Where is Circadian rhythm? | Voters

Where is Circadian rhythm?

planned

Simon Waldron

Most useful function on V1 and now bit appears to have been removed, plus I agree V2 is not as easy to use. I thought software upgrades were supposed to improve customer service not destroy it!

April 11, 2022

Mark Wahlert

I'd like to raise one problem I've experienced over the years with rhythms, and two feature requests.
Problem - occasionally when bulbs are turned off via a wall switch, they do not properly sync to the defined rhythm when they are turned back on.
Feature Requests
1) I would LOVE to be able to assign rhythms on a per bulb or per group basis, not only per room.  For example, if I have some fixed ceiling lights in a room and a table lamp, sometimes I want them on different rhythms.  Obviously I can accomplish this now in the v1 app by splitting the fixtures into "different" rooms but that hampers the organization.
This could also conceptually allow "rhythm sharing", whereby I create a rhythm and it can be used by numerous rooms, lights, or groups. (Right now w/ the v1 app I must manually duplicate rhythms in several rooms.)
2) Operating under the assumption that rhythms are not stored locally in the bulb firmware, but rather dependent on connectivity to WiZ servers (hence the sync delay when bulbs are turned on via a wall switch), I would like to see a configurable option for light groups.  Let's call it "wait for group sync".  The idea is that when a group of lights is turned on via a wall switch, we wait for all of the bulbs in that fixture to connect to the network before dispatching their target state.   
Right now, if I have a group of lights configured to follow a rhythm, when I turn the fixture on via the wall switch the bulbs will sync to the rhythm individually as they "come online".  It would be nice for them to do it in unison.

Antonin Carre

Mark Wahlert: lots of insights, again :)  Thanks!
1- fully understood, and yes we can definitely see uses cases in which you'd like your main lighting to follow a given rhythm while your mood lights do something else, or no rhythm at all. We plan a much deeper revamp the automation functional block towards the end of the year, which should help with this. In the meantime, rhythms will likely release with the same scope as V1, but again this should be temporary :) 
2- Answering about the problem you report here as well. Rhythms are stored inside the lights, so that they can keep running smoothly even if the internet goes down at some point (same goes for the schedules). However, if you turn off the power, you also reset the internal clock. When you power on your light again, it has no idea what time or day it is until it is able to reconnect to the router, then to the internet to get the time.
This explains the delay when turning on with the switch: lights need the time first before they can apply the right setting. If the reconnection takes some time, then indeed the behavior could appear a bit broken. If the light appears controllable in the app but still hasn't rejoined the rhythm, good chances that it only reconnected to the local network (hence available thru it for app control) but not to the internet yet.
We can work on this in two ways: trying to optimize the time it takes to poll the time, for example from a local source, and indeed implementing the kind of sync you mention so that groups "stay together". We'll look into it!

Mark Wahlert

Antonin Carre: 1 - I am looking forward to the automation overhaul and subsequent improvements in usability.
2 - I had not considered that it was simply a matter of the bulb establishing time sync.  I had assumed the delay was induced by whatever measure of time was required to handshake with the wireless access point, receive an IP address, and then a check in with WiZ servers.
2a - Can I over ride the NTP server for WiZ devices by delivering one of preference through my DHCP configuration?  (IE, will the bulbs respect DHCP 004 and or DHCP 042 options?)
2b - Another feature request - allow users to assign static IP addresses to WiZ bulbs to reduce the time required to establish full network connectivity by eliminating the dependency on DHCP.

Antonin Carre

Mark Wahlert: we're fine with static IPs, you can assign them from your router interface and things should be all fine.
I don't think we can override the NTP server call. It's built in our firmware that way.
Another alternative... is to not turn off the power, but instead use WiZ remotes and our upcoming smart button which is going to have a wall-mounting plate :)

Mark Wahlert

Antonin Carre: There is a distinction between static DHCP reservations and static IP assignment. If the bulb could be configured with a static IP address it would not need to wait for a DHCP assignment (even if it is a static reservation). This could reduce the time it takes to establish network connectivity, and ultimately reduce the time until the clock has been synchronized.

What NTP pool is hard coded in? I have my own NTP server on the local network I’d like to use instead.

Mark Wahlert

Found my own answer. The bulbs are using ntp.wiz.world (as a CNAME of pool.ntp.org). I created a record for ntp.wiz.world on my local DNS server and redirected it to my local NTP server. I'll see if the lower RTT helps improve sync time when the bulbs are first turned on. Or at least if reliability of following rhythms improves.

It would still be nice if we could manually configure a static IP address and static NTP server on the bulbs directly someday.

Kenny Lam

marked this post as

planned

Antonin Carre

Hi Simon and thanks for your comments! :)
Rhythms (including circadian) are still here. Except, of course, not visible yet. As part of the beta program, we are releasing the different elements of the system gradually and rhythms are among those which have not been pushed out yet. You should get circadian rhythm back within a few updates :)
When it comes to the overall usability, we appreciate your honest feedback and would of course be glad to deliver some improvements. Are there any particular parts of the interface which you have found to be more problematic?
Thanks!

Mark Wahlert

Antonin Carre: As an aside, when configured, are rhythms pushed down to the bulb firmware and run locally (like schedules) or are they dependent on connectivity to WiZ servers?

I am going to assume rhythms are dispatched and not run locally given my experiences with my collection of bulbs to date.

Antonin Carre

Mark Wahlert: See my reply on your other comment :) They're pushed locally to the lights, but we still need the lighs to know what time it is for things to run smoothly :)