🔆 Smart Light - Entity - Sun Elevation - Ambient & Time Triggers

[Blacky]

FAQ - Sun Option & Sun Elevation

Why did you use it and how can I set it?

I initially considered using Sunset and Sunrise, with a time offset but Home Assistant recommends using sun elevation for more consistent performance throughout the year. Following their advice, I opted for sun elevation. This is because the actual light level differs when using a fixed time after sunset or sunrise during winter versus summer. By setting a sun elevation, you achieve consistent light levels throughout the year.

How do I set up sun elevation settings for my lights in the blueprint?

It’s really easy to set up. First, check your sun elevation degrees and set your Sun Elevation Falling and Sun Elevation Rising to match your specific location, as every site is different. The easiest way to do this is to add the sun solar elevation entity to your dashboard (see below). One evening, observe the sunset and note the elevation at which you’d like the lights to turn on. Set this value for Sun Elevation Falling. Repeat the process for sunrise, noting the elevation at which you want the lights to turn off, and set this for Sun Elevation Rising. Then, monitor to ensure it’s working correctly and meets your preferences. If adjustments are needed, you can easily make changes as necessary.

Note: If the slider doesn’t allow you to set your desired sun elevation degrees, simply type the value into the text box and click save.

Night Lights - Sun Elevation

When choosing to use a sun elevation condition for night lights, it is not necessary to enable the sun elevation condition for normal lights. The night lights sun elevation condition will function independently.

How do I add the Sun Solar Elevation Entity and Sun Entity to a Home Assistant Dashboard?

To add the sun solar elevation and sun entity to your dashboard, follow these steps:

1. Access your Home Assistant instance through your web browser or the Home Assistant App.
2. Navigate to the dashboard where you want to add the sun entities.
3. Click on the pencil icon in the top right corner of the dashboard to enter edit mode.
4. Click on the + Add Card button at the bottom right of the dashboard.
5. In the pop-up window, scroll down and select the Entities card.
6. If the card includes any default entities, click the X to remove them.
7. Under Entities (required), click on the Entity dropdown and search for and select the Sun Solar Elevation (e.g., sensor.sun_solar_elevation) entity. This will display the sun elevation.
8. Click on the next Entity dropdown and search for and select the Sun (e.g., sun.sun) entity. This will display whether the sun is ‘Above horizon’ or ‘Below horizon’.
9. Optionally, give the card a title, such as Sun.
10. Click the Save button to add the card to your dashboard.
11. Click DONE in the top right corner to exit edit mode.

Now you will have the sun elevation and sun status displayed on your dashboard, allowing you to evaluate and adjust the sun elevation values for your automations.

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Enjoy

Blacky

Back to FAQ: Click Here

[Blacky]

@HansE

Firstly welcome to the community.

Looks like you would like a lot of different automatons. You can use this blueprint and also have another one called Sensor Light

You can also use Calendar Notifications & Actions that can do your Christmas automatons and I have a FAQ on how to set it all up that could help. You can also just use the calendar blueprint to toggle ON and OFF your automatons. So you would have a automation for x-mas lights and you toggle it ON and OFF using the start and end actions.

Hope this can help you.

Blacky

[Blacky]

New update 1.8

Some work is required in this upgrade see below. Only entities are allowed now, don’t update if you would like to still use areas and devices or make a copy of the code to use in another custom blueprint file.

Upgrade Features

• Light Control:

  • We have now added a option to set the colour temperature of a light.
  • We have now added a option to set the transition of a light and scene.

• Sun Option: You now have the option to set a rising and falling sun elevation.

Maintenance

• Set blueprint to my new layout.
• Clean up some descriptions.

STEPS REQUIRED WHEN UPGRADING

1. Just need to clean up some YAML. Once you update and you see nothing selected in light control as shown below then jump to step 2.

   

   If you see brightness selected as shown below then you are all good and don’t need to do anything hear unless you use the sun option as a trigger then jump to step 5.

   

2. Click on the 3 dots and select edit in YAML.

   

3. We are looking for the line ‘include_light_control: dont_use_brightness’. If you don’t see it then you are all good nothing more to do if you see it go to step 4.

   

4. Delete the line ‘include_light_control: dont_use_brightness’, click save then the 3 dots and select ‘Edit in visual editor’. If you need to make any changes do so, if you use the sun option as a trigger then go to step 5.

   

5. Scroll down to the sun option. You will see you have 2 inputs now called ‘Sun Elevation Falling’ and ‘Sun Elevation Rising’. Adjust to your liking.

   

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Enjoy

Blacky

[knotfinleyHA]

I’m a newb to HA and trying use this blueprint to turn on and then off a light in my office. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. The device I’m using is a TP-Link P135 wall plug with dimming.

alias: Office Light On & Off
description: Scheduled light on and off for workdays
use_blueprint:
  path: Blackshome/entities-on-off-trigger-conditions.yaml
  input:
    light_colour_temperature: 2700
    entity_switch:
      entity_id: switch.office_light
    light_transition_off: 15
    light_transition_on: 0
    after_time: "10:30:00"
    before_time: "10:35:00"
    weekday_options:
      - mon
      - tue
      - wed
      - thu
      - fri
    include_light_control:
      - dont_use_brightness
    include_time: time_enabled
    include_weekdays: weekday_enabled  

[Blacky]

@knotfinleyHA

Welcome to the community.

Thanks for providing your YAML.

