fixed level I have in my example with a variable value (explained next).

Now... how do we get all those events to have different dim levels at different times? We can use Easy Trigger. Once function of Easy Trigger is that you set a dimmer based on another device's value. That other device could be a virtual device that can have a value from 0 to 100. It's all explained here:
https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/ul...210#post877210

Now you'll want to change the value of your virtual device that holds your preferred dim value at different times of day. You need to create an event that will change it based your schedule. Much of that is explained here:
https://forums.homeseer.com/forum/ul...41#post1347341

It might seem complicated at first, but my recommendation is start with one light close to you (I always use the dimmer in my office to experiment on) and build out each section of functionality as you test it. Once everything is working like you expect it, then apply it to all the other lights that you want to .

Hope this helps. Sorry I couldn't give exact steps, this is in fact something I intend to implement in my own house, but I'm working on other automation use-cases at the moment.

[larrywal32]

Thanks so much. This helps a ton and is very clear.

The only thing I don’t get....for all the lights that are on when we enter the nighttime period, how do I dim them automatically with no tap? I don’t want to turn on lights that are off, just dim the ones on....

[TC1]

Thanks so much. This helps a ton and is very clear.

The only thing I don’t get....for all the lights that are on when we enter the nighttime period, how do I dim them automatically with no tap? I don’t want to turn on lights that are off, just dim the ones on....

Ok... unless someone has a better idea, this is the tedious part.

Just like we had to create an event for each dimmer to detect the Up paddle, you'll have to create an event to set all the active lights to the new dim levels. It's important that these events can ONLY be triggered manually.
For each of these events you'll end up calling them in the THEN section in the event where you set your virtual device value, one after another. You're basically nesting events inside other events.

Each of these events will need to test whether the light is not Off.
The pseudo logic is as follows:
IF
The Office Light is NOT value Off
THEN
Set Office Light to value (use the virtual device value).

Hope this was clear enough.

[jmaddox]

I use EasyTrigger to turn all my lights off via an event that I call when I tap the bottom paddle of any of my dimmers 3 times.

I use two groups. CentralScene is a collection of all the central scene devices. InteriorLights is the collection of all interior lights I want to control. Ignore the blink status line, that just lets me know it's running. I find if you don't reset the central scene group to some other value, this will spam trigger the event so thats why there is a line at the end (not visible in the screen capture) to set the CentralScene group to 0. Finally you'll notice that I checked the box "Send command only if expression results in a new value" that means it only affects those lights currently on.

[TC1]

I use EasyTrigger.... [edit]
Finally you'll notice that I checked the box "Send command only if expression results in a new value" that means it only affects those lights currently on.

I did not know that ET had that feature. Brilliant! Thanks for this tip!

[Stuart]

I use this to set my kitchen lights having a motion that can trigger the lights on or by actually one on press on the switch, using easy trigger.
There are 3 events and 2 variables

motion variable and user variable

If the time is at 6:00:00 AM
Then Set Device Floor main kitchen light brightness by user to variable 35
Then Set Device Floor main kitchen light brightness by motion to variable 20

If the time is at 10:00:00 AM
Then Set Device Floor main kitchen light brightness by user to variable 75
Then Set Device Floor main kitchen light brightness by motion to variable 74

If the time is at 10:00:00 AM
Then Set Device Floor main kitchen light brightness by user to variable 28
Then Set Device Floor main kitchen light brightness by motion to variable 20

Then when the light is turned on either by motion or press the brightness is set = to the variable at that time

Stuart

[larrywal32]

Thanks folks! Stuart - cool ideas. JMaddox, appreciate you finding this thread since the other broke, and love the group of device to expression.

Per TC1's post, I think still, the only non-scripting way I've seen to dim ONLY the lights that are already on is to make an event per light that first checks to see if the light is on, then sets to the dimmed value variable if so.

You can't use the "set all devices in group only if expression results in new value" because it will by design result in a new value.


Anyone else have any other ideas?