Modes. How are people defining modes in CC

I’ll be around if you need help. Hit me up.

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I do the same, and have introduced additional modes for Cleaning (which makes all lights bright) and Emergency (which makes any coloured lights red) which I use if, for example, a leak sensor is triggered. Any flows which set Emergency mode also pass in a payload for why, which I will be sending to dashboards and mobile devices in the next few weeks.

As to setting the modes, Cleaning mode is another global variable linked to Google Home so it can be set easily. Emergency mode is also a global boolean. For the rest, I have a 5 minute timer that evaluates all the overrides and time and then flows through an RBE filter to a “Link out” node so that all my other mode-sensitive flows can be notified if the mode changes.

NR is awesome.

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Low red is after midnight lighting here. Bright enough to see where your going and what your doing, but dim enough and on a wavelength that won’t break sleep patterns if you wake up to use the restroom in the middle of the night.

Actually makes a huge difference in how fast you can fall back asleep

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I do that as well with my basic mode lighting in certain places. Actually I go a bit further and have defined the colours for highlight and night lighting for certain areas as colours controlled by Google Home so that the family can set their preferred colour for certain modes. These colours are stored as flow variables against the appropriate room.

Edit: To clarify, it works like this
“OK Google, set the night colour in Richard’s room to dark green”

Night colour is actually a lighting device to Google so I will probably use this more in future.

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I feel like all meaningful conversation on a topic should have to stop while I am asleep or working… With the former being a much shorter timeframe… would that be something that could be setup in the Community…? :wink:

But seriously… The conversation has probably moved on somewhat, but for my input… I have started to sync my modes from HE via Home Assistant, using the Hubitat HAC plugin…, which makes them available in Node RED.

I don’t intend to change things too much from what I had setup… well forever if I think about it… Day, Night, Away and more recently Evening, predominantly driving lighting, but a couple of other automations…

I’d like to build in room based “modes”, but that may be something I tackle once my setup “settles” after the Core beta. I’m happy to take the toe-dipping / cautious approach…

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That’s a LOOOOOOOOT of data to keep track of and get set up. Perhaps a thought would be to instead of per room mode, have different reactions to activities based on mode.

For example: my kitchen.
quiet mode - only sink like and indirect lighting turns on at a very dimmed level as one person is in bed. So not to disturb them with lights blaring into the bedroom.

Home - if lux is below a certain level, the indirect lighting comes on and possibly the can lighting if we’re moving around for more than 10 minutes

away - only indirect lighting turns on and brightens with motion dims when quiet. lux must be below a certain level and will automatically be on between sunset and sunrise.

Night - all lights off. We’re both in bed. If one of us put our feet on the floor, mode changes to quiet and lights react as such.

It feels like the data for me is easier to manage when I think overall mode and then program the rooms around that. .Then you only need to worry about 4-5 modes and how they react when mode meets certain criteria. You can have the tv being on a trigger for a darker room to watch a movie, etc.
Just some thoughts on this. And I’m a bit miffed that you responded to this when I was sleeping.
Just sayin’

:grin:

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You’re lucky I woke up to respond… :wink: Probably should wait til I can properly absorb what you have included…

Talk to you tomorrow… :grinning:… (Today)

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I never heard of that, but makes sense! What kind of lights are you using to achieve that?

I got a bunch of cheap (2 for $10) merkury RGBW bulbs from walmart when they first came out. It’s kinda funny but those bulbs and a google mini are what got me started down the automation path.

Those bulbs and my transitioning them to Tasmota for local control on HE is what led to Markus and I talking and becoming friends.

Back to the initial question though, you could use ANY smart bulb that also supports colors to create an automation like this.

Honestly this is probably the most simplistic of all my lighting related automations. It consists of a time range node that switched which command path NR takes when calling a light between the red setting, and whatever that room was last set to manually/normal automation settings

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Ok, what settings are low red? Hex would be preferred.

assuming rgb standard layout id say something along the lines of #20000000 would do.

