Advanced Lighting with Multiple Loads and Defaults

[rek]

I was doing some design of our lighting behavior last night with my wife and she stumped me with something she wanted that I was confident I could do but now I'm not so sure. I've got 2.6, Composer HE, and the new adaptive phase dimmers. Here's a sample scenario:

 

Family room has multiple light switch legs.  For the main APD as you enter the room, we want several of the light legs controlled together (like two banks of can lights acting as though they're on the same switch).  We also want "press and hold" to ramp up and down. So, I set up and Advanced Lighting scene with the appropriate lights and levels and had my dealer bind it to the APD - everything works as expected.  But then my wife asked for the starting light level (if the lights had been off) to vary by time of day. I can't think of any way to programmatically do that?

[SMHarman]

More scenes.

On button 1 press

If time >2200 and < 0600 then scene family room night.

If time >0601

Or you can use the time variables. Sunrise sunset.

Why not upgrade to 2.7 for the bug fixes?

Your dealer may need to unbind but I think Programmeing overrides binding.

[rek]

It is my understanding that binding the button to scene is the only way to have "press and hold" ramp the scene smoothly (as in, doing it via programming doesn't result in very clean/precise behavior).  That was why I assumed I needed to leave the binding in place.  Can anyone confirm?

 

But, your comment give me an idea (or maybe this is what you were getting at).  Set Scene1 to set my loads to one set of brightness levels and leave that scene bound.  Set Scene2 to set those same loads to an alternate brightness level and manually activate that scene conditionally in the button press event.  Then "press and hold" should still work against whatever brightness levels they're at.  Anyone thing that would work?  Not sure since the controller would have binding and my programming both trying to set different scenes against the same loads at the same time.  Don't  know if it is reliable to know in which order they'd happen or if light ramping would always appear smooth (not at home to test it now).

 

I'm scheduled to get 2.7 this week.  Any particular bugs you were referring to SMHarman that are related to this area?

 

Thanks.

[AHA]

Your dealer may need to unbind but I think Programmeing overrides binding.

 

Bindings will always work even if there is programming.

[SMHarman]

Nothing in particular bit if you have a dealer remotes in, kicking off 2.6>2.7 is a benign and worthwhile process.

[Matt Lowe]

agreed the programming will take place after the button is pressed. but you may want to set a variable to trigger this only once in case you want the lights brighter or dimmer

[SMHarman]

So binding a night light room scene and the programming of day set the evening room scene will give the control and press and hold will ramp the scene

[Brian Parker]

I run an event in the morning and at night which changes the default light levels for various rooms that need that functionality. It does not mess with ramping at all, for the dimmer responds to all normal events.

 

One other thing that I do is hold the default levels for day and night in variables, because there is no easy way to edit the level in a program step.

[Cyknight]

If you need time (or night/day) specific settings for a lights STARTING level - just programmatically set those light's START_ON_LEVEL (older lighting) or COLD_START_LEVEL based on whatever time etc you want.

 

As this is at the light itself, scenes will stick to those values.

 

(those settings are found by pressing the + sign in fron of the light exposing device variables, then + again)

[Cyknight]

I run an event in the morning and at night which changes the default light levels for various rooms that need that functionality. It does not mess with ramping at all, for the dimmer responds to all normal events.

 

One other thing that I do is hold the default levels for day and night in variables, because there is no easy way to edit the level in a program step.

 

default light levels will not affect scenes however as they override the default (plus it's not what was asked)

[Cyknight]

And...this is apparently a 4 month old thread....