Successfully Integrating Milight and Astro for Sunset to Sunrise Automation

I’m thrilled to share my success in integrating Milight lights with the Astro binding to create an automated sunset-to-sunrise routine. After some trial and error, I managed to get everything working smoothly, and I wanted to document my process in case it helps others who might be tackling a similar project.First, I installed the necessary bindings in my addons folder. I made sure to include binding.milight and binding.astro, as these were crucial for the integration. I avoided adding action.milight and action.astro to the addons folder, as they seemed unnecessary for this setup.Next, I configured the .cfg file with the details for both bindings. For the Astro binding, I set my latitude and longitude to ensure accurate sunrise and sunset times. I also configured the refresh interval for azimuth and elevation calculations. For the Milight binding, I specified the IP address and port of my bridge, which allowed me to control my RGBW lights effectively.Here’s a snippet of my configuration:plaintext################################# Astro Binding ######################################## The latitudeastro:latitude=37.284540# The longitudeastro:longitude=-80.042137# Refresh interval for azimuth and elevation calculation in secondsastro:interval=180################################### Milight Binding #################################### Host of the first Milight bridge to controlmilight:MilightId1.host=10.0.0.194# Port of the bridge to control (optional, defaults to 50000)milight:MilightId1.port=8899I then defined the items in my .items file, including switches and dimmers for controlling the lights, as well as DateTime items for tracking sunrise and sunset events. Thesitemap was set up to include a frame for the porch lights, with switches and a color picker for easy control.Finally, I created two rules in the Rules tab to handle the automation. The first rule turns off the porch lights at sunrise, while the second turns them on at sunset. This setup ensures that the lights come on automatically as the sun sets and turn off as it rises, providing a seamless and energy-efficient solution.While I’m not an expert, this setup has worked perfectly for me. I hope this guide helps others who might be struggling with a similar project. If anyone has questions or suggestions, I’d be happy to discuss further!