"Fade to" vs "Set level"


#1

When I started setting up pistons, I plucked for the “Fade to” action a lot, and found the results to be variable based on the kind of light I was controlling. For Hue lights, they seem to rapidly cycle through bright, very dim, brighter, and then bright again, while a Qubino dimmer unit turns on bright and then dims, or the other way around, unpredictably.

I then discovered “Set level” which seems more reliable but doesn’t seem to do much in the way of smooth dimming - the lights change level pretty instantly.

I also noticed that with “Fade level” the logs show webcore sending multiple commands to the lights over a short period with different levels. This seems like a bit of a hack, for lights that don’t accept 'fade to x over y seconds" type commands? And my lights seem to receive those commands out of order, maybe.

So I guess my questions are:

  • Is there a recommended set of devices that work well with “fade to” (especially in-wall dimmers)?
  • Do people generally use this command or is ‘set level’ more common?
  • Any other tips on getting lots of dimmers across the house to dim in sync?

#2

It’s trial and error for now… the longer the fade duration the smoother the transition will be.

I can’t think of any devices that can receive fade to x in y seconds commands directly, the hack of sending multiple commands is the best workaround we have.

WebCoRE tries to make as many steps as possible, dividing % difference by time, but limits this to 1 command every 3 seconds, so very short fade durations result in large steps which can look jerky.