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Brightness Modes

Enhance your control over brightness transitions during sunrise and sunset with the brightness_mode option.

Available Modes

Adaptive Lighting supports three brightness modes:

Mode Description
default Standard behavior based on sun position
linear Linear ramp between min/max brightness
tanh Smooth S-curve using hyperbolic tangent

Detailed Explanation

Enhance your control over brightness transitions during sunrise and sunset with brightness_mode (click here to learn more 🧠).

With Adaptive Lighting, you can set a brightness_mode to specify how the brightness changes during sunrise and sunset. The brightness_mode can be set to "default" (as illustrated in other graphs above), "linear", or "tanh". If you choose to deviate from the "default" mode, you can adjust brightness_mode_time_dark and brightness_mode_time_light to further customize the lighting transitions.

When brightness_mode is set to "linear":

  • During sunset, the brightness begins to gradually decrease from max_brightness starting at time=sunset_time - brightness_mode_time_light, until it reaches min_brightness at time=sunset_time + brightness_mode_time_dark.
  • During sunrise, the brightness begins to gradually increase from min_brightness starting at time=sunrise_time - brightness_mode_time_dark, until it reaches max_brightness at time=sunrise_time + brightness_mode_time_light.

When brightness_mode is set to "tanh", it uses the smooth transition of a hyperbolic tangent function:

  • During sunset, the brightness starts to decrease from 95% of max_brightness starting at time=sunset_time - brightness_mode_time_light, until it reaches 5% of min_brightness at time=sunset_time + brightness_mode_time_dark.
  • During sunrise, the brightness starts to increase from 5% of min_brightness starting at time=sunrise_time - brightness_mode_time_dark, until it reaches 95% of max_brightness at time=sunrise_time + brightness_mode_time_light.

Notice the values of brightness_mode_time_light and brightness_mode_time_dark in the text box. image image image image

Check out the interactive webapp on https://basnijholt.github.io/adaptive-lighting/ to play with the parameters and see how the brightness changes!

Configuration Parameters

When using linear or tanh modes, you can fine-tune the transition with these parameters:

Parameter Default Description
brightness_mode_time_dark 900 (15 min) Duration to ramp brightness before/after sunrise/sunset
brightness_mode_time_light 3600 (1 hour) Duration to ramp brightness after/before sunrise/sunset

Example Configurations

Quick Transition (Linear)

adaptive_lighting:
  - name: "Quick transitions"
    lights:
      - light.living_room
    brightness_mode: linear
    brightness_mode_time_dark: 600    # 10 minutes
    brightness_mode_time_light: 1800  # 30 minutes

Smooth Transition (Tanh)

adaptive_lighting:
  - name: "Smooth transitions"
    lights:
      - light.bedroom
    brightness_mode: tanh
    brightness_mode_time_dark: 1200   # 20 minutes
    brightness_mode_time_light: 3600  # 1 hour

Graphs

These graphs show how brightness changes throughout the day based on calculated values:

These graphs were generated using the values calculated by the Adaptive Lighting sensor/switch(es).

☀ Sun Position

cl_percent|690x131

🌡 Color Temperature

cl_color_temp|690x129

🔆 Brightness

cl_brightness|690x130

While using transition_until_sleep: true

image

Interactive Simulator

The best way to understand brightness modes is to experiment with the interactive simulator:

Adjust the brightness_mode, brightness_mode_time_dark, and brightness_mode_time_light parameters to see how they affect the brightness curve in real-time.