Control4 Daylight Agent Released - Circadian lighting is here!

[alanchow]

Daylight Agent adds circadian lighting to Control4

SnapOne just released the Daylight Agent for Control4. This new agent warms and cools white LED temperatures to the rising and setting of the sun for improved circadian health. By mimicing the color temperatures of natural daylight (waking hours high in blue spectrum/bright and sunsets fall in blue spectrum/warmer/dimmer) artificial lighting helps the body prepare for the day, be most alert when it needs to and prepares the body for rest when its time for sleep.

Chowmain is proud to announce that we have updated our drivers to support the new Daylight Agent. The following drivers now support the new agent

• Govee
• Light Group
• LIFX
• Shelly
• Switchbot
• TP-Link Kasa
• WiZ
• Yeelight

Haven't used our drivers before? To ensure customer satisfaction all of our drivers come with a 90 day trial. We also offer 50% discounts on licencing for the homes of integrators employees and FREE showroom licencing for integrators who have showrooms.

 

[WhyPhy]

Is there a way for “Dim to Warm” lights to work with this feature? I have lights that change color temp as the dim:

5000k @ 100% brightness
3500k @ 50% brightness
2200k @ 20% brightness 

 

Can this be supported by the agent, or is a custom driver required?

[Cyknight]

The drivers needs to support the agent requirement - so updated drivers are likely required (some may have had it already) to support it.

Light driver support: The Daylight solution supports lights with drivers that offer Color Correlated Temperature (CCT) control and have implemented the brightness_on_mode_preset and color_on_mode_preset functionality

So just having dim to warm bulbs on a dimmer won't 'just work' - somebody more involved than me might need to comment on if C4 dimmers (or other 3rd part dimmers) would possibly support it, let alone if the drivers support it or even can support it.

 

Obvious issue with a 'generic' dim to warm bulb on any 'generic' controlled dimmer is going to be consistency between multiple bulbs. I could see a 'intermediary' driver being an option for these types of lights though - where one can manually set or program a dimmer to go to certain percentages, so that the intermediary 'translates' between the agent and 3rd party devices.

 

@alanchow would know better on feasibility though.

[RAV]

Would like to see a middle man driver that can fake standard lights to work with the Daylight Driver, for brightness only.
That should give us 'night' levels that we've requested for 15 years.

[South Africa C4 user]

3 minutes ago, RAV said:

Would like to see a middle man driver that can fake standard lights to work with the Daylight Driver, for brightness only.
That should give us 'night' levels that we've requested for 15 years.

Or enhance the agent so that it does this properly… could be really cool and allow some of us to remove a lot of programming!

[alanchow]

3 hours ago, Cyknight said:

Light driver support: The Daylight solution supports lights with drivers that offer Color Correlated Temperature (CCT) control and have implemented the brightness_on_mode_preset and color_on_mode_preset functionality

@alanchow would know better on feasibility though.

This statement is correct and what we had to do to modify our licenced lighting drivers that support color temp for daylight agent support.

We worked closely with Control4 to ensure our drivers co-incided with their agent launch.

[Cyknight]

6 hours ago, RAV said:

Would like to see a middle man driver that can fake standard lights to work with the Daylight Driver, for brightness only.
That should give us 'night' levels that we've requested for 15 years.

 

5 hours ago, South Africa C4 user said:

Or enhance the agent so that it does this properly… could be really cool and allow some of us to remove a lot of programming!

Not sure I agree: if you want to do true Circadian Lighting, I don't think doing it poorly is the way to go. Circadian lighting is about the intensity, colour and spectrum of lighting, not (just) the brightness/lumens.

A driver to allow it working with actual dim to warm is another matter: but faking circadian lighting with regular (especially LED) dimmable bulbs is IMHO not the way to go.

Now, that said, I wouldn't mind seeing a separate agent (or lighting proxy enhancement) that would allow for 'regular' scheduled/automatic/tied to time and date brightness dimming in general: but to me that is NOT circadian lighting, nor should it be 'branded' as such.

[South Africa C4 user]

4 hours ago, Cyknight said:

 

Not sure I agree: if you want to do true Circadian Lighting, I don't think doing it poorly is the way to go. Circadian lighting is about the intensity, colour and spectrum of lighting, not (just) the brightness/lumens.

A driver to allow it working with actual dim to warm is another matter: but faking circadian lighting with regular (especially LED) dimmable bulbs is IMHO not the way to go.

Now, that said, I wouldn't mind seeing a separate agent (or lighting proxy enhancement) that would allow for 'regular' scheduled/automatic/tied to time and date brightness dimming in general: but to me that is NOT circadian lighting, nor should it be 'branded' as such.

Fully agree with everything you say but no reason not to brand the dimming and brightening of normal lights over time as part of the daylight agent (equally happy for it to work in any other fashion).

[RAV]

11 hours ago, Cyknight said:

 

Not sure I agree: if you want to do true Circadian Lighting, I don't think doing it poorly is the way to go.

The number of clients that know what Circadian Lighting is exceeds the number of installers that do, and that's not saying much either way.
And likely why they named it Daylight Driver.
Whether it's part of the new driver, an update to lighting drivers, another driver, a middle man driver, doesn't matter, the ability to auto adjust preset turn on brightness is needed for a very long time.
I expect a middle man driver wouldn't be a big project and expose more people to the concept of truly smart lighting.

