Navigation

    Discussion Forum to share and further the development of home control and automation, independent of platforms.

    SmartHome Community

    • Register
    • Login
    • Search
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Unsolved
    (Last Updated: May 28, 2021)
    • HOW TO BALANCE LIGHT LEVELS AT A GIVEN SPOT

      LibraSun

      Having spent years as a professional portrait photographer, I came by many tricks of the trade involving readily available materials. One such trick is known as an "Oil Spot Photometer", which can help you equalize the brightness of two or more light sources.

      For simple setup instructions, visit:

      Oct 2, 2020 Oil Spot Photometer Oil Spot Photometer

      When an oil spot on a card is illuminated equally from both sides, it mysteriously disappears. This allows you to compare the brightness of the light sources on either side of the card.

      The implications for Home Automation, of course, is knowing the preset dim levels needed to balance a room's lighting, without guessing. Just bear in mind that dimmer levels and bulb output are rarely linear, so you may have to take photometer readings at various brightness levels to create a lookup table (for use in MSR, etc.).

      How-To
    • Car integration

      rafale77

      I have been wondering what to post here so bear with me as I am just having a bit of fun given the fact that I haven't had much to fix, improve on or optimize for my home automation setup, I just added a scene today to make a TTS announcement to remind me to plug in my car when its level is low. Not really a necessity but since I have not been commuting anymore for a few months, I caught myself a few times wishing I had recharged my car the day before.

      This is what it looks like on openLuup:

      Screen Shot 2021-03-08 at 3.08.01 PM.png

      I reused a SiteSensor device which was polling my HomeAssistant integration for its lock status (Yes I can get openLuup to lock and unlock my car remotely) and made Home Assistant send the battery status.

      To do this, I added a rest service command on home assistant:

      rest_command: bmw_bat: url: "http://openLuupIP:3480/data_request?id=variableset&DeviceNum=26&serviceId=urn:micasaverde-com:serviceId:HaDevice1&Variable=BatteryLevel&Value={{states('sensor.i3_charging_level_hv')}}"

      Note the device number which will need to be the device you want to send the battery status to and the home assistant entity which you will have to replace with the one you want. Then I created an automation on home assistant to trigger this service whenever the entity state changes.
      Screen Shot 2021-03-08 at 3.20.36 PM.png Screen Shot 2021-03-08 at 3.20.46 PM.png

      After that I just simply created a scene on openLuup to watch the battery level variable and do whatever I need to do with it.

      This is an example of syncing entities in home-assistant to openLuup. I have a number of other similar integrations...

      How-To
    For those who registered but didn't received the confirmation email, please send an email to support@smarthome.community with the email you used

    HOW TO BALANCE LIGHT LEVELS AT A GIVEN SPOT

    How-To
    1
    1
    78
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • LibraSun
      LibraSun last edited by LibraSun

      Having spent years as a professional portrait photographer, I came by many tricks of the trade involving readily available materials. One such trick is known as an "Oil Spot Photometer", which can help you equalize the brightness of two or more light sources.

      For simple setup instructions, visit:

      Oct 2, 2020

      Oil Spot Photometer

      Oil Spot Photometer

      When an oil spot on a card is illuminated equally from both sides, it mysteriously disappears. This allows you to compare the brightness of the light sources on either side of the card.

      The implications for Home Automation, of course, is knowing the preset dim levels needed to balance a room's lighting, without guessing. Just bear in mind that dimmer levels and bulb output are rarely linear, so you may have to take photometer readings at various brightness levels to create a lookup table (for use in MSR, etc.).

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
      • First post
        Last post

      Welcome. If you’d like to participate in the discussion, rather than just read, then you can join the forum. As a member, you can interact with others here to share your experience and ask the questions you need answered.

      Powered by NodeBB | Contributors
      Hosted freely by PointPub Media Communications Inc. | Contact us