Gradually turn on lights.

[gwp1]

General logic says Day is sunrise to sunset and Evening is sunset to sunrise noting that, at some point, you will manually trigger Night when retiring to sleep.

That's fine.

Except...

What if your daily wake times fall before sunrise? Do you apply the theory that your "day" starts when you wake or stick with day starting at sunrise?

The conundrum for me here is that my HVAC kicks into gear when mode = Day. If my wake time during parts of the year fall outside "official" Day then it's cold in the house when I'm crawling out of bed.

How are others architecting this?

[therealdb]

I use a variable called dark to represent the sun status. This is used to run lights and so on. And then I have house modes, and that represent the house status. If I’m moving from night to home and it’s still dark, for example, I’ll turn on lights.
Same is for heating, where thermostat are increased if we’re home, otherwise are staying at a given comfort temperature.
I also have party, house, green mode and mute flag, and all are used to drive lights, announcements and co accordingly. Those are flags, so I could even mix them (ie it’s dark, party is on - or it’s away, green mode is on, etc).
Some mode (ie mute) are intrinsically turned on/off based on other sensors, ie to avoid announcements when everyone except me is sleeping in the house.

[CatmanV2]

I've tried to measure darkness to control lights, but just end up using times before and after sunset

C

[gwp1]

@catmanv2 I have an Ambient weather station in my backyard. I determined what solar radiation level was "the one" when it became darkish in the house (during storms as well as end of day.)

Works a treat, it does.

[gwp1]

@therealdb said in Another philosophy question: Modes:

Those are flags

Define what you mean, here, please: "flags".

I like your overall concept of splitting out actual modes from other controls. Interest is piqued.

[CatmanV2]

@gwp1 said in Another philosophy question: Modes:

@catmanv2 I have an Ambient weather station in my backyard. I determined what solar radiation level was "the one" when it became darkish in the house (during storms as well as end of day.)

Works a treat, it does.

I've looked at some of these. I have plenty of light sensors already and I just can't get a good lumen level

Can you share your model?

C

[therealdb]

@gwp1 they’re just virtual switches. In software development we usually refer to them as flags. You could enable or disable a flag to influence the corresponding features. I’m usually combining many of them. I also have brightness sensors to control my blinds.

[gwp1]

@catmanv2 Hardware:Ambient Weather WS-2902

They have an API you can call to your station and pull in the data. I drive my HVAC with it, too.