Virtual Light Entity for Home Assistant

Create fully-featured virtual light entities in Home Assistant — no hardware needed. Build creative dashboards, test automations, or design ambient lighting scenes using software-only lights that behave exactly like real smart bulbs.

Home Assistant's built-in light helper is limited and unintuitive. Virtual Light Entity gives you a simple UI wizard to create lights with full color support, brightness control, and 11 built-in animations — all configurable per entity.

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Features

• Full color mode support — Brightness, Color Temperature, RGB, RGBW, RGBWW, HS, and XY
• 11 built-in animations — Candle Flicker, Breathing, Color Loop, Rainbow Cycle, Strobe, Sunrise, Sunset, Party Mode, Fireplace, Ocean Wave, and Aurora
• 3-step setup wizard — Name your light, pick color modes, choose animations. Done.
• Reconfigure anytime — Change settings through the options flow without deleting and recreating
• State restoration — Lights remember their state across Home Assistant restarts
• Per-entity configuration — Each virtual light can have different capabilities
• Device registration — Each light appears as a proper device in the Home Assistant device registry
• Transition support — Works with Home Assistant's built-in transition service calls
• HACS compatible — Install and update through the Home Assistant Community Store

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Installation

HACS (Recommended)

1. Open HACS in your Home Assistant instance
2. Click the three dots in the top right corner and select Custom repositories
3. Add https://github.com/gabrielozcomidi/Virtual-Light-Entity as an Integration
4. Search for Virtual Light Entity and click Install
5. Restart Home Assistant

Manual

1. Download the latest release from the Releases page
2. Copy the custom_components/virtual_light_entity folder into your Home Assistant custom_components directory
3. Restart Home Assistant

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Setup

1. Go to Settings > Devices & Services > Add Integration
2. Search for Virtual Light Entity
3. Follow the 3-step wizard:

Step 1 — Name & Initial State

Option	Description
Light Name	Display name for your virtual light
Start turned on	Whether the light should be on when first created
Initial Brightness	Default brightness level (1–255)

Step 2 — Color Modes

Select which color modes your virtual light supports. You can pick any combination:

Mode	Description
Brightness	Dimmable white light
Color Temperature	Warm to cool white (153–500 mireds)
HS Color	Hue & Saturation color control
RGB Color	Red, Green, Blue color mixing
RGBW Color	RGB + dedicated White channel
RGBWW Color	RGB + Warm White + Cool White channels
XY Color	CIE 1931 color space

Step 3 — Animations

Choose which animation effects to enable. These appear in the light's Effect dropdown:

Animation	Description
Candle Flicker	Warm, randomized flicker simulating a real candle
Breathing	Smooth sine-wave pulse that fades in and out
Color Loop	Slowly cycles through all hues
Rainbow Cycle	Full-brightness rainbow rotation
Strobe	Fast on/off flash
Sunrise	60-second gradual transition from deep red to daylight
Sunset	60-second gradual transition from daylight to dark red
Party Mode	Fast random color and brightness changes
Fireplace	Warm orange/red flickering fire simulation
Ocean Wave	Gentle blue-green sine wave
Aurora	Shifting greens and purples simulating northern lights

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Reconfiguring

To change a virtual light's settings after creation:

1. Go to Settings > Devices & Services
2. Find Virtual Light Entity and click Configure on the light you want to edit
3. Update the name, color modes, animations, or default brightness
4. Click Submit — changes apply immediately

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Use Cases

• Dashboard design — Create ambient light cards that animate and respond to input without needing physical hardware
• Automation testing — Test light automations before applying them to real devices
• Demo environments — Set up showcase dashboards with fully functional light controls
• Scene prototyping — Design and preview lighting scenes before buying hardware
• Creative displays — Use animations like Aurora or Ocean Wave as visual elements in wall-mounted dashboards

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Example Automations

Start a sunrise animation at 6:30 AM

automation:
  - alias: "Morning Sunrise"
    trigger:
      - platform: time
        at: "06:30:00"
    action:
      - service: light.turn_on
        target:
          entity_id: light.bedroom_virtual
        data:
          effect: "Sunrise"

Set a virtual light to match another light

automation:
  - alias: "Mirror Living Room Light"
    trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id: light.living_room
    action:
      - service: light.turn_on
        target:
          entity_id: light.virtual_mirror
        data:
          brightness: "{{ state_attr('light.living_room', 'brightness') }}"
          rgb_color: "{{ state_attr('light.living_room', 'rgb_color') }}"

Toggle fireplace mode from a dashboard button

type: button
entity: light.virtual_fireplace
tap_action:
  action: call-service
  service: light.turn_on
  data:
    effect: "Fireplace"
  target:
    entity_id: light.virtual_fireplace

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Requirements

• Home Assistant 2024.1.0 or newer
• HACS (for automatic installation and updates)

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub.

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.