I have some Wiz bulbs and they don’t support transition.
Why should I care? Why can’t HA just handle it in the background without me being any the wiser about it?
The hardware isn’t doing anything that software can’t.
It’s reducing the traffic on your network.
But you can do this yourself with a script that does the transition and a template light that replaces the light you currently have.
If I have phone apps that can make my lights flash and change colour to music in real time without issue, I’m not convinced that traffic is a concern.
And a script could be written, in fact I have done that, but HA should be able to just do it without needing to worry about it. It assists me, the less things I need to do the better.
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How do these apps communicate with the bulbs?
Bluetooth?
IP, then maybe others via specific hubs, at least in the case of Hue.
The app supports Hue, Nanoleaf, and LIFX which all support transitions in hardware (I’m unfamiliar with Avea’s capabilities).
There’s a script available that performs transitions in software for lighting technologies that don’t support it in hardware. There’s a practical upper limit to the number of lights that can be controlled simultaneously, with good results, and it depends on the communication speed and bandwidth.
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For hardware-based, the light only needs to receive one command and then manages its own transition. It’s very efficient even if dozens of lights are involved. Plus all lights start transitioning simultaneously.
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For software-based, the light needs to receive a stream of commands to perform the transition. This presents a traffic congestion problem when many lights are involved. There may also be a perceptible lag between the first and last light because they don’t receive the commands simultaneously.
Each lighting technology’s integration is responsible for implementing the core set of lighting commands (found in the Light integration). If a lighting technology doesn’t support transactions natively, then requests to perform a transition action are simply ignored.
In theory, the integration’s author could simulate transitions in software but, to my knowledge, no one has chosen to do it. My guess is because it’s beyond the normal responsibilities of an integration which only serves to expose the device’s native functionality (i.e. it’s a protocol translator).
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