Everything looks good and I have tested this and it is working. I used version 1.8 but it should work on version 1.7. Note your ‘TP-Link P135 wall plug’ is a switch so the light control will not work on a switch. Maybe this is done internally within the ‘TP-Link P135 wall plug’.

Not sure if you have updated to the new version 1.8 or not but if you have then you can clean up some YAML by removing the code below.

    include_light_control:
      - dont_use_brightness

Here is your full YAML with the code cleaned up for you.

alias: Office Light On & Off
description: Scheduled light on and off for workdays
use_blueprint:
  path: Blackshome/entities-on-off-trigger-conditions.yaml
  input:
    light_colour_temperature: 2700
    entity_switch:
      entity_id: switch.office_light
    light_transition_off: 15
    light_transition_on: 0
    after_time: "10:30:00"
    before_time: "10:35:00"
    weekday_options:
      - mon
      - tue
      - wed
      - thu
      - fri
    include_time: time_enabled
    include_weekdays: weekday_enabled

Blacky

[knotfinleyHA]

Hello Blacky,

I think I found the issue. Using Edge I created Home Assistant webpage as an app so I could pin it to my taskbar and it opens like an app. I have noticed that when updating some items it doesn’t work in app mode. So I opened the HA webpage through the browser and did the update there and it worked. I also copied your version of yaml but don’t think that was the problem.

Thanks for your help and the blueprint.
Thanks for the help.

[Blacky]

@knotfinleyHA

Nice one and thanks for letting the community know and for getting back to me

Your welcome

Enjoy

Blacky

[k5madsen (Kent Madsen)]

Thanks for the blueprint. I’m relatively new to HA and this my first automation with HA. The following:

alias: Office Lights On
description: Turn Office Light ON at sunset and OFF at sunrise
use_blueprint:
  path: Blackshome/entities-on-off-trigger-conditions.yaml
  input:
    entity_switch:
      entity_id:
        - light.office_light
        - light.office_light_2
    include_sun: sun_enabled
    include_light_control:
      - use_brightness
    light_brightness: 50
    include_entity_input: entity_disabled
    light_transition_on: 5
    light_transition_off: 5
    sun_elevation_rising: -4
    sun_elevation: 5

Turns the lights on appropriately before sunset but doesn’t turn them off at sunrise. I added the line “sun_elevation_rising” since the normal edit only created one line (sun_elevation) in the YAML.

These are Feit smart light bulbs connected via the Tuya integration.

Thanks for your guidance.

[Blacky]

@k5madsen

Hi Kent and welcome to the community.

Thanks for reaching out and giving me the heads up. There was a bug and it has now been resolved. Please update the blueprint. It will not change your automatons when you update. You can do this by just clicking on the “Import Blueprint” blue button again at the top.

@k5madsen

I added the line “sun_elevation_rising” since the normal edit only created one line (sun_elevation) in the YAML.

If you don’t see it in your YAML it just means that you are using the default value and haven’t selected anything yet so that is okay.

Again thanks for letting us know.

Blacky

[Blacky]

New update 1.9

Bugs Fixed

• Fixed a bug in sun options. Sun Elevation Rising would not turn entities OFF.

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Enjoy

Blacky

[Blacky]

New update 2.0

Trigger-Ready Control - Customize On & Off for Light, Switch, Scene, or Any Entity

Maintenance

• Update the description in “Lights - Switches - Entities - Scenes” to include the new option to select “labels”. The updated description should read:

  NOTE: Only entities can be used. Areas, devices, and labels are not supported.

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Enjoy

Blacky

[k5madsen (Kent Madsen)]

Thanks for the quick and effective fix. I deployed the update yesterday afternoon and the lights turned off this morning as desired.

[BobMac57 (Bob)]

Excellent! Question, any chance to add weather to this? What I mean is, I’d like to use Sun elevation along with weather so if it’s cloudy/raining I can change the elevation value to a different value compared to sunny/partly cloudy, etc.

[Blacky]

Not really sure what you are trying to do. If you can give me some more detail (use case) for me to better understand.

Blacky

[BobMac57 (Bob)]

Apologies, I should have provided more detail. Here’s an example for turning lights on and off at sunrise/sunset:

Let’s say for example it’s cloudy or raining, set the sun’s elevation higher before turning lights on/off and if it’s clear or partly cloudy, set the suns elevation lower.

[Blacky]

@BobMac57

It looks like your doing this based on the ambient light. You are best to use an ambient light sensor (LUX sensor).

Blacky

[BobMac57 (Bob)]

Thx for the quick response. I am using that config in one area of the house and not wanting this everywhere due to not wanting to spend money on additional sensors since the ambient light would differ extensively. There is a blueprint for ‘Close/open curtain (cover, blinds) based on sun and weather’ that I can adapt… would be nice though to have the option… thanks for your hard work!

[Kfuhr (Ken)]

not sure this is possible - trying to use Sun elevation to trigger the lights on, but want to use time (midnight) to turn them off?

[Blacky]

@Kfuhr

Welcome to the community.

Yes you can do this.

Enable the sun and you ‘Sun Elevation Falling’ settings to your liking. Just leave the ‘Sun Elevation Rising’ set to -4. Then enable time. Set your ‘On Time’ to 11:59pm and your ‘Off Time’ to 12am. Happy days.

Enjoy

Blacky

[Kfuhr (Ken)]

awesome - thank you!!!