I’m new to home automation, so please excuse my ignorance, but is it a common feature to be able to have a smart lightbulb fade very slowly (over the course of an hour or two) either from one setting/color to another or between on and off? I’m looking for a lightbulb that either has this feature, or that I can program to have this feature.
I use the Philips Hue White Ambiance lights for this.
It looks like 2 hours is not possible though (with the Hue iOS App):
- for waking up: 10/20/30 minutes
- for winding down: 15/30/45/60 minutes
EDIT: I have the old version that requires a bridge. Newer versions can work directly via Bluetooth, but I’m not sure whether the bulb can do this on its own, or it’s the bridge controlling the process.
EDIT 2: If it’s for in your bedroom only: the light curve of the Philips Somneo Connected wake-up light is much nicer, but that device is not cheap…
- for waking up: 5/10/15/20/25/30/35/40 minutes
- for winding down: 5/10/15/20/30/45/60 minutes
- bonus: relax breathing: 5/10/15 minutes
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I’m not sure about fading between colors, but LifX bulbs will transition between on/off up to 24 hours.
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Off the top of my head, you could probably force this with Hue bulbs through a series of 30 minute transitions implemented through the Hue app. I’m sure it’s possible, but it’d probably require a lot of manual calibration.
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It looks like there are three different styles of bulbs – White, Day & Dusk, & Color. Do you know if they all have this feature or is this particular to some models?
Do you know if you can stack the transitions somehow? Like, either within the app or Siri shortcuts? What I’m wondering about is whether I would only have to interact once with the app or would I have to manually start each transition.
I’ve got the regular A19 and Mini Color. It looks like the other models use the same app, but I’m not sure exactly how they are limited.
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I was thinking you could set up a series of time-triggered transitions, such that each one begins after the last ends. In the Hue app, you’d have to set up the colors you want to transition to each half-hour as separate Scenes. So 8pm to 8:30pm for scene 1, 8:30pm to 9pm for scene 2, etc.
This is the settings on a new transition from the Other Routines section:
Ah, I see! Interesting…this might work…
Now for the fun part – time to buy some hardware and starting playing with it.