So, I want the following to happen, does anyone have any advice the best way to make the conditions in HA?

If it’s bright outside, close the blind and turn on the light If it’s dark outside, close the blind and turn on the light If it’s anywhere in between, keep the blind open - if it’s ‘dark enough’ turn on the light as well.

I haven’t bought any lux sensors yet. I do believe it’s a lux sensor I need. Can I make this automation with 1 (pointing outside and using that value to control both the light and blind) or would I need to have 2? (I assume, one pointing outside controlling the blind, the other in the room controlling the light?

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    11 year ago

    the ‘actual daylight level’ is my main automation trigger. I used to do it using the azimuth but that didn’t cover rainy days or days with a clouded sky so I added the lux sensor of my outside motion sensor into this. until the battery went out during a holiday. I now have a template sensor named ‘reliable light level’. It uses the actual lux sensor as the main value, if that is not available I use the sun azimuth and do some calculations with the date and time to get a light level. after that it was a bit of trying things out to find the perfect levels for

    • turn on light in the staircase with motion
    • turn the staircase lights on completely
    • shut the blinds when it’s too sunny

    I do this by activating different mode booleans (dim, dark, light) so the automations are triggered by them turning on or off and Incan also check the state of these in the automation conditions.