![]() HomeKit News is not in any way afflilated or endorsed by Apple Inc. However, if you don’t have an Ikea gateway yet, it may be a good idea to hold off, as the company will be releasing a brand new gateway soon, that will not only have Zigbee (which is what the drivers use), but it’ll act as a Thread border router, and be ready for Matter when that arrives soon. If you already have a Trådfri gateway – or even a spare Trådfri driver for that matter – then I’d suggest these are definitely a better option to standard light strips, not only for the fact they have a built-in diffuser but also because they’re focused on white light only, as who really needs 16 million colour options for their wardrobe? Besides that, this wouldn’t allow me the opportunity to set my brightness level automations based on the time of day, so it was a foregone conclusion in some ways. I did hope the built-in sensor would be a great backup in the event my automations with external sensors didn’t fire off, but for whatever reason, I found the response to be hit and miss, so I decided not to waste any time, and just forego using this feature at all. It did make a big difference that you’re offered different ways in which to mount these, which I think is a big plus. Fitting was very easy and despite having to drill a hole or two to get the strip and cable near enough to my Trådfri driver, the installation itself was really easy. Having already used a couple of Ikea lights, I knew what to expect, and what I wouldn’t get, so in many ways, there was no excitement other than getting the strip fitted. This shortcut automation is set for both sensors, basically looking at the state of the opposite sensor to itself, so it knows what to do based on the state of the opposite sensor. If the other sensor is in the ‘closed’ state, it means that the other door is already closed, and therefore when the initial sensor has been set to closed, the light can turn off, as both sensors are now in the closed state. If it is, then set the light to ‘on’ as it means that the door is open and someone still needs the light on. That’s the logic for the shortcut, but for the sensor in the automation above it detects that the sensor has entered the ‘closed’ state, then checks to see if the other sensor is in the ‘open’ state. So, essentially, the automation works like this You can create a ‘condition’ in an automation in apps like ‘Eve for HomeKit’, but in this case I decided to keep it all within the Home app using the ‘convert to shortcut’ option. With a standard automation, you would end up having the strip turn off, once it detects the closed automation from one of the sensors, which isn’t what you want if you still have the other door open. The reason for this is that at some point, you may open one of the wardrobe doors, then open the other, but close the first one. Even though the strip has a maximum of 570lm, at night that can be too bright for many.Īs you can see, here, both contact sensors are set up in HomeKit, and both have the basic ‘on’ automations previously mentioned, but in addition, each has an automation for when the wardrobe closes, that is converted to a Shortcut automation (not to be confused with a Siri Shortcut). I set these levels so that the light isn’t too blinding if someone happens to need to access the wardrobe in the middle of the night. between 0630~0800 – set brightness to 60% when the sensors are triggered.between 2330~0630 – set brightness to 30% when the sensors are triggered.between 0800~2330 – set brightness to 100% when the sensors are triggered.Essentially these are used in conjunction with a couple of contact sensors – which I’ll go into in a bit – but I’ve created separate automations to set the strip to different brightness levels depending on the time of day ![]() This being the case, you get the one simple slider control to control these levels, and as it’s only capable of warm white, you get no colour temperature options.Īs you can see in the third screenshot, I have a series of automations set up. This does have the benefit that all lights connected to a driver act as one, so there are no issues with getting them to turn on or off in sync, or ensuring the same brightness levels. In my case, I only have the one Skydrag strip anyway, so that’s ok, but it’s important to note that if you have two strips, they’ll be treated as one – either in the Home app or Ikea’s own Home Smart app. Regardless of how many lights are attached to a Trådfri driver, you only get one tile per driver in the Home app.
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