Hi Jacob,

That would also work of course; if you use that sensor you can skip the “get day of week” nodes. I wasn’t aware of that sensor. Great suggestion!

Regards, Wouter

Hi Anthony,

This error occurs when the light is off. Home Assistant does not return the brightness for a light that is not on, the value will be None. Check if the template works with a light that’s already on :)

Regards, Wouter

Hi Jens,

Thanks for the comment. Based on your comment, I’m not sure yet what is going wrong. Is the output of the function node correct? Maybe you can add a debug node there and see if the output matches what it should be. msg.payload.ontime should be somthing like 08:00 (no seconds). You can also test setting a custom msg.payload first, just to see if the schedex node updates correctly. Btw, what version of schedex do you have?

Regards, Wouter

Hi Martijn,

Nice to hear that the post helped!

What should I add if I also want to specify the color temperature here (it should go on with color temperature 1000

In essence you can set any attribute that is valid for the Light interface (see https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/light/). In your case, you can set color_temp to the value you want. Just add it to payload/data just like the brightness.

What does the 250 at the start mean? Does it have a specific function? What do I need to add/change to also reduce color temperature here? So I would to reduce it from 1000 to 100 within the set number of loops

I take the minimum of (250, the computed value); this is just a safety check that the value will always be at most 250. For example: [1, 2] | min would give 1.

If you want to do the same for color temperature, if would probably do something like this: 1) get the state of the light with all attributes, and then 2) use a function node to write a new payload in which you compute the color temp and brightness in a single node. With the function node you can pick certain attributes and then convert them to a new payload. There are probably more ways to do this; this is one I could think of without further testing :)

Good luck!

Thanks for your reply!

As far as I understood I can not put both brightness and color_temp in one data field (it gives an API error if I try), so I used two call service nodes after each other to turn my lamp on with brightness low (40) and color temp warm (1000). That part works, my bulb goes on with the correct settings.

After that I start my loop. I’ve used your setup, and added an extra template with the following text: {{ [1000, state_attr(’light.03010850600194d4930b’, ‘color_temp’) - 90] | min }} I’ve added a debug node after it, to check what happens, and it doesn’t return the correct value. For some reason it returns the same value as the brightness template.

When I disable the brightness template, and the set brightness, so only keeping the color_temp nodes, it does work.

So how do I make sure these templates don’t interfere with each other.

My solution is a bit different. I would propose to use a function node to build a new data object and pass that to a node that turns on the light. Note: your light must support receiving both brightness and color temp at the same time.

The flow would be something like:

1. current_state node to get brightness and color temp
2. function node (see below)
3. call_service node to turn on the light

Then your function node can be:

return {
    payload: {
        data: {
            "brightness": msg.data.attributes.brightness + 10, // Compute it here
            "color_temp": msg.data.attributes.color_temp - 10, // Compute it here
        }
    }
};

Here is a flow you can start with (tested with a Hue bulb):

[{"id":"cd30ffc0.296fc","type":"api-current-state","z":"c0765167.cd327","name":"","version":1,"outputs":1,"halt_if":"","halt_if_type":"str","halt_if_compare":"is","override_topic":false,"entity_id":"light.hue_spot_1","state_type":"str","state_location":"payload","override_payload":"msg","entity_location":"data","override_data":"msg","blockInputOverrides":false,"x":230,"y":280,"wires":[["2d9c3721.d25148"]]},{"id":"899c5b7a.0226c8","type":"inject","z":"c0765167.cd327","name":"","topic":"","payload":"","payloadType":"date","repeat":"","crontab":"","once":false,"onceDelay":0.1,"x":140,"y":220,"wires":[["cd30ffc0.296fc"]]},{"id":"2d9c3721.d25148","type":"function","z":"c0765167.cd327","name":"","func":"return {\n    payload: {\n        data: {\n            \"brightness\": msg.data.attributes.brightness + 10, // Compute it here\n            \"color_temp\": msg.data.attributes.color_temp - 10, // Compute it here\n        }\n    }\n};","outputs":1,"noerr":0,"x":430,"y":280,"wires":[["a261b972.905a48","40ba0325.61110c"]]},{"id":"a261b972.905a48","type":"debug","z":"c0765167.cd327","name":"","active":true,"tosidebar":true,"console":false,"tostatus":false,"complete":"false","x":590,"y":280,"wires":[]},{"id":"40ba0325.61110c","type":"api-call-service","z":"c0765167.cd327","name":"","version":1,"service_domain":"light","service":"turn_on","entityId":"light.hue_spot_1","data":"","dataType":"json","mergecontext":"","output_location":"","output_location_type":"none","mustacheAltTags":false,"x":610,"y":320,"wires":[[]]}]

Hi Wouter,

Thanks a lot! This is way more elegant than I had. I implemented this as well, and it works fine.

