The Adaptive Lighting custom component in Home Assistant can change the brightness and color temperature of the lights in your smart home throughout the day to mimic the natural light of the sun.This can help make lighting feel more comfortable throughout the day and may help support better sleep habits.By default, adaptive lighting in Home Assistant is linked to sunrise and sunset times, which can cause adaptive lighting to feel out of sync with your schedule.
Related 7 smart home upgrades you need in the bedroom Sleep better, wake up gently.Posts 2 By Tim Brookes Why sun-based timings feel wrong Your schedule may not match the sun's I get up at the same time every day during the week.My alarm goes off at the exact same time, and I get out of bed.
The same cannot be said of the sun.On average, the time of sunrise can shift by as much as three minutes day-to-day, and if you live near the poles, that can rise to more than five minutes.Over the course of a week, sunrise can move by more than a quarter of an hour.
If your Adaptive Lighting custom component is fixed to sunrise, there's no way it can match your schedule if your schedule remains fixed.While you're getting up at the same time each day, the sun's schedule is constantly changing.Your lights might brighten too late to wake you up on dark mornings.
At the other end of the day, in the summer, sunset may be so late that your lights are still bright and cool well into the evening.This won't help you wind down in time for bed.Philips Hue Smart White Bulbs Brand Philips Integrations Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Nest Philips Hue smart bulbs are pricey, but they’re worth every penny for their reliable connectivity, customizable light options, and ease of use.
Brightness 800 Lumen $55 at Amazon $55 at Philips Hue Expand Collapse A quick fix using offsets Make solar time match your schedule One quick way to fix this problem is to use offsets.The Adaptive Lighting custom component allows you to add an offset to sunrise and sunset to make these times match more closely with your own schedule.For example, if you want your lights to start to wake you at 7 AM, but sunrise happens at 6 AM, you can add an offset of 3600 seconds to your sunrise time, which makes the adaptive lighting behave as if sunrise is at 7 AM.
There's a separate offset for sunset, so you don't have to worry if you need a different offset for the evening; you can set both to match your schedule.There's an obvious flaw with this method.The offset adds or removes time from the actual time of sunset or sunrise, so the time of your offset sunset or sunrise will continue to change, just like the real sunrise and sunset times.
While this may not be a huge issue to begin with, after a few weeks, your offset times are likely to have moved a reasonable distance from the times that you actually want.If you're happy for your wake times to match the pattern of sunrise, if not exact times, then an offset can work well.You can make the adaptive lighting better match your schedule but still change over the course of the year, making it feel more natural and more closely aligned with the sun.
Fixing sunset and sunrise times Hardcode the sun For many of us, having the time that you get up or go to bed constantly shifting isn't really practical.Things such as jobs and school days tend to start at the same time every day, so it makes more sense to get up or go to bed at roughly the same time.My alarm always goes off at the same time on a weekday, so I want my adaptive lighting to stay on a stricter schedule.
In this case, instead of using an offset, you can hardcode the times for sunrise and sunset so that they stay fixed all year round.There are fields for sunrise_time and sunset_time in the Adaptive Lighting custom component you can set to fixed times, down to the second.Your lights will then always use these values as the times for sunrise and sunset, regardless of what the true sunrise and sunset times are.
If this feels too rigid, there are also min_sunrise_time and max_sunrise_time, and min_sunset_time and max_sunset_time fields.These let your adaptive lighting track the true sunrise and sunset times, but stop them from going beyond set values.This is an ideal middle ground, as your sunrise and sunset times will follow those of the sun only as long as they fit your schedule, but will become fixed if they start to stray too far from suitable times.
Match the schedule to your alarm Adapt your lights to your wake time I usually stay in bed a little later on weekends than I do in the week.There's no native way for the Adaptive Lighting custom component to handle this change in schedule.However, there's a clever way you can work around this problem.
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You can unsubscribe anytime.Using the Home Assistant Companion App, you can generate a sensor in Home Assistant that gives the time of your next alarm on Android phones.For an iPhone, you have to use a workaround such as running an iOS shortcut to get your next alarm and pass that time to a helper in Home Assistant.
Once you've got this information, you can use it in an automation to set the sunrise time for your adaptive lighting to match your alarm.This means that you can effectively make sunrise happen later on the weekend and earlier in the week.The best part is that if you take a day off and set your alarm a little later, your lighting will change to match.
This makes it even more accurate than using a weekday sensor, which can't tell when you're working and when you're not.Adapt your adaptive lighting Adaptive lighting is a simple but effective way to make your smart home feel more luxurious, and it can have other benefits, too.If your schedule is out of whack with the sun's, a few simple tweaks are all you need to get things in sync.
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