First the layout. My garage is setup similar to this one, although mine is attached, has three light fixtures, and my driveway is 4 cars wide.
The wife wants me to replace the three basic on / off fixtures that we have (they’re getting rusty) and keep them all matching. If I’m going to do this I want to add a camera to the setup.
Functionally I’d like the lights to have or work like they have dual bright capability where they come on full bright at sunset then after a couple of hours they dim down unless they detect motion. If they detect motion then they come back to full bright for a period of time then dim back down again. They do this for a set period of hours, say 4, then they turn off completely unless they detect motion.
My current lights are already automated for on / off (but not dimming or motion) through the use of HA and a z-wave switch.
Where I’m getting stuck is that I can see at least three ways to do this but none of them are perfect.
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Replace my dumb carriage fixtures with new dumb fixtures then change the switch to a dimming version plus add a motion sensor and camera out front. Then setup HA for the functionality I want. The upside of doing it this way is that it’s very easy to get matching fixtures. The downside is that the motion sensor and camera will not be well integrated visually.
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Replace my dumb fixtures with ones that have dual bright built in. It’s easy to do, and I could even keep the HA Automation I have setup now, but again the camera setup is not going to integrate well visually. I’m also concerned that three motion sensors controlling three lights will cause trouble for the camera (or each other) because they will react to different things and turn themselves on and off independently.
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Replace my dumb fixtures with smarter ones. In the center position I’d use one that has an integrated motion sensor and camera. This Reolink seems like it would work pretty well. However RL doesn’t make any fixtures that match it, which means my center fixture would look different than the other two.
I may just have to deal with mismatched fixtures but does anyone have any suggestions? Am I missing an option?
I have something similar to this with my kitchen setup: I have two motion sensors on either end of the island. I have 2 “bright” light fixtures (hooked up via Zooz smart switches – these can be dimmable) and one middle light fixture (smart bulb with the switch left on because the switch is in an awkward spot that I never use anyway).
If motion is triggered and it’s between 5pm - 11pm, turn on all 3. If it’s between 11-4am, just use the dim light. And then after X minutes of inactivity, kill the lights. You could easily add in brightness levels and fades.
I used to have it set to factor in the lesser of sunset or a helper I created (“is it cloudy?”) that read the lux value of my weather station, but in the end I just liked the predictably of set times.
All that to say it would be no problem for you to add dimming based on motion + time of day. Grab the Zooz Dimmer and replace your switches with that and grab whatever regular dimmable light fixtures your wife likes. In your automation set your lights to go on at full brightness during sunset, dim at a specific time, then have it adjust brightness when motion is triggered, and then back to the dim setting after a delay.
You can also set a transition time, so lights on at sunset, transition from 100% to 30% over 3 hours, etc.
Another suggestion: with the HA app on your phone, use that to detect if you’re coming home and turn the lights on full for a few minutes as you pull in.
Thank you for the suggestions. I’ve decided that matching fixtures are what’s most important to me so I’ll be going with Option 1, basically what you just described.