Idea: Using brightness sensors to estimate non smart lights power usage.

[mattahr]

Hi,

I have regular, non smart spotlights in a couple of small rooms , but I also have motion sensors that measure brightness.
So, I figured that if I could somehow set up sensors that use the brightness in the room that would correlate to the power used by the spotlights. I have not yet found a way to implement this, maybe it is already possible?

I realize that this is far from optimal and would not work for rooms with windows or different lights and so on, but I think it could work as a last resort for some of us while saving up to buy smarter lights :)

In it's simplest form like a fixed sensor:
If brightness is over X then power is Y

Thanks.

[bramstroker]

Cool idea to use your motion sensor to determine if your dumb light is on or off? However it will also give you false positives when it is bright outside (you would not know if your light is on of off).

To accommodate this use case I would suggest to just create some template sensors. Using if/else statement for the brightness.

If I would support something like this in the component the configuration would get complex and it would not have a big advantage over template sensors.

[mattahr]

The rooms are small and have no windows (bathrooms), so sunlight is not a problem and the light coming in when the door i opened is easy to recognize since the spotlights are much brighter and always about the same strength.

I'll give template sensors a try, thanks!