Programmatically fade on / fade off?

[lupinglade]

How do I properly programmatically fade on / off a UPB dimmer?

The problem I am having is that sometimes it seems a dimmer will turn on or off instantly w/o a fading effect.

Also, is there a way to make a line such as "WHEN Front Door NOT READY THEN TURN ON Entry Light FOR 5 MINUTES" do a fade for on and off?

It seems that using "SET LIGHTING LEVEL Front Light TO 50% FOR 5 MINUTES" will do a fade on, but wont do a fade for the off.

I guess the main question is: Is there a way/proper procedure to ensure a soft fade is always used?

 

[HAI_fjh]

The way I do it is with a Scene. If you do a "Foyer Light ON" it snaps on, but if you do "Foyer Light SCENE A" it fades up. I have redefined the Foyer scenes so that A = 100%, B=66%, C=33%, D=0% (the defaults were 80, 60, 40 ,20).

 

[lupinglade]

so you'd have to activate SCENE D to get it to turn off again? What if its only for 5 minutes, there seems to be no real simple way of making it dim once the 5 minutes are up... :/

 

[Steve]

That's a function of how HLC does it, correct? Because raw UPB and UpStart you program the switch with default fade rates and stuff and if you issue it on/off from any system it will simply go at those defaults unless overridden.

 

[HAI_fjh]

My setup is slightly different. I want the light to come on when I open the door in case I have my hands full. When I finish carrying stuff in, if it takes 1 minute or 10 minutes, and go back to lock the door, I just manually turn the lights off, or not.

You can easily implement a timer using a flag.

See if this works for you:

fFoyerLights is the flag...

WHEN Front Door NOT READY
AND IF DARK
THEN fFoyerLights ON FOR 5 MINUTES

WHEN fFoyerLights ON
THEN Foyer SCENE A

WHEN fFoyerLights off
THEN Foyer SCENE D

 

[lupinglade]

That is a good trick with the flag, but the problem is that I'd need to define a flag for any light I want to control and have a nice fade to. Would be a lot better if there was a command to fade on / fade off via programming :/

 

[HAI_fjh]

The flag was only used for timing...

Here's how the commands work programmatically:

- ON: snap on
- OFF: snap off
- Level 100: fade up to 100% (aka ON)
- Level 0: fade down to 0% (aka OFF)
- Level 100 for 5 minutes: Fade on then 5 minutes later snap off

Does this help?

 

[lupinglade]

- Level 100 for 5 minutes: Fade on then 5 minutes later snap off

What I'm saying is that it would be nice to have that line fade down to 0%, or at least to have an option for that, say:

LEVEL 100 FOR 5 MINUTES THEN LEVEL 0 (and it would fade back to 0)


I find it shocking that there is no simple way to make it fade on and fade off programatically.