Shortly after I finished building the pavilion, I put up some holiday lights. They were pretty, but didn’t light it up very much and — for mysterious reasons — they have become dimmer over time and now they’re purely an accent. They don’t provide any usable illumination.
Even at their brightest, the pavilion still needed more light even to eat a meal, much less play a card game at the table.
Among the dear, departed Queen B’s effects was an old clamp light. I put it in the pavilion facing down toward the table. It provided plenty of light for gaming, and probably too much for a quiet evening of talk story. I wanted to be able to control the brightness, so I bought a smart bulb that I can control with Home Assistant. It required a Zigbee hub (Zigbee is a low-energy, low-bandwidth wireless protocol), which didn’t cost much and integrated instantly to Home Assistant. That also will let me add wireless pushbuttons so that we can control the light without having to dig out a phone.
The pavilion can now be an excellent nighttime space!
—2p