[WhyPhy]

5 hours ago, RAV said:

Whether it's part of the new driver, an update to lighting drivers, another driver, a middle man driver, doesn't matter, the ability to auto adjust preset turn on brightness is needed for a very long time.

I expect a middle man driver wouldn't be a big project and expose more people to the concept of truly smart lighting.

I completely agree.

@alanchow is there any chance Chowmain could create a generic "daylight-to-dimmer-level" driver to fill this void? I'm guessing it would have ~5 different dimmer levels mapped to 5 different "Kelvin color temperatures", with the ability to adjust the default dimmer levels to better match different types of bulbs. When the daytime lighting agent specifies a certain "Kelvin color temperature", the driver translates that to the appropriate dimmer level.

[Andrew luecke]

55 minutes ago, WhyPhy said:

I completely agree.

@alanchow is there any chance Chowmain could create a generic "daylight-to-dimmer-level" driver to fill this void? I'm guessing it would have ~5 different dimmer levels mapped to 5 different "Kelvin color temperatures", with the ability to adjust the default dimmer levels to better match different types of bulbs. When the daytime lighting agent specifies a certain "Kelvin color temperature", the driver translates that to the appropriate dimmer level.

You could potentially use the variables in the chowmain light group driver to do this. And maybe mix with variable manipulator driver.

 

[Cyknight]

8 hours ago, RAV said:

The number of clients that know what Circadian Lighting is exceeds the number of installers that do, and that's not saying much either way.
And likely why they named it Daylight Driver.
Whether it's part of the new driver, an update to lighting drivers, another driver, a middle man driver, doesn't matter, the ability to auto adjust preset turn on brightness is needed for a very long time.
I expect a middle man driver wouldn't be a big project and expose more people to the concept of truly smart lighting.

Ignorance is something that should be cured, not abused. Like I said, I'd love to see the functionality to adjust preset brightness on a schedule BAKED IN to , say an agent as well: but I don't want to see 'daylight' as the name for that function: daylight or circadian lighting naming set aside: it would be a misnomer that should be avoided.

[Topspin14m]

What’s the best driver to utilize this with Ketra/Hue? I have a mixed environment.


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[Andrew luecke]

2 hours ago, Topspin14m said:

What’s the best driver to utilize this with Ketra/Hue? I have a mixed environment.


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Not sure what you mean. But basically, the standard hue driver supports daylight (and I suspect ketra probably does too).

If you want to group them, Chowmain light group is the best solution imho  https://chowmain.software/drivers/control4-chowmain-light-group

[Topspin14m]

Not sure what you mean. But basically, the standard hue driver supports daylight (and I suspect ketra probably does too).
If you want to group them, Chowmain light group is the best solution imho  https://chowmain.software/drivers/control4-chowmain-light-group

Admittedly, I probably just am misinformed, but my dealer said to activate daylight, I need a new driver?

I’m not worried about the grouping at the moment (though that is good to know as it is something I’ve been thinking about).

I must have the native Hue and Ketra drivers, but I’m still not seeing any daylight options.


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[Andrew luecke]

If you don't have a colour wheel in your interface and not running is 3.3.2 or later, you need those updates 

[Topspin14m]

If you don't have a colour wheel in your interface and not running is 3.3.2 or later, you need those updates 

I do have the color wheel. I’m running 3.3.2.651066-res (Jan 9 2023). Is it just a system update I need?




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[Andrew luecke]

Then you should have support. Maybe the agent just needs to be installed or your light drivers need a quick update to the latest version. You probably are best off speaking to your installer

[msgreenf]

You probably need the daylight agent installed

[Topspin14m]

Then you should have support. Maybe the agent just needs to be installed or your light drivers need a quick update to the latest version. You probably are best off speaking to your installer

I’m sure you both are right. I just don’t have Daylight Agent yet. Separately - In c4 parlance, what’s the difference between a driver and an “agent”? Is agent something C4 native vs a driver is developed by a third party?


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[Andrew luecke]

1 minute ago, Topspin14m said:

I’m sure you both are right. I just don’t have Daylight Agent yet. Separately - In c4 parlance, what’s the difference between a driver and an “agent”? Is agent something C4 native vs a driver is developed by a third party?


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Agent can only be installed once on a system. A huge amount of our drivers use an agent these days

[alanchow]

43 minutes ago, Andrew luecke said:

Agent can only be installed once on a system. A huge amount of our drivers use an agent these days

For additional reference Control4 told us that the rule of thumb is that if only one instance is to be installed then it should be an agent.  Otherwise it should be a driver.

That is the only difference.  Stops multiple copies being installed to ensure that multiple instance mistakes don't happen.

[Cyknight]

For 'native' agents at least, they also tend to be 'brand neutral' in that they offer a function that isn't related to a specific brand of equipment. ie the Advanced lighting scenes work across any lighting device that uses the standard lighting proxy, daylight agent works with any lighting driver for any brand that supports the functions.

 

As time has progressed, there are many things that drivers are now able to do (including checking for already installed instances) that used to be limited to agents (also think of the experience button timers) so it's gotten a lot less obvious, especially as agents are now something that isn't specifically hard-locked/coded to system version (doesn't mean an agent won't have a minimum version mind you).

10 years ago I think the answer would have been that agents are for (background) system functions whereas drivers were for 'external' device control.

[Topspin14m]

Very interesting!  Thanks for the answer guys.