I rigged up a simulated sunrise about 20 years back with a regular light, a computer, and an X10 controller back when I slept in a room without windows and wanted a more-gentle way of waking up than an alarm clock. So I totally get wanting to simulate a sunrise.

But why do you want to simulate a sunset?

Also, you might want to ask on !homeautomation@lemmy.world, as they specialize in this sort of thing.

Pretty sure that exact feature is built into the native Hue app, as long as you have the bulbs that support those kinds of colors. I see it when i try to make a “wake up” automation, i’d have to look again to see if there is an opposite for sunset. You can automate bedtime or go to sleep automations, and schedule them for sunset/sunrise or specific times.

Edit- just quickly looked through the app- there IS a sunrise for a wakeup automation, but not seeing any default sunset types. Might have to create your own by fading through some other sunset colors while dimming. Which is done basically like you are sayin; pick a color and and start time, then another color at another start time, etc. you can set whether to snap to these colors or fade to them over a period of time which also picking brightness. BUT- this is just in the native Hue app, i dont know about other Hue compatible apps.

If you're not afraid of some doing some configurations, then you might want to check out Home Assistant. I got completely rid of my Hue bridge and am using a Raspberry Pi with HA and a ZigBee Dongle instead (there are also other setup options, and you can also still use your Hue bridge instead of a Dongle to control the lights). Wouldn't go back, it's so much more versatile and cleaner to use.

Then find a blueprint (e.g. like this one), or create an automation from scratch for your individual needs.

Yes. I did it myself, configurable duration. Three sets of parallel color values...

I've almost posted on Lemmy before, but the script is too long (the variable RGBs drive the length)... It is absolutely possible. Starts white, moves gold, peach, pink, red, then blue. Brightness subsides with time and sun's position.

I use home assistant to make it happen. The software is free and an RPi4B+ doesn't break most banks.

iConnectHue has self adjusting sunset and sunrise timers... but it might have gone to a subscription model, in which case screw that.

And I could certainly set something like that up in home assistant.

It's worth noting that all the Hue bulbs I own have a fairly high minimum brightness. Meaning they pop on at ~10-15% full brightness.