Set all keypad backlights programatically

[dw886]

So I'm tired of seeing keypads that are right next to each other with slightly different colors because one ambient light sensor is reading "dim" and the other is reading "bright".  Stating this up front so this doesn't come up: these are brand new keypads with the new ambient light sensors with the black shaft.

Here's what I'm thinking:

• Set backlight levels to "high" all of the time via "Fully Customized" backlight levels
• At a given time in the morning (say ~sunrise), set the backlight color to "White" - seems the most readable color for daylight
• At a given time in the evening (say ~sunset), set the backlight color to something dark, like dark navy
• Possibly handle well-lit night areas differently than bedrooms.

Questions:

1. What's the best way to programatically set *all* keypad colors at once?  I can do these one-by-one if it has to be that way, but this is going to be tedious - this project has ~ 55 lighting loads with engraved keypads.
2. Is there a way to manipulate the "level" from DIM to BRIGHT and vice versa?
3. Is there a better way to deal with keypads all looking different because ambient light levels in different areas of a room are read differently (sometimes in keypads side-by-side?  I can't believe there's not a way to connect all keypad light levels together, especially in the same room.  For example, there's a room that has windows on 3 sides, and has keypads on all 3 sides of the room.  All keypad backlight levels look differently (and the colors all look different then too).

[Control4Savant]

Unfortunately, you will have to do most of this one by one to have it work out the way you would like. I would create a true/false variable that you can program once and tigger easily from scheduler or wherever with one line of code. This is used a lot for emergency or holiday reasons but I have done it enough for late night in sleeping areas.  The keypad ambient light "different color" complaint is pretty common.

[chudel]

On 3/27/2020 at 2:24 PM, AVNeeds said:

Unfortunately, you will have to do most of this one by one to have it work out the way you would like. I would create a true/false variable that you can program once and tigger easily from scheduler or wherever with one line of code. This is used a lot for emergency or holiday reasons but I have done it enough for late night in sleeping areas.  The keypad ambient light "different color" complaint is pretty common.

Can you assign the LED color value by a variable? (And then just change the variable?)

[eggzlot]

On 3/27/2020 at 11:45 AM, dw886 said:

So I'm tired of seeing keypads that are right next to each other with slightly different colors because one ambient light sensor is reading "dim" and the other is reading "bright".  Stating this up front so this doesn't come up: these are brand new keypads with the new ambient light sensors with the black shaft.

Here's what I'm thinking:

• Set backlight levels to "high" all of the time via "Fully Customized" backlight levels
• At a given time in the morning (say ~sunrise), set the backlight color to "White" - seems the most readable color for daylight
• At a given time in the evening (say ~sunset), set the backlight color to something dark, like dark navy
• Possibly handle well-lit night areas differently than bedrooms.

Questions:

1. What's the best way to programatically set *all* keypad colors at once?  I can do these one-by-one if it has to be that way, but this is going to be tedious - this project has ~ 55 lighting loads with engraved keypads.
2. Is there a way to manipulate the "level" from DIM to BRIGHT and vice versa?
3. Is there a better way to deal with keypads all looking different because ambient light levels in different areas of a room are read differently (sometimes in keypads side-by-side?  I can't believe there's not a way to connect all keypad light levels together, especially in the same room.  For example, there's a room that has windows on 3 sides, and has keypads on all 3 sides of the room.  All keypad backlight levels look differently (and the colors all look different then too).

did the black ambient bar even help?  I have those and I cannot get any multi bank of keypads/dimmers/switches with engravings to match up.  It was a big selling point, looks great in the catalog but its hogwash when installed.  My biggest gripe about C4 to date.

Before you program everything, test it out one with bank first, see if you can get them matching.  I tried with hex color codes or whatever, programming, etc and I couldn't get it.  I have well more than 55 loads and I've defaulted to no backlighting EXCEPT if the alarm is on, its red.  which is basically just at night so I do not have to see them and its a good reminder if I go to open a door to take the dog out I need to turn it off.

[South Africa C4 user]

I had similar issues and ultimately did the following:

1. Set all keypads brightness to full all the time except for one or two that I wanted night access to (e.g. one next to each bed and next to each bathroom door).

2. For the few that I wanted night access to, I set these to full unless very dark and then to very dim.  I made sure none that needed access were next to each other for the reasons described in other people’s posts.

3. I have 2 settings (essentially day time and night time) and I set all the keypads to white (usually) for day time use and black for night time use.  The exception being the night access lights which I set to orange (which dims very well).

4. I check and choose to change between the day and night setting in each bedroom whenever the TV goes on/off, the blinds open / close and the lights  go on /off.  Essentially... if the TV is on then night setting else, if blinds open or lights on then day setting.

5. You can use the great LED wizard driver to change multiple light back lights at one go (this answers the OP’s Q1)  This makes it easy and quick to do.  As well as white, orange and black which I use in the bedrooms as described above, I have a day colour and a night colour for the common areas (currently set as white and yellow, but it can be changed from the T3s to 6 or 7 options using custom buttons.  Lastly, if the alarm goes off, I change all the upstairs backlights to green. If the alarm detects further movement from a different armed zone in the next 10 minutes, the backlights go red... a great way to see visually when one wakes up if it is a false alarm or really serious...