It’s basically set the lights to red at a brightness level that allows you to still see where you are going at night, without being so bright it bothers your eyes.

I use red because of studies showing it is the wavelength that least interferes with sleep patterns, and that your able to fall asleep quicker from a midnight restroom run than any other color of light.

I’d imagine any color at a lower intensity would be better than normal lighting, but the studies say go with red so I did. :slight_smile:

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Be honest with yourself. You use red because it makes you feel like you are on a submarine on alert in a Hollywood movie.

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One of my favorite automations I saw online and still have plans to implement fully is telling Alexa goodnight and then the red-alert sound from star trek goes on and the RGB lights in the room flash red to the alarm.

I have a version of this without the lighting and after the reed-alert ends the shield’s up sound plays :nerd_face: arming the house and locking all doors.

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I have one for my wife- when she gets PO’d living under gray northern skies, she can say, “Alexa it’s too dark in here.” The scene associated with that phrase hits 20 lights in the family room kitchen, and dining room. It’s like someone shining a spotlight in your face.

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It was a long day :wink:

To answer / respond to your questions around the complexity I may introduce with Room-based modes… (why do I feel like go into ultra-formal speak when I do these kind of posts… :slight_smile: )

To an extent you are probably right… It does add extra info and complexity to my automations… I would only look to do this by exception, e.g. cater for room-specific mode where it needs to deviate from the “whole-of-house” mode setting. The kind of situations I want to cater for are…

The typical situation of lighting and other rules In each room responding to the house mode, so night mode for the house produces a “Night” scene in room X. Nothing too out there so far…

Alongside that, any intricate logic to determine the whole-house mode can come into play, with the lighting / rules for each room still only needing to reference whatever the outcome of the logic produces. Still nothing complicated from a rules perspective in referencing a single “whole-house” mode.

My main use case is, admittedly one I don’t need to manage on a regular basis, apart from my recent “man-flu” :-). My house may be in “Day” mode with lights across the house set to a brighter-white setting. But I want some time to rest in the main bedroom where downlights don’t turn-on, rather, lamps and other ambient lighting turn on instead. But if I get up and go into the bathroom or kitchen, I would like to whole-of-house mode to take effect.

On a slightly different note, in my Study I would like to manage the motion-based triggering of the lighting based on a setting to indicate I am “working-from-home”. So not so much a lighting level change to the norm, but still somewhat a mode change to the logic applied only in that room.

So for me the change really only affects two rooms that I can think of, while 2nd, 3rd bedrooms, living and kitchen areas along with the Garage and Entrance can all operate off the mode for the house, not needing any special logic or additional data kept.

Each to their own, you have brought together a very versatile mix of tools and options for us to choose from, with no right or wrong answers, just more commonly adopted solutions :wink:

I’ll admit… I am considering holding back my lighting setup for now. That’s not to say what is on offer is not fit for purpose, just that I would like to wait and compare the rules engine offered in Core before setting up my rules on Node RED. Certainly happy to play with NR for the smaller and simpler automations I have, to help me learn about the various options… But that’s a topic for another… topic.

EDIT - I do realise I may be touch-and-go with whether you are asleep… :slight_smile: Hopefully you will get this soon enough… Something to mull over at work…

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This was a winner in the SOAF. My wife was surprised that “battlestation lighting” was quite a bit less jarring last night.

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I chose Orange, but have only one user to accommodate… :wink:

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We are having two states of our lighting, or three when including the night lighting.

The normal is activated by sunset as I’m guessing all of us do, the softer will be by time and actually serves two purposes. First is to reduce the amount of blue hues as it should be more relaxing in comparison. The color temperature and brightness is going more towards the warmer and lower and all RGB:s will be more towards orange.

The second purpose is to be as a kind of gentle time-go-to-bed announcement, because both me and the wife otherwise tends so stay up far to long, especially when having a workday the day after. :wink:

The night light will be plain red and is motion controlled, pretty necessary to prevent us from stepping on the cat that is having a habit to be sleeping in the most unexpected places!! :smile:

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