Vent: why is 70% of "advanced" smart lighting features marketed to me absolutely useless?
What I want in a smart lighting app:
Default Daycycle / Default Daylight&Nightlight
– ability to set cycling through light temperature&brightness over the clock as lighting's default state, regardless of lights being on or off. Let's say, as an example: Default Daylight with set temperature, brightness, start-end hours (let's say, 4000K, 100%, 6:00, 19:00). Default Nightlight with set temperature, brightness, non-overlapping start-end hours (let's say, 2500K, 50%, 23:00, 5:00). Between it automatically progresses between. Therefore: if I turn on the light at 23:12, it's automatically default Nightlight. If I turn on the light at 21:30, exactly midway between Daylight end and Nightlight start, it'll be automatically 3250K at 75% and automatically progressing towards Nightlight.
Dawn Simulation / Wake Up
– with start/end hours or duration+end hour; target brightness&temperature optional, can take set Daylight value or can be hard coded, as long as it's really bright daylight with explicitly shown numbers. When active, it turns light on at low value and increases gradually.
Work&Focus override hot button
– settings: brightness, temp, override duration. Optionally: phaseout duration. Necessarily: available both through app and physical controller (when I want to focus on work, the last thing I need is to take phone to open app and risk distraction). When used, changes light to work setting for a set time (I'm thinking 4500K for 30 minutes), then gradually returns to default value of Daycycle over the course of few minutes.
Cozy&Relax override hot button
– settings: brightness, temp, others. Necessarily available through both app and physical controller.
Variant1, Set Duration: has override duration setting and optionally a phaseout duration setting, then gradually phases out to Default. In some cases it might cause the light to be less cozy than Default instead of more cozy.
Variant2, More Cozy Only: no override duration, lasts until current value of Default is equal to Cozy, then continues with Default.
Variant3: both available as boolean. If both are active then first ending condition to be fulfilled wins. If both are inactive you're informed you have to activate one for button to work.
Custom override
– settings: brightness, temp, override duration, phaseout duration. To be set to whatever's needed every time it's used.
Dusk Simulator
– settings: duration. Necessarily available through both app and physical controller. Automatically takes the current light value as a starting point, then over set duration gradually reduces brightness&temp to minimum values, then turns lights off. Can be used after Cozy Override or Custom Override.
Back To Default hot button
– exactly what it says.
Turn On / Turn Off physical button
– just to have it explicitly mentioned.
———
Meanwhile, options I DO NOT want, but am offered nonetheless:
"desert vibe" setting
"forest vibe" setting
whole room lighting copying current colors from movie or video game
lights blinking in synchronization with bass line
for lighting app to listen to phone's microphone in order to filter it out so it doesn't accidentally take love song "oh Alexa turn down the lights" as a valid order (I mean. Not that I want the app to take orders from songs. But this is very much NOT a valid marketing point. It gives "our premium chocolate! no longer contains teeth!". If this is not a standard, how the hell do you have any business when you sell, apparently, an unsafe buggy shit)
disco ball option
necessity to manually consciously change light temperature everytime in order to "set the mood"
And to think that the exact same brands produce light alarm clocks / dawn&dusk simulators. They know how to do that! But the option to use smart lighting as an awesomest dawn&dusk simulator ever is mysteriously absent from their marketing.
Guess what? The best part of influencing the mood with light is an option to be influenced into healthier circadian rhythm without having to think about it! If I was able to always remember to change light to evening, I wouldn't need smart lighting, I'd be just manually switching off big ceiling lamp and switching on a small one! Y'all already sold me a light alarm clock! You know how to make it! I want the same but bigger and better! I just want a giant dawn/dusk simulator to patch up my Non24h failure of a circadian rhythm!
...if anyone knows of an existing smart lighting app that can do at least some things that I want, please tell me. I really don't want to register as Phillips Hue developer just to write the most goddamn obvious use case for their lighting... and I don't really want to download all smart lighting apps in existence one by one to check whether they have some non-advertised useful features... I know it's more of a Reddit question. But I have hope in tumblr and its population of nonstandard circadian rhythm disorders. Or the tumblr You Ranted About Lack Of X And Suddenly X Is Everywhere Since Always magic. Please tell me it exists already, I beg you