However, I tried to implement the min and max (with [code][1, 2] | min[/code] as well, but this did not work.

I replaced the input you had there with: [code] return { payload: { data: { “brightness”: [255, msg.data.attributes.brightness + 10] | min, // Compute it here “color_temp”: [100, msg.data.attributes.color_temp - 40] | max, // Compute it here } } }; [/code]

This resulted in an error [code]“ReferenceError: min is not defined (line 4, col 72)”[/code], is there someway I can implement this?

Hi Martijn, great that it worked! Note that everything in the function node has to be valid Javascript. You cannot use the template syntax in those nodes. If you want to take the minimum, use Math.min() like so:

"brightness": Math.min(msg.data.attributes.brightness + 10, 255),

Hallo Wouter,

First of all, great blogpost! I have it setup a bit different and took a part of your flow. My setup is :

• take input data from the home assistant app (next_alarm)
• Add a negative offset (so it triggers 15min before my alarm goes off)
• Start at brightness 1 and color_temp 454
• Loop this with brightness +10 and color_temp -10

This way I can set an alarm on my phone (any alarm app) and the flow triggers accordingly

Everything works but I wanted to know how I could set a minimum value for both brightness and color_temp. So the function doesn’t output any values below this minimum.
I don’t know if this is necessary for my Ikea lights. When the output is below the minimum accepted by the light (color_temp: 250-454), the light just sets the min value. So if it outputs ex. 150, the light uses 250.

“color_temp”: Math.min(msg.data.attributes.color_temp - 10, 255),

This results in the start value of 250, instead of the minimum outputted value.

Hi Mehmet, nice additions! Fetching the time from HA seems like a sensible way to go.

If I understand you correctly, you want to end with a minimum value, right? Because for color temp you need to have a different range. One way to limit the range would be to do something like (in pseudo code):

color_temp = max(40, min(color_temp - 10, 255))

This will slowly decrease the color temp from 255 to 40. If at start the color temp is > 255, it will set it to 255. If at some time the new color temp drops down 40, it will use 40 instead.

I hope that answers your question!

Hi Wouter,

Is does! Thnx so much, this was indeed what I was looking for.

Hi Marcus,

Thanks for the compliments! I noticed that the template only works if the light is already on. If the light is not on, the brightness is None. That’s something I could address in a new version. Maybe that’s what is causing your problems?

Regards, Wouter

Hi Danwill,

The idea is to increment the brightness with ‘+9’ every step. However, you don’t want to exceed a value of 250 so that’s what the ‘min’ does. I agree the syntax is a bit difficult to grasp but you can see it like this:

min(250, brightness + 9)

This makes sure the brightness is always within 0 and 250.

Hello wouter,

I found a simple soloution for me after the loop (second last node)

I put in the call service node with my light domain light service turn_on data: {“brightness_step”:5}

this way the loop sets every time steps of5% and you got what you want.

Hi Tom, that’s a great suggestion! I don’t think that was supported yet when I wrote this blog post, but it makes it a lot easier :)

Regards, Wouter

Hi Sam, Are you using the same code as I? The error is caused by HA expecting an int but receiving a string from your flow. One thing you could try is the suggestion made by Tom in a few comments above yours:

I found a simple solution for me after the loop (second last node). I put in the call service node with my light domain light service turn_on data: {“brightness_step”:5}. This way the loop sets every time steps of5% and you got what you want.

You can see the documentation for that here: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/light/

I haven’t had time yet to create a new version based on this, but it should make it a bit easier. So instead of calculating the difference in brightness yourself, you just send that step data to HA and then HA will increase the light automatically.

Hope that helps!

Hi Ruud, thanks :) Wat ik begrijp is dat je een tijd wilt opgeven in HA (of iets) en dan een half uur voor die tijd het wilt starten. Net zoals met een wake-up wekker.

Deze post is al weer van even geleden dus het zijn vooral suggesties:

1. Je zou kunnen kijken naar de offsets van de schedex node (https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-red-contrib-schedex). Je kunt daar bijv 30 minuten voor zonsopgang doen, dus waarom niet ook 30 minuten voor de start tijd?
2. Alternatief zou je het ook nog in HA kunnen doen, door daar met een template een nieuwe tijd te berekenen. Dat is vooral handig als je die variable ook nog in andere automationsw ilt gebruiken.
3. Laatste optie is nog dat je in de parse time node een offset inbouwt van 30 minuten.

Hopelijk helpt dat!