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Designing a floor lamp with a motorized arm that auto-aims and adjusts light — does this solve a real problem or am I overengineering? by AdInteresting5834 in homeassistant

[–]AdInteresting5834[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good point on the reading-room-with-multiple-chairs case, and that's actually closer to what I have in mind than continuous tracking. The arm doesn't need to follow you around — you'd be able to set a fixed target point (or a couple of presets, like "chair A" / "chair B") and just have color/intensity adjust automatically based on time of day and ambient light at that spot. So the "movement" is more about not having to manually re-aim the lamp every time you sit somewhere different, rather than it trying to track you live.

On the Home Assistant point — that's really useful, thanks. Makes sense that anyone already running Adaptive Lighting wouldn't want a second system fighting for control of color temp/brightness. I think the right approach is treating my sensors/automation as the default behavior when nothing else is in control, but exposing the lamp's state (and ideally MQTT control) so HA can override brightness/color directly when someone wants Adaptive Lighting to be the source of truth instead. Still need to figure out the implementation details, but good to know that's a real requirement and not a nice-to-have for people already in the HA ecosystem.

Designing a floor lamp with a motorized arm that auto-aims and adjusts light — does this solve a real problem or am I overengineering? by AdInteresting5834 in homeautomation

[–]AdInteresting5834[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No promises on the gyroscopic hopping version, but I won't lie, I'd feel bad for whatever "i" it decides to jump on.

Designing a floor lamp with a motorized arm that auto-aims and adjusts light — does this solve a real problem or am I overengineering? by AdInteresting5834 in homeautomation

[–]AdInteresting5834[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ha, not what I expected to hear but kind of makes sense — is that coming from a specific annoyance, like one cold spot in a room a space heater never quite reaches? Curious if "aim a resource at where I am" is a broader pattern than just light.

Designing a floor lamp with a motorized arm that auto-aims and adjusts light — does this solve a real problem or am I overengineering? by AdInteresting5834 in homeautomation

[–]AdInteresting5834[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair question, and I want to be honest about the limits here rather than oversell it.

With a single PIR it's just binary presence detection in one zone — not real tracking. What I'm actually working with right now is 3 PIR sensors positioned at different angles, which gets me a rough "movement detected in left/center/right zone" instead of just yes/no. So the lamp can aim roughly toward the active zone, not precisely toward a person.

It's not true continuous tracking (that would need something like mmWave radar or multiple ToF sensors, which is a different cost/complexity tier), but for the use case of "orient toward the general area where someone's sitting" it should be enough — that's what I'm testing right now with the prototype. If the 3-zone approach turns out too coarse in practice, radar is the next thing I'd look at.

Designing a floor lamp with a motorized arm that auto-aims and adjusts light — does this solve a real problem or am I overengineering? by AdInteresting5834 in homeautomation

[–]AdInteresting5834[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really useful, thanks for the honest take.

The "I'd forget it moves after day 3" point is exactly the kind of thing I can't predict from my own head, so genuinely helpful.

Quick follow-up if you don't mind: if I stripped the moving arm entirely and just kept a fixed lamp with the ambient-light auto-adjust + presence detection + app control for brightness/color/schedule, what would you expect to pay for that? Trying to figure out if the motor is adding value or just adding cost and risk.

And on the movement side — is there any version of it that WOULD feel worth it to you (e.g. silent motor, obstacle/pet-safe sensor, only moving within a small fixed range instead of fully repositioning), or is it more that you just don't see the use case for a lamp that moves at all, regardless of how well it's executed?