Set default brightness level of dimmer switch based on time of day

Configuration Z-Wave
1

Hey All!

I’m trying to find a solution to a small annoyance my wife brought up. Currently we have a few z-wave dimmer switches around the house with different automations setup. One in the hallway activates with a motion sensor and based on time of day and light level will be set to a certain dimming level (i.e. 100 during the day, 5 in the middle of the night).

The issue is that if you turn the light on manually (a single click up on the paddle) it will go to whatever the last dim level was. So if the last time the motion sensor triggered it it set the brightness to 5 then that’s what the manual switch action will go to.

Ideally we would like the dim level to go to an appropriate level based on time of day. This would also be great for non-motion activated switches - i.e. kitchen switch goes to 100 during the day but 5 when I go to get water in the middle of the night.

Any thoughts on how to automate this default dim level without turning the light on?

Thanks!

2

If it’s like my WiFi light, you can turn it on to a brightness, and turn it off immediately without it actually lighting up.

I know there’s been discussion about enabling, for devices that support it, the ability to change the brightness (and other attributes) while off. I don’t know how far those discussions got though.

3

Hmm okay. I’ll have to try that.

How would I go about doing that in the code? Just two actions one after another?

4

Exactly that, here’s the action part of one of mine:

action:
  - service: light.turn_on
    data:
      entity_id: light.master_bedroom_bedhead
      brightness: 10
  - service: light.turn_off
    data:
      entity_id: light.master_bedroom_bedhead
1 Like
5

This was the first problem I ran into when switching to HomeAssistant last year. Basically the same problem as you have described, but I wanted the correct theme depending on the time of day (or night)

Here’s my post with the solution I came up with:

6

@Tinkerer Okay thanks I’ll give that a try.

@mvdarend Thanks this might work for me too. I like the external file with the profiles for your lights. Didn’t know you could do that.

7

I would like to do this too. @coup, did you get this working? What was your experience like? Which dimmers are you using?