Best way to repeatedly dim and brighten Hue bulb

Posted on
Thu Jan 14, 2016 6:12 pm
greenhornet offline
Posts: 61
Joined: Jan 22, 2011

Best way to repeatedly dim and brighten Hue bulb

I would like to brighten and then dim a Hue bulb continuously for about 10-15 seconds. This is different than the on / off flashing alert. What's the best way to accomplish this?

Posted on
Mon Jan 18, 2016 3:14 pm
jltnol offline
Posts: 989
Joined: Oct 15, 2013

Re: Best way to repeatedly dim and brighten Hue bulb

Hmmmmm

I'm thinking because of the latency this is going to be really hard... but to be clear.... you want the dim up/dim down cycle to be pretty short... a second or two, and then repeated for 15 seconds...

Or do you want the dim up cycle to be 15 seconds, and the dim down cycle to be the same, and have this cycle repeat for a period of time?

Posted on
Tue Jan 19, 2016 8:10 am
greenhornet offline
Posts: 61
Joined: Jan 22, 2011

Re: Best way to repeatedly dim and brighten Hue bulb

you want the dim up/dim down cycle to be pretty short... a second or two, and then repeated for 15 seconds...


This is correct.

Posted on
Sun Jan 31, 2016 11:11 pm
jltnol offline
Posts: 989
Joined: Oct 15, 2013

Re: Best way to repeatedly dim and brighten Hue bulb

Well I tried a few things but nothing works like I suspect you want it to. The wireless latency between the Hue Hub and the lamps is not your friend.

I built an Action Group based on "Hue Set Brightness"

Step 1 Delay By 00:00 Brighten Lamp to 100% over 01 Second
Step 2 Delay By 00:02 Brighten Lamp to 0% over 01 Second
Step 3 Delay By 00:04 Brighten Lamp to 100% over 01 Second
Step 4 Delay By 00:06 Brighten Lamp to 0% over 01 Second
Step 5 Delay By 00:08 Brighten Lamp to 100% over 01 Second
Step 6 Delay By 00:10 Brighten Lamp to 0% over 01 Second


You can build as many steps as you like but while Indigo can send this info in a timely manner to the Hue Hub, the hub can't sent it out to the bulbs "timely'... some steps get missed in the process, meaning the cycles aren't very even. Some fade out cycles are missed, so the light stays on longer... and some fade up cycles are missed, meaning the lamp stays off longer.

Now, you'd have better luck with longer fade up/fade down times.... maybe 4 seconds, and increasing the delay of each step, but you are only going to get 2, maybe 3 cycles in 15 seconds...Again, I think the latency in the communication to the light is the bottle neck here.

And of course, the other problem is that the Hue Bulbs don't/can't fade all the way out. They can smoothly fade down to maybe 10% brightness, and the next step is 0% brightness, so its almost impossible to get them to do what you want anyway.

You'd have better luck with an Insteon Dimmer Module, and an incandescent lamp. You can set up 2 scenes...one to fade up to 100% brightness over half a second... and one scene to fade down to 0% brightness over half a second, then just add them to an Action Group adding the appropriate delays to each step. And lastly, no doubt there is a better way to do this via Python scripting... but I'd be hard pressed to write it out and have it work.

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