Fairly a few years in the past I got here across Lighten Up! Coupled with a halogen bulb (that’d begin out very yellow at lowest brightness) I had a beautiful sunrise-like alarm clock and it was a lot, much nicer than a beeping alarm. The LCD shows within the Lighten Up! I couldn’t change the programming, which was a problem as the clocks in them drifted by a pair minutes monthly. With a mixture of COVID-19 distant work eliminating the necessity for an alarm clock and the gadgets dying, within the trash they went. I’ve been attempting to use an alarm to stay on a extra regular sleep schedule and whereas a bunch of different wake-up lights are available, they're dedicated models which might be mainly alarm clocks with inbuilt lights. I really appreciated the elegance of the Lighten Up! I couldn’t find anything else prefer it. For a while I thought about growing my own hardware version that’d additionally work with LED bulbs, but never obtained round to it.

This winter I’ve been experimenting with Residence Assistant (HA), and it turns out that with a couple low-cost Zigbee components (bulb and pushbutton from IKEA) it allows for an exquisite alternative/upgrade sunrise alarm idea. A subsequent-technology Lighten Up! With all the pieces put together the lamp subsequent to my bed will now slowly come up to brightness quarter-hour earlier than the wake-up alarm on my phone, reaching ultimate as the conventional alarm triggers. If I change the alarm time on my telephone, or shut it off, the light-up alarm in HA will comply with go well with. Additionally, a physical button on the nightstand turns off the light off while replicating a sunrise alarm, or in any other case toggles the sunshine on and off. Even higher, if I’m not residence or if the alarm is set for aside from between 3:00 AM and 9:00 AM (times throughout which I’d probably be in bed and EcoLight desirous to get up) the light won’t activate. This enables me to use alarms throughout the traditional day for other things without activating with the sunshine, or while touring without waking Kristen.

Between this and the gently-rising volume (and vibration) alarm built into the Android clock which triggers at the top of the sunrise cycle it’s a very nice, gradual wake-up system. And, EcoLight all of this happens without any cloud companies or ongoing subscriptions. My HA instance is native